will you force me to tell you truths I
desire to conceal? If by such unmerited, such barbarous usage I could
lose her heart it would break mine. How should I be able to endure the
torment of thinking that I had wronged such a wife? What could make me
amends for her being no longer mine, for her being another's? Don't
frown, Circe, I must own--since you will have me speak--I must own you
could not. With all your pride of immortal beauty, with all your magical
charms to assist those of Nature, you are not so powerful a charmer as
she. You feel desire, and you give it, but you have never felt love, nor
can you inspire it. How can I love one who would have degraded me into a
beast? Penelope raised me into a hero. Her love ennobled, invigorated,
exalted my mind. She bid me go to the siege of Troy, though the parting
with me was worse than death to herself. She bid me expose myself there
to all the perils of war among the foremost heroes of Greece, though her
poor heart sunk and trembled at every thought of those perils, and would
have given all its own blood to save a drop of mine. Then there was such
a conformity in all our inclinations! When Minerva was teaching me the
lessons of wisdom she delighted to be present. She heard, she retained,
she gave them back to me softened and sweetened with the peculiar graces
of her own mind. When we unbent our thoughts with the charms of poetry,
when we read together the poems of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, with what
taste did she discern every excellence in them! My feelings were dull
compared to hers. She seemed herself to be the muse who had inspired
those verses, and had tuned their lyres to infuse into the hearts of
mankind the love of wisdom and virtue and the fear of the gods. How
beneficent was she, how tender to my people! What care did she take to
instruct them in all the finer arts, to relieve the necessities of the
sick and aged, to superintend the education of children, to do my
subjects every good office of kind intercession, to lay before me their
wants, to mediate for those who were objects of mercy, to sue for those
who deserved the favours of the Crown. And shall I banish myself for
ever from such a consort? Shall I give up her society for the brutal
joys of a sensual life, keeping indeed the exterior form of a man, but
having lost the human soul, or at least all its noble and godlike powers?
Oh, Circe, it is impossible, I can't bear the thought.