pleasures and its recompenses; showing that, if there be a future life,
the gods have done wisely to withhold its exact nature from us, and
that, whatever uncertainties may exist in other respects, nothing can be
more true than that those who now die in the arena will, in another
world, find their highest felicity in the privilege of looking up from a
distance at the loved emperor in whose honor they perished, and
beholding him enjoying, through adoption, the society of the inhabitants
of Olympus. I then--but it is useless to detail all the argument. I will
read the poem itself; or rather, if you so permit, I will let this
scribe of yours read it for me. Perhaps, upon hearing it from another's
mouth, I may be led to make still further corrections.'

Handing the manuscript with all care to Cleotos, the poet leaned back
with eyes closed in delicious revery, now and then arousing himself to
correct some defective emphasis or unsatisfactory intonation, the
tolerance of which, he imagined, would mar the proper effect of the
production, or, with persistent desire for praise, momentarily calling
closer attention to such passages as appeared to him deserving of
especial commendation--and generally omitting no opportunity of exacting
that entire admiration to which he believed his genius entitled him.
Apart from a somewhat extravagant display of high-strained metaphor, the
poem had merit, being bold in scope, sonorous and well rounded in tone,
and here and there gracefully decked with original and pleasing
thoughts. Throughout the whole, however, the singular propensity of the
author for indulgence in morbid and gloomy reflection found its usual
development, while every line was laden with lofty maxims of moral
philosophy, mingled with urgent incentives to the adoption of a virtuous
career;--all, in themselves, both unexceptionable and praiseworthy, but,
nevertheless, having a strange sound in the ears of those who recognized
them as the utterances of one whose conversation was always flippant and
puerile, and whose daily life, in the enormity and uninterrupted
persistency of its profligacy, rendered him the acknowledged leader of
all that was most disreputable and contaminating in Roman society.

At length, the reading having been fully completed, and the listener's
powers of flattery exhausted, the author carefully rewrapped his poem in
its silken cover and carried it away, to read it, in turn, to other
noble ladies, with th