would best
wish to see you.

There was some ambiguity in the compliment; but Lord Curryfin took it as
implying that his aspect in all its variety was agreeable to the young
lady. He did not then dream of a rival in the Hermit of the Folly.

CHAPTER XIV

MUSIC AND PAINTING--JACK OF DOVER

(Greek passage)
Anacreon.

I love not him, who o'er the wine-cup's flow
Talks but of war, and strife, and scenes of woe:
But him who can the Muses' gifts employ,
To mingle love and song with festal joy.

The dinner and dessert passed away. The ladies retired to the
drawing-room: the gentlemen discoursed over their wine. Mr.
MacBorrowdale pronounced a eulogium on the port, which was cordially
echoed by the divine in regard to the claret.

_Mr. Falconer._ Doctor, your tastes and sympathies are very much with
the Greeks; but I doubt if you would have liked their wine. Condiments
of sea-water and turpentine must have given it an odd flavour; and
mixing water with it, in the proportion of three to one, must have
reduced the strength of merely fermented liquor to something like the
smallest ale of Christophero Sly.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I must say I should not like to put either
salt water or turpentine into this claret: they would not improve its
bouquet; nor to dilute it with any portion of water: it has to my mind,
as it is, just the strength it ought to have, and no more. But the Greek
taste was so exquisite in all matters in which we can bring it to the
test, as to justify a strong presumption that in matters in which we
cannot test it, it was equally correct. Salt water and turpentine do not
suit our wine: it does not follow that theirs had not in it some basis
of contrast, which may have made them pleasant in combination. And it
was only a few of their wines that were so treated.

Lord Curryfin. Then it could not have been much like their drink of the
present day. 'My master cannot be right in his mind,' said Lord Byron's
man Fletcher, 'or he would not have left Italy, where we had everything,
to go to a country of savages; there is nothing to eat in Greece but
tough billy-goats, or to drink but spirits of turpentine.'{1}

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There is an ambiguous present, which somewhat
perplexes me, in an epigram of Rhianus, 'Here is a vessel of half-wine,
half-turpentine, and a singularly lean specimen of kid: the sender,
Hippocrates, is worthy o