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Chor. Hark! A note the woodland fills,
Fantasies flit o'er the hills,

Clear expressed in song!

But the thing to which we're led
Step by step must now be said:
(How can we be wrong?)

He who found this wonder out
Was the robber, never doubt!
Be not thou displeased at this!
Lady, take it not amiss!

Cyll. What is this folly? Whom do ye call a thief?
Chor. Lady, by heaven, we would not anger thee.
Cyll. Will ye accuse of theft the son of Zeus?
Chor. Aye, and will overtake him, theft and all.
Cyll. The gods are thieves then, if ye speak the truth.
Chor. We speak the truth which thou art fain to hide.
Full sure are we this boy did steal the kine,

And from the corse of one of them he flayed
That piece of skin which to the shell he fitted.
Cyll. I see ye play on my simplicity,
Seeking no other object than a jest.
For my part henceforth be at ease, and if
It gives you pleasure, or if ye think to gain,
Laugh as ye will, and let your hearts be glad.
But do not mock the very son of Zeus,
Nor with new tales assail a new-born child.
His father gave him not a thievish nature,
Nor in his mother's stock doth theft prevail.

If any theft there be, the robber seek

In some poor churl; this boy's house hungers not.
Look at his birth; fasten the guilt where'er
'Tis due; but here to bring it is not meet.
Nay, ye are ever children: bearded men,

Ye revel like a goat among the thistles.

Cease courting pleasure with your hairless pates!
Will not the utterer of foolish jests

Anon to tears be driven? So say I.

Chor. Turn and twist, thy fables weave,

Any artifice conceive;

Thou wilt ne'er persuade

Me of this, that he whose hand

Made this instrument hide-spanned

Other cattle flayed

Than Apollo's: from this track

Do not seek to draw me back.

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Cyll. But shall a child like this be called a thief?
Chor. If he does wicked things, then is he wicked.
Cyll. The son of Zeus may not be thus abused.
Chor. If it be true, we have the right to speak.
Cyll. Ye shall not say it.

If then the kine are here, where do they feed!

Chor. Perhaps there's room for several below.

Cyll. Who has them then, knaves? What will ye hazard next?

Chor. The boy whom thou dost keep enclosed within.

Cyll. Cease speaking slander of the son of Zeus !

Chor. We'll cease when someone brings those cattle out.

Cyll. Ye and your kine will be the death of me. . . .

(The text here breaks off. Some remains of another column show APOLLO, summoned by SILENUS and the CHORUS, again upon the stage, eventually, no doubt, to be confronted with HERMES.)

QUEEN'S COLLEGE, Oxford.

A. S. HUNT.

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MR WINSTON CHURCHILL'S VERSATILITY-"VIOLENCE" AND BAD
CITIZENS —A CONSTITUTIONAL PEOPLE-ROBERT SOUTHEY-HIS
FALSE IMPRESSION OF HIMSELF-AN OVERWEENING CONCEIT-HIS
EXCELLENT WORK AND CHARACTER-A HISTORY OF PROSE RHYTHM
-PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY'S INGENIOUS THESIS-AN ANTHOLOGY
OF PROSE-THE ANCIENTS' LOVE OF NATURE-SIR ARCHIBALD
GEIKIE'S TREATISE.

MR WINSTON CHURCHILL came forward, for a month, as has proved himself, since he a patriotic Minister, the chamtook office in a Radical Govern- pion of British supremacy and ment, the most versatile of a strong navy. The mood demagogues. At the outset he passed swiftly, and Mr Churchill discovered, in friendly rivalry lost the opportunity which is with his colleague, Mr Lloyd never granted twice to the George, that there was, for a same politician. He might while at least, a clear profit in have resigned, and became the inciting the hatred of class representative of a nation. He against class. The country is preferred to remain in the not likely to forget or forgive Cabinet, the slave of a peacethe raving, ramping campaign ful majority, and to leave the of these twin sons of Thunder. Mediterranean, with the foodIn the wanton destruction of supply of the country, to its the British Constitution, by fate. Still restless to be cast what Mr Balfour called a felon's in another rôle, he has disstroke, Mr Churchill played a turbed the tranquillity of the conspicuous part. He did his recess by giving a pompous best to create a wanton and representation of Mr Pecksniff. unjust prejudice in the popular There he stands in the pose of mind against the House of platitude, with his hand in his Lords, to several members of vest, addressing the country for which he is bound by the ties its good. And we offer Sir of blood. Such jingling, mean- George Ritchie our sincerest ingless phrases as "we've got condolences. If he receives 'em on the run, we'll keep 'em at his breakfast - table many on the run," are still fresh in the such missives as Mr Winston people's memory. Then sud- Churchill favours him withal, denly class-hatred gathered no he will lose his appetite even more votes. Mr Lloyd George for his native marmalade. might apparently feed upon his own rhetoric. For himself, Mr Churchill determined "to abjure sack and live cleanly." He

Through weary columns of The Times' Mr Churchill preaches the doctrines of law and order. He has at last

finally renounced the gospel of his father that "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right." Always a late-learner, he desires to teach the world that obedience to the whim of a composite majority of the House of Commons is the universal duty. Now "opsimathie," said Sir Matthew Hale, "which is too late beginning to learn, was accounted a great vice, and very unseemly amongst moral and natural men," and Mr Churchill must excuse us if we doubt the depth and sincerity of his new doctrine. "Violence within the realm," says he, "is the mark of a bad citizen." This is true enough, if we reserve the right to resist tyranny. It is a lesson which Mr Churchill and his colleagues are prevented from inculcating by six years of unbridled lawlessness. Even if they made public confession of their sins, and, humbly repentant, demanded absolution from their dupes, the absolution would be withheld. They are not repentant. When their own lessons fail them, they misread the lessons of others, and we do not suppose that Mr Churchill has deceived anybody by his latest manifestoes, not even Sir George Ritchie himself.

"Violence within the realm is the mark of a bad citizen." How has our Radical Government interpreted this pregnant saying? For six years it has made a convenience of the law. It has encouraged violence with a stout heart, whenever violence has strengthened its majority. It has looked upon cattle

driving with a lenient smile. An ill-timed jest from Mr Birrell has seemed enough to palliate the fiercest outrage of Nationalist Ireland. There are no "bad citizens" where Mr Devlin reigns. With the contempt for authority which has always characterised them in small things as in great, Mr Asquith and his friends have permitted Mr Fitzgibbon, a gentleman who publicly declared that "estates in Connaught should be sold at fag-end prices," to remain a member of the Congested Districts Board. Was not this "violence within the realm," or is it true that in the government of Ireland only

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bad citizens" need apply? The policy pursued in Ireland has been matched by the lawlessness encouraged by our Ministers at the London Docks. Mr Tillett, their prime favourite, has been permitted to pray for the death of Lord Devonport in public. The honest men who dared to work have been belaboured by the strikers at their leisure and with impunity. Not content with placing the Trade Unions above the law, the Government have permitted warlike as well as peaceful picketing. And the reason was not far to seek. The professors of "violence are well-organised voters, and they are never "bad citizens," citizens," who have learned how to go to the polling-booth in a compact body. But what became in the East of London of "all the liberties which dignify our island life,

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which are the envy of every foreign people," to quote Mr Churchill's stilted phrases? They were gaily trodden underfoot by the Home Office, lest, surviving, they might lose the Government a handful of precious votes.

For the same reason the miscreants go scatheless who incite soldiers to kill their officers. The murder of officers, we take it, is not the "violence" of "bad citizens." And in general every crime may be pardoned, if the enlargement of the criminal appear "popular" or provide a demagogue with a passage of rhetoric. The world is never likely to forget the blue-eyed shepherd of Dartmoor, the "good citizen," the recital of whose injuries rocked a vast and sobbing audience to tears, and was as fair an excuse for a political argument as any one of our Ministers has ever found. The blue-eyed one, we are forced to confess, was not a true apostle of law and order. But he pointed a moral, he adorned a tale, perhaps he suggested to a foolish Minister that the bench of judges was out of harmony with the British democracy, and, at any rate, he was far too valuable a "citizen" to languish all his life in an uncomfortable jail.

The persistent lawlessness of the Government, then, makes Mr Churchill's rodomontade hypocritical and ridiculous. We agree with a wise 66 Contemporary," who points out in 'The Times' that the only principle discernible in it all "is that

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what suits the Government is right, and what does not is wrong. And there is another and deeper reason why Mr Churchill's mouth should be closed in the presence of Ulster and its purposes. "We are a constitutional country," he said in his pious address. Had he said "were,' we should have agreed with him. We are "constitutional" no no longer. Our constitution was destroyed by Mr Asquith after a campaign of unexampled and irrelevant insult conduoted by Mr Asquith's lieutenants. The Radicals cannot have their cake and eat it. Having destroyed the constitution, they cannot find shelter behind it for their misdeeds. We pointed out many months ago in this magazine that the Radicals would be the first to regret the absence of the restraint once imposed upon them by the House of Lords. In desperation Mr Churchill invokes "the Crown and Parliament of these realms." He invokes them too late. The Crown and Parliament are no more. The King, by a trick, has been made the instrument of a party. The veto of the Lords is treasonably abolished, and whatever laws are passed to-day carry with them no other authority than the whim of the House of Commons. Until the constitution be restored, we live under a tyranny, reckless and unbridled. The ancient privileges of the people are torn away. An appeal to the country has been made impossible. Mr Churchill knows as

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well as any man in the country that the Home Rule Bill is being passed against the general wish of Great Britain, and it has been passed as the result of a nefarious bargain. Until Mr Asquith has redeemed his debt of "honour," and recreated the House of Lords, we are without the semblance of a government; nothing stands between us and the usurping tyranny. And tyranny leaves but one loophole of escape-resistance. "Men have been found, and will be found again in the world," says Mr Churchill, "to dare and suffer all things in resistance to tyranny." This is one among the many copybook headings, mistaken by Mr Churchill for arguments, which we gladly endorse. And let it be remembered that in this battle of "tyranny" and "resistance" it is Mr Churchill and his masters who are the aggressors. They are thrusting the men of Ulster out of the Union against their will, and handing them over to what they know to be a hostile majority. When Mr Churchill asserts in his most unctuous manner that he and his accomplices "seek to liberate, not to enthrall, to conciliate, not to coerce," he is talking nonsense. "We have no intention," he boasts, "of creating evils greater than those we wish to remedy." Who made him master of his "intention"? If he had studied history he would know that most of the evils which have overtaken the world have come from the failure of "inten

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A lack of humour neutralises the most of the virtues. Many a greater man than Mr Churchill has injured his career by the mere inability to understand his own foibles. Robert Southey, for instance, could never see himself in a fair and just relation to the rest of the world. He was totally without that sense of proportion that is the essence of humour, and he has come down to us in a far different guise from that which would have been his, if he had not too gravely considered his pretensions. He could not, if he would, take himself other than seriously. He compared himself, in prose and verse,

and he loved comparisons, only with the highest. In his estimation there was only one thing in the world greater than his poetry, and that was his prose. Who his prose. "Thalaba,"" said he to one confiding correspondent, "has certainly and inevitably the faults of 'Samson Agonistes.' . . . Such as it is, I know no poem which can claim a place between it and

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