"Very good," said Karl, "but I did not remember it--where is it from?"
"From the Captives," replied Ashburner; "don't you remember the slave Tyndavas uses it, when old Hegio tells him he is a sower and harvester of crime?"
"Oh yes, I believe you are right; but to tell the truth, I'm not much of an admirer of Plautus."
"Indeed," replied Ashburner; "why I thought you would admire him extremely; for my part I like his bold unpolished comedies; if it was not heresy for an Englishman to say so, I should say the _Maenuhm_ was equal to the Comedy of Errors; and Shakspeare certainly must have borrowed the idea of his play from Plautus--the resemblance between them is too close to be accidental."
Karl said "Yes," in that cool sort of tone by which people show they assent to admiration without participating in it, and added something of there being no language but Greek; at which Harry Benson laughed and asked him if he was still reviewing his Homer.
Though this was said in raillery, Ashburner remarked that Karl looked quite pleased, and seemed to take the allusion to Greek and Reviews as a special compliment. The fact was that Mr. Karl Benson had just been through a gentle controversy upon the question whether the Greek word [Greek: kadestêchnia] should be rendered _constitut_ING or constitut_ed_,--which had redounded very much to the credit of himself or his antagonist--a point not yet decided, and which it is very much feared never will be.
The particulars of this important contest were these: Karl had been classical editor of one of the leading magazines of Gotham, known to the literary public of that literary metropolis as the _Zuyderzee_. The Zuyderzee when first organized, had not boasted a classical editor among its managers; and as it was devoted to what is vulgarly called "light literature," was supposed by the initiated portion of the public not to want one. Suddenly, however, certain short pieces appeared in the Editor's table (which was printed in small type at the end of each number, and never read), containing severe criticisms on such classical scholars of the nineteenth century as ventured to publish works in the dead languages with notes attached, for the benefit of young England, or more particularly, young America. Though these criticisms were always after the Edinburgh Review model, and finished up in the severest style of the month, and though the Zuyderzee had a classical editor to do them (which we would here explain to be an editor devoted to the review of classical works and subjects, and nothing else), they were to the Zuyderzee a cheap and harmless luxury. Mr. Karl Benson being a gentleman of fortune, was not particular about compensation, but limited his desires to the very worthy object of seeing himself in print. At that time, too, Mr. Benson had not "been up" to works of _fiction_; or else had restrained his powers and devoted them to the inferior task of "portraying" individuals, and abusing other men's works. The editor of the Zuyderzee, though not particularly anxious for a classical sub (who, to tell the truth, was no more wanted than a Scandinavian critic for the _Blunder and Bluster_), had no objection to the gratuitous aid of Mr. Benson; and so it came that Karl was installed as classical editor of the Zuyderzee, with full power to annihilate the classics, and with no restraint set upon him except that he was to do it briefly.