PEPE. Think of it, cousin. Tell it to your friends, The statesmen, soldiers, and philosophers; Noise it about the earth, and let it stir The sluggish spirits of the multitudes. Pursue the thought, scan it, from end to end, Through all its latent possibilities. It is a great seed dropped, I promise you, And it must sprout. Thought never wholly dies; It only wants a name--a hard Greek name-- Some few apostles, who may live on it-- crowd of listeners, with the average dulness That man possesses--and we organize; Spread our new doctrine, like a general plague; Talk of man's progress and development, Wrongs of society, the march of mind, The Devil, Doctor Faustus, and what not; And, lo! this pretty world turns upside down, All with a fool's idea!
LANCIOTTO. By Jupiter, You hit our modern teachers to a hair! I knew this fool was a philosopher. Pepe is right. Mechanic means advance; Nature bows down to Science' haughty tread, And turns the wheel of smutty artifice: New governments arise, dilate, decay, And foster creeds and churches to their tastes: At each advance, we cry, "Behold, the end!" Till some fresh wonder breaks upon the age. But man, the moral creature, midst it all Stands still unchanged; nor moves towards virtue more, Nor comprehends the mysteries in himself, More than when Plato taught academies, Or Zeno thundered from his Attic porch.
PEPE. I know not that; I only want my scheme Tried for a while. I am a politician, A wrongs-of-man man. Hang philosophy! Let metaphysics swallow, at a gulp, Its last two syllables, and purge itself Clean of its filthy humours! I am one Ready for martyrdom, for stake and fire, If I can make my great idea take root! Zounds! cousin, if I had an audience, I'd make you shudder at my eloquence! I have an itching to reform the world.
PEPE. Home is not my sphere; Heaven picked me out to teach my fellow-men. I am a very firebrand of truth-- A self-consuming, doomed, devoted brand-- That burns to ashes while I light the world! I feel it in me. I am moved, inspired, Stirred into utterance, by some mystic power Of which I am the humble instrument.
LANCIOTTO. A bad digestion, sage, a bilious turn, A gnawing stomach, or a pinching shoe.
PEPE. O! hear, but spare the scoffer! Spare the wretch Who sneers at the anointed man of truth! When we reached that, I and my followers Would rend you limb from limb. There!--ha! ha! ha! [_Laughing._] Have I not caught the slang these fellows preach; A grand, original idea, to back it; And all the stock in trade of a reformer?