But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of the verdure: but the tear is not the cause of the memory: the memory is the cause of the tear.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There are inaccuracies more offensive to me than even false imagery. Here is one, in a song which I have often heard with displeasure. A young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and higher, he repeats _Excelsior_: but _excelsior_ is only taller in the comparison of things on a common basis, not higher, as a detached object in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was _excelsior_ the higher it grew: but Jack himself was no more _celsus_ at the top than he had been at the bottom.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I am afraid, doctor, if you look for profound knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I do not look for profound knowledge. But I do expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a scholar, but he was always master of his subject. All the scholarship of the world would not have produced _Tarn o' Shanter_: but in the whole of that poem there is not a false image nor a misused word. What do you suppose these lines represent?
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled: A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I should take it to be a description of the Queen of Bambo.
The Rev. Dr, Opimian, Yet thus one of our most popular poets describes Cleopatra: and one of our most popular artists has illustrated the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning Æthiop. Moore led the way to this perversion by demonstrating that the Ægyptian women must have been beautiful, because they were 'the countrywomen of Cleopatra.' { 1} 'Here we have a sort of counter-demonstration, that Cleopatra must have been a fright because she was the countrywoman of the Ægyptians. But Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, and a lady of Pontus. The Ptolemies were Greeks, and whoever will look at their genealogy, their coins, and their medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure Greek blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who Dio says --and all antiquity confirms him--was 'the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear.'{ 2} For she was eminently accomplished: she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. There is not a shadow of intellectual expression in that horrible portrait.