MR. TRILLO. Gentlemen, you inspire me. Your last exclamation runs itself into a chorus, and sets itself to music. Allow me to lead, and to hope for your voices in harmony.
After careful meditation, And profound deliberation, On the various pretty projects which have just been shown, Not a scheme in agitation, For the world's amelioration, Has a grain of common sense in it, except my own.
SEVERAL VOICES. We are not disposed to join in any such chorus.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, of all these schemes, I am for Mr. Trillo's. Regenerate the Athenian theatre. My classical friend here, the Captain, will vote with, me.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I, sir? oh! of course, sir.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Surely, Captain, I rely on you to uphold political economy.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Me, sir! oh, to be sure, sir.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Pray, sir, will political economy uphold the Athenian theatre?
MR. MAC QUEDY. Surely not. It would be a very unproductive investment.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Then the Captain votes against you. What, sir, did not the Athenians, the wisest of nations, appropriate to their theatre their most sacred and intangible fund? Did not they give to melopoeia, choregraphy, and the sundry forms of didascalics, the precedence of all other matters, civil and military? Was it not their law, that even the proposal to divert this fund to any other purpose should be punished with death? But, sir, I further propose that the Athenian theatre being resuscitated, the admission shall be free to all who can expound the Greek choruses, constructively, mythologically, and metrically, and to none others. So shall all the world learn Greek: Greek, the Alpha and Omega of all knowledge. At him who sits not in the theatre shall be pointed the finger of scorn: he shall be called in the highway of the city, "a fellow without Greek."
MR. TRILLO. But the ladies, sir, the ladies.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Every man may take in a lady: and she who can construe and metricise a chorus, shall, if she so please, pass in by herself.
MR. TRILLO. But, sir, you will shut me out of my own theatre. Let there at least be a double passport, Greek and Italian.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No, sir; I am inexorable. No Greek, no theatre.
MR. TRILLO. Sir, I cannot consent to be shut out from my own theatre.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. You see how it is, Squire Crotchet the younger; you can scarcely find two to agree on a scheme, and no two of those can agree on the details. Keep your money in your pocket. And so ends the fund for regenerating the world.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Nay, by no means. We are all agreed on deliberative dinners.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very true; we will dine and discuss. We will sing with Robin Hood, "If I drink water while this doth last;" and while it lasts we will have no adjournment, if not to the Athenian theatre.
MR. TRILLO. Well, gentlemen, I hope this chorus at least will please you:-
If I drink water while this doth last, May I never again drink wine:
For how can a man, in his life of a span, Do anything better than dine?
Well dine and drink, and say if we think That anything better can be, And when we have dined, wish all mankind May dine as well as we.
And though a good wish will fill no dish And brim no cup with sack, Yet thoughts will spring as the glasses ring, To illume our studious track.
On the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes The light of the flask shall shine;
And we'll sit till day, but we'll find the way To drench the world with wine.
The schemes for the world's regeneration evaporated in a tumult of voices.