‘You were always fond of flowers,’ said Lady Annabel.
‘Yes, I imbibed the taste from you,’ said Cadurcis, gratified by the gracious remark.
He seated himself at her feet, examined and admired her work, and talked of old times, but with such infinite discretion, that he did not arouse a single painful association. Venetia was busied with her father’s poems, and smiled often at the manuscript notes of Cadurcis. Lying, as usual, on the grass, and leaning his head on his left arm, Herbert was listening to Captain Cadurcis, who was endeavouring to give him a clear idea of the Bosphorus. Thus the morning wore away, until the sun drove them into the villa.
‘I will show you my library, Lord Cadurcis,’ said Herbert.
Cadurcis followed him into a spacious apartment, where he found a collection so considerable that he could not suppress his surprise. ‘Italian spoils chiefly,’ said Herbert; ‘a friend of mine purchased an old library at Bologna for me, and it turned out richer than I imagined: the rest are old friends that have been with me, many of them at least, at college. I brought them back with me from America, for then they were my only friends.’
‘Can you find Cabanis?’ said Lord Cadurcis.
Herbert looked about. It is in this neighbourhood, I imagine,’ he said. Cadurcis endeavoured to assist him. ‘What is this?’ he said; ‘Plato!’
‘I should like to read Plato at Athens,’ said Herbert. ‘My ambition now does not soar beyond such elegant fortune.’
‘We are all under great obligations to Plato,’ said Cadurcis. ‘I remember, when I was in London, I always professed myself his disciple, and it is astonishing what results I experienced. Platonic love was a great invention.’
Herbert smiled; but, as he saw Cadurcis knew nothing about the subject, he made no reply.
‘Plato says, or at least I think he says, that life is love,’ said Cadurcis. ‘I have said it myself in a very grand way too; I believe I cribbed it from you. But what does he mean? I am sure I meant nothing; but I dare say you did.’
‘I certainly had some meaning,’ said Herbert, stopping in his search, and smiling, ‘but I do not know whether I expressed it. The principle of every motion, that is of all life, is desire or love: at present; I am in love with the lost volume of Cabanis, and, if it were not for the desire of obtaining it, I should not now be affording any testimony of my vitality by looking after it.’
‘That is very clear,’ said Cadurcis, ‘but I was thinking of love in the vulgar sense, in the shape of a petticoat. Certainly, when I am in love with a woman, I feel love is life; but, when I am out of love, which often happens, and generally very soon, I still contrive to live.’
‘We exist,’ said Herbert, ‘because we sympathise. If we did not sympathise with the air, we should die. But, if we only sympathised with the air, we should be in the lowest order of brutes, baser than the sloth. Mount from the sloth to the poet. It is sympathy that makes you a poet. It is your desire that the airy children of your brain should be born anew within another’s, that makes you create; therefore, a misanthropical poet is a contradiction in terms.’
‘But when he writes a lampoon?’ said Cadurcis.
‘He desires that the majority, who are not lampooned, should share his hate,’ said Herbert.
‘But Swift lampooned the species,’ said Cadurcis. ‘For my part, I think life is hatred.’
‘But Swift was not sincere, for he wrote the Drapier’s Letters at the same time. Besides, the very fact of your abusing mankind proves that you do not hate them; it is clear that you are desirous of obtaining their good opinion of your wit. You value them, you esteem them, you love them. Their approbation causes you to act, and makes you happy. As for sexual love,’ said Herbert, ‘of which you were speaking, its quality and duration depend upon the degree of sympathy that subsists between the two persons interested. Plato believed, and I believe with him, in the existence of a spiritual antitype of the soul, so that when we are born, there is something within us which, from the instant we live and move, thirsts after its likeness. This propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. The gratification of the senses soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love. Love, on the contrary, is an universal thirst for a communion, not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative, and sensitive. He who finds his antitype, enjoys a love perfect and enduring; time cannot change it, distance cannot remove it; the sympathy is complete. He who loves an object that approaches his antitype, is proportionately happy, the sympathy is feeble or strong, as it may be. If men were properly educated, and their faculties fully developed,’ continued Herbert, ‘the discovery of the antitype would be easy; and, when the day arrives that it is a matter of course, the perfection of civilisation will be attained.’
‘I believe in Plato,’ said Lord Cadurcis, ‘and I think I have found my antitype. His theory accounts for what I never could understand.’
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