May 6, 1841.

Few present. Our last talk, and we were all dull. For my part, Bacchus does not inspire me, and I was sad because it was the last time that I should see Margaret. She does not love me; I could not venture to follow her into her own home, and I love her so much! Her life hangs on a thread. Her face is full of the marks of pain. Young as I am, I feel old when I look at her.

Margaret spoke of Hercules as representing the course of the solar year. The three apples were the three seasons of four months each into which the ancients divided it. The twelve labors were the twelve signs.

E. P. P. accepted this, and spoke of Bryant’s book, which Margaret did not like.

Margaret said Bryant forced every fact to be a point in a case. Bending each to his theory, he falsified it. She wished English people would be content, like the wiser Germans, to amass classified facts on which original minds could act. She liked to see the Germans so content to throw their gifts upon the pile to go down to posterity, though the pile might carry no record of the collectors. She spoke of Kreitzer, whose book she was now reading, who coolly told his readers that he should not classify a second edition afresh, for his French translator had done it well enough, and if readers were not satisfied with his own work, they must have recourse to the translation. This she thought was as it ought to be.

James Clarke said it always vexed him to hear ignorant people speak of Hercules as if he were a God, and of Apollo and Jupiter as if they might at some time have been men.

Margaret said, Yes, the distinction between Gods and Demigods was that the former were the creations of pure spontaneity, and the latter actually existent personages, about whose heroic characters and lives all congenial stories clustered.

J. F. C. did not like the statues of Hercules; the brawny figure was not to his taste.

Margaret thought it majestic. She said he belonged properly to Thessaly, and was identified with its scenery. She told several little stories about him. That of his sailing round the rock of Prometheus, in a golden cup borrowed of Jupiter, was the least known. She told the story from Ovid, the glowing account of his death, of the recognition by delighted Jove. She said Wordsworth’s “Tour in Greece” gave her great materials for thought.

Then she turned to Bacchus.

To show in what manner she supposed Bacchus to be the answer or complement to Apollo, she mentioned the statement of some late critic upon the relation of Ceres and Persephone to each other.

Persephone was the hidden energy, the vestal fire, vivifying the universe. Ceres was the productive faculty, external, bounteous. They were two phases of one thing. It was the same with Apollo and Bacchus. Apollo was the vivifying power of the sun; its genial glow stirred the earth, and its noblest product, the grape, responded.

She spoke of the Bacchanalian festivals, of the spiritual character attributed to them by Euripides, showing that originally they were something more than gross orgies.

Mrs. Clarke (Ann Wilby) said that they licensed the wildest drunkenness in Athens.

I said that was at a later time than Euripides undertook to picture. Were they identical with the Orphic? Did Orpheus really bring them from Egypt?

Margaret would accept that for a beginning.

E. P. P. thought that next winter we might have a talk about Roman Mythology.

Margaret liked the idea, and James Clarke seemed to accept it for the whole party. He said that he had never felt any interest in the Greek stories, until Margaret had made them the subject of conversation.

E. P. P. said she had felt excessively ashamed all through that she knew so little.

Margaret said no one need to feel so. It was a subject that might exhaust any preparation. Still, she wished we would study! She had herself enjoyed great advantages. Nobody’s explanations had ever perplexed her brain. She had been placed in a garden, with a great pile of books before her. She began to read Latin before she read English. For a time these deities were real to her, and she prayed: “O God! if thou art Jupiter!” etc.

James Clarke said he remembered her once telling him that she prayed to Bacchus for a bunch of grapes!

Margaret smiled, and said that when she was first old enough to think about Christianity, she cried out for her dear old Greek gods. Its spirituality seemed nakedness. She could not and would not receive it. It was a long while before she saw its deeper meaning.

CAROLINE W. HEALEY.

May 7, 1841.