(in German Barlappen-mehl), vulgarly known as the Devil's Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in England as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is made of the pollen of common club moss, or wolf's claw (Lycopodium clavatum), the capsules of which contain a highly inflammable powder. Translators have uniformly failed in rendering this passage.]     **[This simile brings to mind Shakespeare's:                      "We petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about."                 JULIUS CAESAR, Act I., Sc. 2.] 

       A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them.     

       SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.     

       CHARLES VON M. A brilliant reward for your sweat in the battle-field truly to have your existence perpetuated in gymnasiums, and your immortality       laboriously dragged about in a schoolboy's satchel. A precious recompense for your lavished blood to be wrapped round gingerbread by some Nuremberg chandler, or, if you have great luck, to be screwed upon stilts by a French playwright, and be made to move on wires! Ha, ha, ha!     

       SPIEGEL. (drinks). Read Josephus, I tell you.     

       CHARLES VON M. Fie! fie upon this weak, effeminate age, fit for nothing but to ponder over the deeds of former times, and torture the heroes of antiquity with commentaries, or mangle them in tragedies. The vigor of its       loins is dried up, and the propagation of the human species has become dependent on potations of malt liquor.     

       SPIEGEL. Tea, brother! tea!     

       CHARLES VON M. They curb honest nature with absurd conventionalities; have scarcely the heart to charge a glass, because they are tasked to drink a health in it; fawn upon the lackey that he may put in a word for them with His Grace, and bully the unfortunate wight from whom they have nothing to fear. They worship any one for a dinner, and are just as ready to poison him should he chance to outbid them 

 Prev. P 20/139 next