I know not what is the colour
of Dante's devils, but as he is certainly becoming fashionable I
conclude they are blue; for the blue devils, as it seems to me, Mr
Flosky, constitute the fundamental feature of fashionable literature.
MR FLOSKY
The blue are, indeed, the staple commodity; but as they will not
always be commanded, the black, red, and grey may be admitted as
substitutes. Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution, have played
the devil, Mr Listless, and brought the devil into play.
MR TOOBAD (_starting up_)
Having great wrath.
MR FLOSKY
This is no play upon words, but the sober sadness of veritable fact.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the
connection of ideas.
MR FLOSKY
I should be sorry if you could; I pity the man who can see the
connection of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connection
of whose ideas any other person can see. Sir, the great evil is,
that there is too much common-place light in our moral and political
literature; and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a
great friend to enthusiasm. Now the enthusiasm for abstract truth is
an exceedingly fine thing, as long as the truth, which is the object
of the enthusiasm, is so completely abstract as to be altogether out
of the reach of the human faculties; and, in that sense, I have
myself an enthusiasm for truth, but in no other, for the pleasure of
metaphysical investigation lies in the means, not in the end; and if
the end could be found, the pleasure of the means would cease.
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