Gryll Grange | Page 6

whenever I hear of a lecturing
lord.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I hope, Miss Gryll, you will not laugh at Lord
Curryfin: for you may be assured nothing will be farther from his
lordship's intention than to say anything in the slightest degree droll.
Mr. Gryll. Doctor Johnson was astonished at the mania for lectures,
even in his day, when there were no lecturing lords. He thought little
was to be learned from lectures, unless where, as in chemistry, the
subject required illustration by experiment. Now, if your lord is going
to exhibit experiments in the art of cooking fish, with specimens in
sufficient number for all his audience to taste, I have no doubt his
lecture will be well attended, and a repetition earnestly desired.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I am afraid the lecture will not have the aid of
such pleasant adventitious attractions. It will be a pure scientific
exposition, carefully classified, under the several divisions and
subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and
Conchology. But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be
learned from lectures. For the most part those who do not already
understand the subject will not understand the lecture, and those who
do will learn nothing from it. The latter will hear many things they
would like to contradict, which the bienséance of the lecture-room does
not allow. I do not comprehend how people can find amusement in
lectures. I should much prefer a tenson of the twelfth century, when
two or three masters of the Gai Saber discussed questions of love and
chivalry.

Miss Gryll. I am afraid, doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of
thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the
disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons
would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of
society is not ours.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, Miss Gryll, I should like, some winter
evening, to challenge you to a tenson, and your uncle should be umpire.
I think you have wit enough by nature, and I have poetry enough by
memory, to supply a fair portion of the requisite materials, without
assuming an absolute mastery of the Gai Saber.
Miss Gryll. I shall accept the challenge, doctor. The wit on one side
will, I am afraid, be very shortcoming; but the poetry on the other will
no doubt be abundant.
Mr. Gryll. Suppose, doctor, you were to get up a tenson a little more
relative to our own wise days. Spirit-rapping, for example, is a fine
field. Nec pueri credunt... Sed tu vera puta.{1} You might go beyond
the limits of a tenson. There is ample scope for an Aristophanic
comedy. In the contest between the Just and the Unjust in the Clouds,
and in other scenes of Aristophanes, you have ancient specimens of
something very like tensons, except that love has not much share in
them. Let us for a moment suppose this same spirit-rapping to be
true--dramatically so, at least. Let us fit up a stage for the purpose:
make the invoked spirits visible as well as audible: and calling before
us some of the illustrious of former days, ask them what they think of
us and our doings? Of our astounding progress of intellect? Our march
of mind? Our higher tone of morality? Our vast diffusion of education?
Our art of choosing the most unfit man by competitive examination?
1 Not even boys believe it: but suppose it to be true.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You had better not bring on many of them at
once, nor ask many similar questions, or the chorus of ghostly laughter
will be overwhelming. I imagine the answer would be something like
Hamlets: 'You yourselves, sirs, shall be as wise as we were, if, like
crabs, you could go backward.' It is thought something wonderful that

uneducated persons should believe in witchcraft in the nineteenth
century: as if educated persons did not believe in grosser follies: such
as this same spirit-rapping, unknown tongues, clairvoyance,
table-turning, and all sorts of fanatical impositions, having for the
present their climax in Mormonism. Herein all times are alike. There is
nothing too monstrous for human credulity. I like the notion of the
Aristophanic comedy. But it would require a numerous company,
especially as the chorus is indispensable. The tenson may be carried on
by two.
Mr. Gryll. I do not see why we should not have both.
Miss Gryll. Oh pray, doctor! let us have the comedy. We hope to have a
houseful at Christmas, and I think we may get it up well, chorus and all.
I should so like to hear what my great ancestor, Gryllus, thinks of us:
and Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, and Richard the First, and