A German Apologue
A GERMAN APOLOGUE.
__________________
THE other day Jupiter gave Mercury a remarkable com-
mission. Whether the God had grown older since the times
of Plato and of Horace, or that the tempers of Diana and
Minerva had not sweetened, or that there was something in
the existing state of the world which alarmed him for the
continuance of his authority, we know not; but certain it is,
that great complaints had been made for some time past
against three persons, whose names will surprise the reader,
in conjunction with such a circumstance; to wit, the Graces.(1)
One body of persons represented, that they were grown
much to philosophic for their taste: another (which seemed
odd) that they were much too vivacious. A third asserted
(which was still more singular, considering they are god-
desses) that they had no religion. Another admitted they
might have some little religion, because they are the same
as the Charities; but that there was nothing vital in it, and
that they had been heard to speak ill of Pluto. A number
of old ladies and gentlemen declared that they were no longer
any such things as Graces. But the most remarkable sight
was to see all the puritans and debauchees assembled toge-
ther, and maintaining that the Graces were no longer modest.
By way of counter-petition to all this, a numerous body of
persons, dressed in the extremest point of the fashion, de-
clared that they knew the Graces very well, that they were
the best good-natured creatures in the world, and had helped
[Page 92]
them to dress that morning. We are sorry to say, that this
petition was rejected as frivolous and vexatious. The pre-
senters however did not appear to be disconcerted. They
smiled in a manner which seemed to say that conviction
ought to follow it; and their smile, like that of the whole
assembly, was changed into a convulsion of laughter by a
poor crazy poet, who half stalking and half tottering forward,
with an old laurel on his head, asserted that he could settle
the whole matter at once; and being asked in that way,
replied, “I am the three Graces.”
The Graces were then called into court, but nobody came.
Again they were called; but a dead silence prevailed over
the vast assembly. Some old prophecies made Jupiter look
uneasy. After waiting as long as he well could, he had them
called, more solemnly, a third time. Not a Grace was to be
seen. The old ladies and gentlemen could not help chuckling
at this, as a proof of what they had said; but one of the most
ancient of the females coming forward, and swearing she had
seen them, and now say them, in the likeness of three beau-
tiful women of her own age, in stomachers and toupees, the
laugh was turned in favour of the young ones. The laugh
seemed to be echoed at a great distance but three of the
most charming laughs in the world; which made somebody
cry out, “There are the Graces!” upon which he was fined
in a great passion by Mr. Justice Minos,(2) for interrupting
business. Indeed all the Judges, but one, seemed to be in
a great passion; which was thought to be owing to a loyal
interest they took in the anxiety of the King of Gods and
Men. The one in question was in so great a passion, that
he seemed to be in none at all. He was only considering all
the while, how he should put the Graces to the torture, if
ever he caught them.
At length Jupiter, not knowing what was to be done,
[Page 93]
asked the opinion of the great men present, particularly
of the three ordinary looking persons, who though not of the
priesthood, piqued themselves upon being the holiest of his
vice-gerents. Their opinion was (and it was also the unani-
mous opinion of the judges, of the most orthodox of the
priests, of the female writers on Tartarus, and indeed of every
one who had a right to give an opinion; that is to say, who
had a respectable superfluity of possession, particularly of
nonsense) that the three goddesses, hitherto known by the
name of Graces, ought to be deprived of their name and
offices, and other three ladies, properly deified for the occa-
sion, appointed in their stead. The warrant was accordingly
drawn up by three commissioners instantly nominated for
that purpose; to wit, the dissipate Judge above-men-
tioned, one of the female writers on Tartarus, and an old
Scotch lord, whose past profligacy of life, and extreme filthi-
ness of conversation, did not hinder him from knowing what
was quite right and delicate in his old age, and having a
becoming zeal for it. The warrant was drawn up with a
rapidity proportionate to the zeal. It purported, that whereas
the three very irregular, anti-Tartar, and indecorous perso-
nages, the Charities, better known by the style and title of
the Three Graces, had utterly lost, ruined, and abolished their
reputations, as well by certain wicked compliances with pre-
tended humanists and philosophers, as by certain other abo-
minable non-compliances with their right lords, masters, and
mistresses,—the said Three Graces, commonly so called, are
from this day forward, in their own persons and existence,
utterly abolished, done away, va-viad, driven out with up-
lifted hands and eyes, reprobated, non-elected, and altoge-
ther nihili-vili-pilified,—any apparent life, vitality, beauty,
or entity of their notwithstanding:—And in the room of the
said Three Graces, commonly so called, three certain other
[Page 94]
Graces, hereafter to be more especially nominated, are to
prevail and be received with all due worship in their stead,
and to preside in particular over all elegancies, proprieties,
decorums, withdrawing-rooms, female influences, prudes,
prostitutes (for their better undoing) old generals, nice dis-
tinctions, in short, all that exquisite moral order of things
genteel, which, in the midst of every vice, maintains, as it
were, every virtue, and by the mere strength of a close, thick,
and hard-grained integrity in the few, would suffice, if neces-
sary, for the utter rottenness of virtue and felicity in all the
rest:—The said three new Graces to be of equal heights,
bearings and accomplishments, like the former ones; only
to be dressed, instead of undressed, except when they go to
court; and to be undeniably beautiful, unexceptionably or-
thodox, and irreversibly chaste.
For the discovery of these requisite trinal triplicities,
Mercury was immediately dispatched on his travels. We
luckily need not accompany him, for he sought every where,
like the Squire of Dames;(3) and though he was not in a di-
lemma, so extremely one and indivisible, as that in which
the Squire is represented by the courtly poet who has related
his adventures,* yet he was hampered quite enough. He
could not for the life of him meet with the three ultra-quali-
fied perfections altogether. Many ladies were undeniably
beautiful, but not unexceptionably orthodox. The lovelier
their style of beauty, the more heterodox they were as Tar-
tars. A great number were undeniably beautiful, but by no
means irreversibly chaste. Some who claimed the merit of
being irreversibly chaste, as well as unexceptionably orthodox,
were a great way off indeed from being undeniably beauti-
ful,—not to say truly what they were. In short, the young
* See Faerie Queene, Book 3rd.
[Page 95]
deity, who carried his scrupulosity of proof somewhat further,
we suspect, than his employers intended, found plenty of
women who pretended to all the qualifications, but none who
completely stood the test of investigation. In direct propor-
tion to their claims in some respects, they were apt to fail in
others; and even when they made no pretensions at all, but
were at once unaffectedly beautiful, virtuous, and chaste,
Mercury found that in proportion to the trusting simplicity
of their goodness, the irreversible part of the business stood
very aukwardly in the way.
At length, to his great joy, he had accounts which he could
rely on, of three persons who completely answered the de-
scription in request. Without further delay, he wrote about
them to Jupiter, and proceeded to the place they lived in to
claim them: when unluckily he had the mortification to
find, that they had been taken away by Pluto the day before,
for the Three Furies.(4)
[BLANK PAGE]
EDITORIAL NOTES
[1] Also known as the Charities. In Greek mythology, sister goddesses who personified charm, grace, beauty, human creativity, and fertility. Hesiod describes three Graces (Aglaea, Euphrosyne, and Thalia), but their number varies depending on the source.
[2] In Greek mythology, the mighty king of Crete. Minos was the son of Zeus and Europa. After his death, he became a judge of the dead in Hades.
[3] A comic character in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (III. vii). This knight is assigned an unusual task by his lady, Columbell, who challenges him to seduce as many women as possible in a year’s time. After being successful with three hundred ladies, he is sent forth to receive an equal number of rejections. However, in three years he finds only three virgins refusing his services and views this as a proof that women do not value chastity, the virtue upon which Book III is centred.
[4] Also known as the Erinyes or the Eumenides. In Greek mythology, the chthonic goddesses of vengeance and retribution who punished men for crimes against the natural order.
Ultimo aggiornamento
08.03.2025