The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

GLAZIERS’ HOUSES It hath never had aught to say; but, then, how affectedly it hath said it! .. . Will not the late Vew Quarterly take note of this? O these barbers, with their prattle, and their false ex- pedients—and scarce even a safety razor among them! For let each one who worships George Bernard Shaw, while ignorant of that magnificent foundation of literature and philosophy—the Cubical Stone of the Wise, on which a greater than Auguste Rodin hath erected the indomitable figure of Le Penseur—take these remarks individually to himself, and—oh! Thinker, think again. Let not posterity consider of this statue that its summit is no Overman, but a gibbering ape! Not filth, not sorrow, not laughter of the mocker is this universe; but laughter of a young god, a holy and beautiful god, a god of love and light. And thou, since thou hast the ear of the British ass at thy lips, sing to it those starry songs. It can but bray... . But why, as hitherto, shouldst thou bray also? Or if bray thou must, let us have the virile and portentous bray of the Ass of Apuleius, not (as hitherto) the plaintive bray of the proverbial ass who hesitated so long between the two thistles that he starved to death. I warn thee, ass! We who are gods have laughed with thee these many years; beware lest in the end we laugh at thee with the laughter of a mandrake torn up, whereat thou shouldst fall dead. A. QUILLER, JR. 351