He seemed to promise some greater matter than was
then actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great
outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity
of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see
that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word
to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid
expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his
written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat
in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+
insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied--the
volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in
mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for
Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh
laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly
exterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or
suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the
"triumphant beast," the "constellation of the Ass," shining even
there, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the
Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a
worthless "parchment and paper" currency.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34