iy EXILE. 157

the Itliacan princess of that name, for he takes Cyrnus to witness, in a quaint fashion enough, that " Of all good things in human life, Nothing can equal goodness in a wife. In our own case we prove the proverb true ; You vouch for me, my friend, and I for you." (F.) It must be allowed that this is a confirmation, under -the circumstances, of the poet's dictum, "that absence is not death to those that love ; " but still one is tempted to wonder what their wives at Megara thought of these' restless, revolution-mongering husbands, as they beheld them in the mind's eye hobbing and nob- bing over treason in some " Leicester Square " tavern of Euboea or of Thebes. In such tete-a-tetes Theognis, no doubt, was great in aesthetics as well as moralities ; and the sole deity still left to reverence, Hope, became more winsome to his fancy as he dwelt on the refine- ments he had to forego, now that he was bereft of home and property. The following fragment repre- sents this state of feeling : For human nature Hope remains alone Of all the deities the rest are flown. Faith is departed ; Truth and Honour dead ; And all the Graces too, my friend, are fled. The scanty specimens of living worth Dwindled to nothing and extinct on earth. Yet while I live and view the light of heaven (Since Hope remains, and never hath been driven From the distracted world) the single scope Of my devotion is to worship Hope : Where hecatombs are slain, and altars burn, With all the deities adored in turn,