If this were madness, it
seemed to me a somewhat sublime madness: and I assured him of my co-
operation against the kings, promising that I would bury 'The Harp of
Apollo' in my own orchard in Grasmere at the foot of Mount Fairfield; that
I would bury 'The Apocalypse of Nature' in one of the coves of Helvellyn,
and several other works in several other places best known to myself. He
accepted my offer with gratitude; but he then made known to me that he
relied on my assistance for a still more important service--which was
this: in the lapse of that vast number of ages which would probably
intervene between the present period and the period at which his works
would have reached their destination, he feared that the English language
might itself have mouldered away. 'No!' I said, '_that_ was not probable:
considering its extensive diffusion, and that it was now transplanted into
all the continents of our planet, I would back the English language
against any other on earth.' His own persuasion however was, that the
Latin was destined to survive all other languages; it was to be the
eternal as well as the universal language; and his desire was that
I would translate his works, or some part of them, into that language. [2]
This I promised; and I seriously designed at some leisure hour to
translate into Latin a selection of passages which should embody an
abstract of his philosophy.
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