Laudator Temporis Acti

Walter Savage Landor, "Demosthenes and Eubulides, Second Conversation," Imaginary Conversations, Vol. I (London: J.M. Dent & Co., 1891), pp. 153-162 (at 153-154):

Demosthenes. Let us avoid, I entreat you, my dear Eubulides, those thorny questions which we cannot so well avoid within the walls. Our opinions in matters of State are different; let us walk together where our pursuits are similar or the same.

Eubulides. Demosthenes! it is seldom that we have conversed on politics, sad refuge of restless minds, averse from business and from study.

Demosthenes. Say worse against them, Eubulides! and I, who am tossed on the summit of the wave, will cry out to you to curse them deeplier. There are few men who have not been witnesses that, on some slight divergence of incondite and unsound opinions, they have rolled away the stone from the cavern-mouth of the worst passions, and have evoked them up between two friends. I, of all men, am the least inclined to make them the subject of conversation; and particularly when I meet a literary man as you are, from whom I can receive, and often have received, some useful information, some philosophical thought, some generous sentiment, or some pleasant image.