Jane Lumley, who translated Euripides into English and Isocrates into Latin, which is just the sort of thing an Elizabethan would do.

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Making repairs and adjustments to the broken world we live in is one of the services Dr. Boli tries to provide for his readers. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that these repairs and adjustments can usually take the form of suggestions only. The world has not demonstrated much wisdom lately, or at any other time that Dr. Boli can remember; but it has been at least wise enough not to make him absolute dictator.

Today, therefore, Dr. Boli has a suggestion for all his readers, and if they were to take it, the world would be a more pleasant place to live in. The suggestion is that we should all imitate the Elizabethans.

The Elizabethans—by which, of course, we mean the ones we remember—lived in a dream-world of fantasy and imagination. They imagined themselves the cleverest and most refined ladies and gentlemen since classical times; they played at being great wits and deep philosophers. And because they kept that vision before them constantly, they imprinted their fantasy on their universe, and the world became in reality what they had imagined it to be. Their lives were filled with wit and thought and color; they could be dirty and vulgar, but their very vulgarity bore a stamp of genius.

Meanwhile they sinned great sins and filled their world with atrocity, just as we do today, and just as every generation since Cain has done. But a fallen world with gorgeous colors is more delightful than a fallen world without them.

We miss those colors today, but we could bring them back. The number of readers of this Magazine is not large, but it probably exceeds the number of memorable Elizabethans. If we keep the Elizabethan fantasy constantly in our minds, we can live in the Elizabethan world. We can remember that every speech we utter should be sharpened to a keen edge before we open our mouths. We can exercise the forms of courtesy we learned from our mothers, or learn forms of courtesy if we were not so fortunate as to have that sort of mother. We can think and arrange our thoughts before we let them loose on the Internet; and once we have let them loose, we can look at them again and resolve to do better tomorrow.

If the Elizabethan age is not to your taste, you might take another age as your model. There have been many ages in human history when extraordinary people built a real world of wit and color out of their fantasies of what the world might be. Just to mention the European and American tradition, we might point to the Athens of Pericles, or the Harlem Renaissance, or the English Restoration. The principle is the same: we resolve to expect the most of ourselves. We never consider ourselves finished; there is always polishing to do. We live our lives as if the world expected us at our best.

Nothing we do will end sin and injustice and suffering in the world. Certainly there was enough misery in the England of Good Queen Bess for anybody who cared to look for it. We have the poor always with us. But we have choices, and we can make the right ones. It costs us nothing to choose beauty over ugliness. It demands nothing but effort to look at mediocrity and say that it is not good enough. The effort itself becomes a joy, and by constant exercise our better selves can become our natural selves. This is the Elizabethan way, and it could be our way just as well.