miracles, could as easily fix a feather eternally on the most
tempestuous promontory, as the mark of their feet upon the flint.
_Ternissa._ They could indeed; but we know the one to a certainty, and
have no such authority for the other. I have seen these pinasters from
the extremity of the Piraeus, and have heard mention of the altar
raised to Boreas: where is it?
_Epicurus._ As it stands in the centre of the platform, we cannot see
it from hence; there is the only piece of level ground in the place.
_Leontion._ Ternissa intends the altar to prove the truth of the
story.
_Epicurus._ Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can deceive,
much less the old; the gay, much less the serious.
_Leontion._ It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.
_Epicurus._ Some minds require much belief, some thrive on little.
Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts
differently on different hearts; it troubles some, it consoles others;
in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism
and self-devotion; in the ungenerous it fosters pride, impatience of
contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry
stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone.
_Ternissa._ We want it chiefly to make the way of death an easy one.
_Epicurus._ There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the
easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen the
declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its situation and
dimensions may allow; but principally I would cast under-foot the
empty fear of death.
_Ternissa._ Oh, how can you?
_Epicurus._ By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that
some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as
Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent's or
friend's tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts: in
short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while
those around were in the most deplorable and desperate.
_Ternissa._ It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that
any one I love would grieve too much for me.
_Epicurus._ Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the
apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.
_Leontion._ No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was
unsound; your means futile.
_Epicurus._ Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the road
should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.
_Leontion._ Yes.
_Epicurus._ I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide him
quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than
a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.
_Leontion._ Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think
about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same
trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember
that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile
and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and
entanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of
them until the time is come.
_Epicurus._ I would never think of death as an embarrassment, but as a
blessing.
_Ternissa._ How? a blessing?
_Epicurus._ What, if it makes our enemies cease to hate us? what, if
it makes our friends love us the more?
_Leontion._ Us? According to your doctrine we shall not exist at all.
_Epicurus._ I spoke of that which is consolatory while we are here,
and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay
no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better; and better they
certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field,
and their rancour is tired with treading upon dust. The generous
affections stir about us at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms
of the Median apple swell and diffuse their fragrance in the cold.
_Ternissa._ I cannot bear to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon
should touch me; he is so old and wilful, so cross and ugly.
_Epicurus._ Ternissa! Ternissa! I would accompany you thither, and
stand between. Would you not too, Leontion?
_Leontion._ I don't know.
_Ternissa._ Oh, that we could go together!
_Leontion._ Indeed!
_Ternissa._ All three, I mean--I said--or was going to say it. How
ill-natured you are, Leontion, to misinterpret me; I could almost cry.
_Leontion._ Do not, do not, Ternissa! Should that tear drop from your
eyelash you would look less beautiful.
_Epicurus._ If it is well to conquer a world, it is better to conquer
two.
_Ternissa._ That is what Alexander of Macedon wept because he could
not accomplish.
_Epicurus._ Ternissa! we three can accomplish it; or any one of us.
_Ternissa._ How? pray!
_Epicurus._ We can conquer this world and the next; for you will have
another, and nothing should be refused you.
_Ternissa._ The next by piety: but this, in what manner?
_Epicurus._ By indifference to all who are indifferent to us; by
taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by wishing no
more intensely for what is a hair's-breadth beyond our reach than for
a draught of water from the Ganges; and by fearing nothing in another
life.
_Ternissa._ This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility.
_Epicurus._ Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and good as
you are? or do you not?
_Ternissa._ Much kinder, much better in every way.
_Epicurus._ Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep in your
little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath
flown where you did not wish him to fly?
_Ternissa._ No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of so
little and weak a creature is enough.
_Epicurus._ You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say
confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which strict justice
and pure benevolence unite, it must be His.
_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! when you speak thus--
_Leontion._ Well, Ternissa, what then?
_Ternissa._ When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as these, I am
grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as
some others have.
_Leontion._ You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when he
possesses that authority.
_Ternissa._ What will he do?
_Leontion._ Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will
forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the
sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body. If you
invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table
live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you
would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is
yet living. One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye
were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern
kings, he could be looked at near only when his limbs are stiff, by
waxlight, in close curtains.
_Epicurus._ One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token
of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude;
one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might
(if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us
more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the
legacy cannot; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well
as ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is
extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy,
sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we
commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with any one, and
with few the second.
Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little
Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and
boisterous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can
they do better?
_Leontion._ But those feathers, Ternissa, what god's may they be?
since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to Caläis nor to
Zethes.
_Ternissa._ I do not think they belong to any god whatever; and shall
never be persuaded of it unless Epicurus says it is so.
_Leontion._ O unbelieving creature! do you reason against the
immortals?
_Ternissa._ It was yourself who doubted, or appeared to doubt, the
flight of Oreithyia. By admitting too much we endanger our religion.
Beside, I think I discern some upright stakes at equal distances, and
am pretty sure the feathers are tied to them by long strings.
_Epicurus._ You have guessed the truth.
_Ternissa._ Of what use are they there?
_Epicurus._ If you have ever seen the foot of a statue broken off just
below the ankle, you have then, Leontion and Ternissa, seen the form
of the ground about us. The lower extremities of it are divided into
small ridges, as you will perceive if you look around; and these are
covered with corn, olives, and vines. At the upper part, where
cultivation ceases, and where those sheep and goats are grazing,
begins my purchase. The ground rises gradually unto near the summit,
where it grows somewhat steep, and terminates in a precipice. Across
the middle I have traced a line, denoted by those feathers, from one
dingle to the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The
distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a
level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but
another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be
several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the
summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation
underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance. Among the
projecting fragments and the massive stones yet standing of the
boundary-wall, which old pomegranates imperfectly defend, and which my
neighbour has guarded more effectively against invasion, there are
hillocks of crumbling mould, covered in some places with a variety of
moss; in others are elevated tufts, or dim labyrinths of eglantine.
_Ternissa._ Where will you place the statues? for undoubtedly you must
have some.
_Epicurus._ I will have some models for statues. Pygmalion prayed the
gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not pray them to give
marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet cheek upon the foot under which
is inscribed the name of Leontion or Ternissa!
_Leontion._ Do not make us melancholy; never let us think that the
time can come when we shall lose our friends. Glory, literature,
philosophy have this advantage over friendship: remove one object from
them, and others fill the void; remove one from friendship, one only,
and not the earth nor the universality of worlds, no, nor the
intellect that soars above and comprehends them, can replace it!
_Epicurus._ Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful! How lovely
do you now appear to me! what beauteous action accompanied your words!
_Leontion._ I used none whatever.
_Epicurus._ That white arm was then, as it is now, over the shoulder
of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom to your cheek, a
new music to your voice. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious
as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that
of woman for woman. In youth you love one above the others of your
sex; in riper age you hate all, more or less, in proportion to
similarity of accomplishments and pursuits--which sometimes (I wish it
were oftener) are bonds of union to man. In us you more easily pardon
faults than excellences in each other. _Your_ tempers are such, my
beloved scholars, that even this truth does not ruffle them; and such
is your affection, that I look with confidence to its unabated ardour
at twenty.
_Leontion._ Oh, then I am to love Ternissa almost fifteen months!
_Ternissa._ And I am destined to survive the loss of it three months
above four years!
_Epicurus._ Incomparable creatures! may it be eternal! In loving ye
shall follow no example; ye shall step securely over the iron rule
laid down for others by the Destinies, and _you_ for ever be Leontion,
and _you_ Ternissa.
_Leontion._ Then indeed we should not want statues.
_Ternissa._ But men, who are vainer creatures, would be good for
nothing without them: they must be flattered even by the stones.
_Epicurus._ Very true. Neither the higher arts nor the civic virtues
can flourish extensively without the statues of illustrious men. But
gardens are not the places for them. Sparrows, wooing on the general's
truncheon (unless he be such a general as one of ours in the last
war), and snails besliming the emblems of the poet, do not remind us
worthily of their characters. Porticos are their proper situations,
and those the most frequented. Even there they may lose all honour and
distinction, whether from the thoughtlessness of magistrates or from
the malignity of rivals. Our own city, the least exposed of any to the
effects of either, presents us a disheartening example. When the
Thebans in their jealousy condemned Pindar to the payment of a fine
for having praised the Athenians too highly, our citizens erected a
statue of bronze to him.
_Leontion._ Jealousy of Athens made the Thebans fine him; and jealousy
of Thebes made the Athenians thus record it.
_Epicurus._ And jealousy of Pindar, I suspect, made some poet persuade
the archons to render the distinction a vile and worthless one, by
placing his effigy near a king's--one Evagoras of Cyprus.
_Ternissa._ Evagoras, I think I remember to have read in the
inscription, was rewarded in this manner for his reception of Conon,
defeated by the Lacedemonians.
_Epicurus._ Gratitude was due to him, and some such memorial to record
it. External reverence should be paid unsparingly to the higher
magistrates of every country who perform their offices exemplarily;
yet they are not on this account to be placed in the same degree with
men of primary genius. They never exalt the human race, and rarely
benefit it; and their benefits are local and transitory, while those
of a great writer are universal and eternal.
If the gods did indeed bestow on us a portion of their fire, they seem
to have lighted it in sport and left it; the harder task and the
nobler is performed by that genius who raises it clear and glowing
from its embers, and makes it applicable to the purposes that dignify
or delight our nature. I have ever said, 'Reverence the rulers.' Let,
then, his image stand; but stand apart from Pindar's. Pallas and Jove!
defend me from being carried down the stream of time among a shoal of
royalets, and the rootless weeds they are hatched on!
_Ternissa._ So much piety would deserve the exemption, even though
your writings did not hold out the decree.
_Leontion._ Child, the compliment is ill turned: if you are ironical,
as you must be on the piety of Epicurus, Atticism requires that you
should continue to be so, at least to the end of the sentence.
_Ternissa._ Irony is my abhorrence. Epicurus may appear less pious
than some others, but I am certain he is more; otherwise the gods
would never have given him----
_Leontion._ What? what? let us hear!
_Ternissa._ Leontion!
_Leontion._ Silly girl! Were there any hibiscus or broom growing near
at hand, I would send him away and whip you.
_Epicurus._ There is fern, which is better.
_Leontion._ I was not speaking to you: but now you shall have
something to answer for yourself. Although you admit no statues in the
country, you might at least, methinks, have discovered a retirement
with a fountain in it: here I see not even a spring.
_Epicurus._ Fountain I can hardly say there is; but on the left there
is a long crevice or chasm, which we have never yet visited, and which
we cannot discern until we reach it. This is full of soft mould, very
moist, and many high reeds and canes are growing there; and the rock
itself too drips with humidity along it, and is covered with more
tufted moss and more variegated lichens. This crevice, with its
windings and sinuosities, is about four hundred paces long, and in
many parts eleven, twelve, thirteen feet wide, but generally six or
seven. I shall plant it wholly with lilies of the valley, leaving the
irises which occupy the sides as well as the clefts, and also those
other flowers of paler purple, from the autumnal cups of which we
collect the saffron; and forming a narrow path of such turf as I can
find there, or rather following it as it creeps among the bays and
hazels and sweet-brier, which had fallen at different times from the
summit and are now grown old, with an infinity of primroses at the
roots. There are nowhere twenty steps without a projection and a turn,
nor in any ten together is the chasm of the same width or figure.
Hence the ascent in its windings is easy and imperceptible quite to
the termination, where the rocks are somewhat high and precipitous; at
the entrance they lose themselves in privet and elder, and you must
make your way between them through the canes. Do not you remember
where I carried you both across the muddy hollow in the footpath?
_Ternissa._ Leontion does.
_Epicurus._ That place is always wet; not only in this month of
Puanepsion,[7] which we are beginning to-day, but in midsummer. The
water that causes it comes out a little way above it, but originates
from the crevice, which I will cover at top with rose-laurel and
mountain-ash, with clematis and vine; and I will intercept the little
rill in its wandering, draw it from its concealment, and place it like
Bacchus under the protection of the nymphs, who will smile upon it in
its marble cradle, which at present I keep at home.
_Ternissa._ Leontion, why do you turn away your face? have the nymphs
smiled upon you in it?
_Leontion._ I bathed in it once, if you must know, Ternissa! Why now,
Ternissa, why do you turn away yours? have the nymphs frowned upon you
for invading their secrets?
_Ternissa._ Epicurus, you are in the right to bring it away from
Athens, from under the eye of Pallas: she might be angry.
_Epicurus._ You approve of its removal then, my lovely friend?
_Ternissa._ Mightily. [_Aside._] I wish it may break in pieces on the
road.
_Epicurus._ What did you say?
_Ternissa._ I wish it were now on the road, that I might try whether
it would hold me--I mean with my clothes on.
_Epicurus._ It would hold you, and one a span longer. I have another
in the house; but it is not decorated with fauns and satyrs and
foliage, like this.
_Leontion._ I remember putting my hand upon the frightful satyr's
head, to leap in: it seems made for the purpose. But the sculptor
needed not to place the naiad quite so near--he must have been a very
impudent man; it is impossible to look for a moment at such a piece of
workmanship.
_Ternissa._ For shame! Leontion!--why, what was it? I do not desire to
know.
_Epicurus._ I don't remember it.
_Leontion._ Nor I neither; only the head.
_Epicurus._ I shall place the satyr toward the rock, that you may
never see him, Ternissa.
_Ternissa._ Very right; he cannot turn round.
_Leontion._ The poor naiad had done it, in vain.
_Ternissa._ All these labourers will soon finish the plantation, if
you superintend them, and are not appointed to some magistrature.
_Epicurus._ Those who govern us are pleased at seeing a philosopher
out of the city, and more still at finding in a season of scarcity
forty poor citizens, who might become seditious, made happy and quiet
by such employment.
Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition:
never to be listened to, and to be listened to always. Aware of
these, I devote a large portion of my time and labours to the
cultivation of such minds as flourish best in cities, where my garden
at the gate, although smaller than this, we find sufficiently
capacious. There I secure my listeners; here my thoughts and
imaginations have their free natural current, and tarry or wander as
the will invites: may it ever be among those dearest to me!--those
whose hearts possess the rarest and divinest faculty, of retaining or
forgetting at option what ought to be forgotten or retained.
_Leontion._ The whole ground then will be covered with trees and
shrubs?
_Epicurus._ There are some protuberances in various parts of the
eminence, which you do not perceive till you are upon them or above
them. They are almost level at the top, and overgrown with fine grass;
for they catch the better soil brought down in small quantities by the
rains. These are to be left unplanted: so is the platform under the
pinasters, whence there is a prospect of the city, the harbour, the
isle of Salamis, and the territory of Megara. 'What then!' cried
Sosimenes, 'you would hide from your view my young olives, and the
whole length of the new wall I have been building at my own expense
between us! and, when you might see at once the whole of Attica, you
will hardly see more of it than I could buy.'
_Leontion._ I do not perceive the new wall, for which Sosimenes, no
doubt, thinks himself another Pericles.
_Epicurus._ Those old junipers quite conceal it.
_Ternissa._ They look warm and sheltering; but I like the rose-laurels
much better: and what a thicket of them here is!
_Epicurus._ Leaving all the larger, I shall remove many thousands of
them; enough to border the greater part of the walk, intermixed with
roses.
There is an infinity of other plants and flowers, or weeds as
Sosimenes calls them, of which he has cleared his oliveyard, and which
I shall adopt. Twenty of his slaves came in yesterday, laden with
hyacinths and narcissi, anemones and jonquils. 'The curses of our
vineyards,' cried he, 'and good neither for man nor beast. I have
another estate infested with lilies of the valley: I should not wonder
if you accepted these too.'
'And with thanks,' answered I.
The whole of his remark I could not collect: he turned aside, and (I
believe) prayed. I only heard 'Pallas'--'Father'--'sound
mind'--'inoffensive man'--'good neighbour'. As we walked together I
perceived him looking grave, and I could not resist my inclination to
smile as I turned my eyes toward him. He observed it, at first with
unconcern, but by degrees some doubts arose within him, and he said,
'Epicurus, you have been throwing away no less than half a talent on
this sorry piece of mountain, and I fear you are about to waste as
much in labour: for nothing was ever so terrible as the price we are
obliged to pay the workman, since the conquest of Persia and the
increase of luxury in our city. Under three obols none will do his
day's work. But what, in the name of all the deities, could induce you
to plant those roots, which other people dig up and throw away?'
'I have been doing,' said I, 'the same thing my whole life through,
Sosimenes!'
'How!' cried he; 'I never knew that.'
'Those very doctrines,' added I, 'which others hate and extirpate, I
inculcate and cherish. They bring no riches, and therefore are thought
to bring no advantage; to me, they appear the more advantageous for
that reason. They give us immediately what we solicit through the
means of wealth. We toil for the wealth first; and then it remains to
be proved whether we can purchase with it what we look for. Now, to
carry our money to the market, and not to find in the market our
money's worth, is great vexation; yet much greater has already
preceded, in running up and down for it among so many competitors, and
through so many thieves.'
After a while he rejoined, 'You really, then, have not overreached
me?'
'In what, my friend?' said I.
'These roots,' he answered, 'may perhaps be good and saleable for some
purpose. Shall you send them into Persia? or whither?'
'Sosimenes, I shall make love-potions of the flowers.'
_Leontion._ O Epicurus! should it ever be known in Athens that they
are good for this, you will not have, with all your fences of prunes
and pomegranates, and precipices with brier upon them, a single root
left under ground after the month of Elaphebolion.[8]
_Epicurus._ It is not every one that knows the preparation.
_Leontion._ Everybody will try it.
_Epicurus._ And you, too, Ternissa?
_Ternissa._ Will you teach me?
_Epicurus._ This, and anything else I know. We must walk together when
they are in flower.
_Ternissa._ And can you teach me, then?
_Epicurus._ I teach by degrees.
_Leontion._ By very slow ones, Epicurus! I have no patience with you;
tell us directly.
_Epicurus._ It is very material what kind of recipient you bring with
you. Enchantresses use a brazen one; silver and gold are employed in
other arts.