_Ternissa._ My mother has a fine golden one. She will lend it me; she
allows me everything.
_Epicurus._ Leontion and Ternissa, those eyes of yours brighten at
inquiry, as if they carried a light within them for a guidance.
_Leontion._ No flattery!
_Ternissa._ No flattery! Come, teach us!
_Epicurus._ Will you hear me through in silence?
_Leontion._ We promise.
_Epicurus._ Sweet girls! the calm pleasures, such as I hope you will
ever find in your walks among these gardens, will improve your beauty,
animate your discourse, and correct the little that may hereafter rise
up for correction in your dispositions. The smiling ideas left in our
bosoms from our infancy, that many plants are the favourites of the
gods, and that others were even the objects of their love--having once
been invested with the human form, beautiful and lively and happy as
yourselves--give them an interest beyond the vision; yes, and a
station--let me say it--on the vestibule of our affections. Resign
your ingenuous hearts to simple pleasures; and there is none in man,
where men are Attic, that will not follow and outstrip their
movements.
_Ternissa._ O Epicurus!
_Epicurus._ What said Ternissa?
_Leontion._ Some of those anemones, I do think, must be still in
blossom. Ternissa's golden cup is at home; but she has brought with
her a little vase for the filter--and has filled it to the brim. Do
not hide your head behind my shoulder, Ternissa; no, nor in my lap.
_Epicurus._ Yes, there let it lie--the lovelier for that tendril of
sunny brown hair upon it. How it falls and rises! Which is the hair?
which the shadow?
_Leontion._ Let the hair rest.
_Epicurus._ I must not, perhaps, clasp the shadow!
_Leontion._ You philosophers are fond of such unsubstantial things.
Oh, you have taken my volume! This is deceit.
You live so little in public, and entertain such a contempt for
opinion, as to be both indifferent and ignorant what it is that people
blame you for.
_Epicurus._ I know what it is I should blame myself for, if I attended
to them. Prove them to be wiser and more disinterested in their wisdom
than I am, and I will then go down to them and listen to them. When I
have well considered a thing, I deliver it--regardless of what those
think who neither take the time nor possess the faculty of considering
anything well, and who have always lived far remote from the scope of
our speculations.
_Leontion._ In the volume you snatched away from me so slyly, I have
defended a position of yours which many philosophers turn into
ridicule--namely, that politeness is among the virtues. I wish you
yourself had spoken more at large upon the subject.
_Epicurus._ It is one upon which a lady is likely to display more
ingenuity and discernment. If philosophers have ridiculed my
sentiment, the reason is, it is among those virtues which in general
they find most difficult to assume or counterfeit.
_Leontion._ Surely life runs on the smoother for this equability and
polish; and the gratification it affords is more extensive than is
afforded even by the highest virtue. Courage, on nearly all occasions,
inflicts as much of evil as it imparts of good. It may be exerted in
defence of our country, in defence of those who love us, in defence of
the harmless and the helpless; but those against whom it is thus
exerted may possess an equal share of it. If they succeed, then
manifestly the ill it produces is greater than the benefit; if they
succumb, it is nearly as great. For many of their adversaries are
first killed and maimed, and many of their own kindred are left to
lament the consequences of the aggression.
_Epicurus._ You have spoken first of courage, as that virtue which
attracts your sex principally.
_Ternissa._ Not me; I am always afraid of it. I love those best who
can tell me the most things I never knew before, and who have patience
with me, and look kindly while they teach me, and almost as if they
were waiting for fresh questions. Now let me hear directly what you
were about to say to Leontion.
_Epicurus._ I was proceeding to remark that temperance comes next; and
temperance has then its highest merit when it is the support of
civility and politeness. So that I think I am right and equitable in
attributing to politeness a distinguished rank, not among the
ornaments of life, but among the virtues. And you, Leontion and
Ternissa, will have leaned the more propensely toward this opinion, if
you considered, as I am sure you did, that the peace and concord of
families, friends, and cities are preserved by it; in other terms, the
harmony of the world.
_Ternissa._ Leontion spoke of courage, you of temperance; the next
great virtue, in the division made by the philosophers, is justice.
_Epicurus._ Temperance includes it; for temperance is imperfect if it
is only an abstinence from too much food, too much wine, too much
conviviality or other luxury. It indicates every kind of forbearance.
Justice is forbearance from what belongs to another. Giving to this
one rightly what that one would hold wrongfully in magistrature not in
the abstract, and is only a part of its office. The perfectly
temperate man is also the perfectly just man; but the perfectly just
man (as philosophers now define him) may not be the perfectly
temperate one. I include the less in the greater.
_Leontion._ We hear of judges, and upright ones too, being immoderate
eaters and drinkers.
_Epicurus._ The Lacedemonians are temperate in food and courageous in
battle; but men like these, if they existed in sufficient numbers,
would devastate the universe. We alone, we Athenians, with less
military skill perhaps, and certainly less rigid abstinence from
voluptuousness and luxury, have set before it the only grand example
of social government and of polished life. From us the seed is
scattered; from us flow the streams that irrigate it; and ours are the
hands, O Leontion, that collect it, cleanse it, deposit it, and convey
and distribute it sound and weighty through every race and age.
Exhausted as we are by war, we can do nothing better than lie down and
doze while the weather is fine overhead, and dream (if we can) that we
are affluent and free.
O sweet sea air! how bland art thou and refreshing! Breathe upon
Leontion! breathe upon Ternissa! bring them health and spirits and
serenity, many springs and many summers, and when the vine-leaves have
reddened and rustle under their feet!
These, my beloved girls, are the children of Eternity: they played
around Theseus and the beauteous Amazon; they gave to Pallas the bloom
of Venus, and to Venus the animation of Pallas. Is it not better to
enjoy by the hour their soft, salubrious influence, than to catch by
fits the rancid breath of demagogues; than to swell and move under it
without or against our will; than to acquire the semblance of
eloquence by the bitterness of passion, the tone of philosophy by
disappointment, or the credit of prudence by distrust? Can fortune,
can industry, can desert itself, bestow on us anything we have not
here?
_Leontion._ And when shall those three meet? The gods have never
united them, knowing that men would put them asunder at the first
appearance.
_Epicurus._ I am glad to leave the city as often as possible, full as
it is of high and glorious reminiscences, and am inclined much rather
to indulge in quieter scenes, whither the Graces and Friendship lead
me. I would not contend even with men able to contend with me. You,
Leontion, I see, think differently, and have composed at last your
long-meditated work against the philosophy of Theophrastus.
_Leontion._ Why not? he has been praised above his merits.
_Epicurus._ My Leontion! you have inadvertently given me the reason
and origin of all controversial writings. They flow not from a love of
truth or a regard for science, but from envy and ill-will. Setting
aside the evil of malignity--always hurtful to ourselves, not always
to others--there is weakness in the argument you have adduced. When a
writer is praised above his merits in his own times, he is certain of
being estimated below them in the times succeeding. Paradox is dear to
most people: it bears the appearance of originality, but is usually
the talent of the superficial, the perverse, and the obstinate.
Nothing is more gratifying than the attention you are bestowing on me,
which you always apportion to the seriousness of my observations.
_Leontion._ I dislike Theophrastus for his affected contempt of your
doctrines.
_Epicurus._ Unreasonably, for the contempt of them; reasonably, if
affected. Good men may differ widely from me, and wiser ones
misunderstand me; for, their wisdom having raised up to them schools
of their own, they have not found leisure to converse with me; and
from others they have received a partial and inexact report. My
opinion is, that certain things are indifferent and unworthy of
pursuit or attention, as lying beyond our research and almost our
conjecture; which things the generality of philosophers (for the
generality are speculative) deem of the first importance. Questions
relating to them I answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again,
there are modes of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to
others. What I myself follow and embrace, what I recommend to the
studious, to the irritable, to the weak in health, would ill agree
with the commonality of citizens. Yet my adversaries cry out: 'Such is
the opinion and practice of Epicurus!' For instance, I have never
taken a wife, and never will take one; but he from among the mass, who
should avow his imitation of my example, would act as wisely and more
religiously in saying that he chose celibacy because Pallas had done
the same.
_Leontion._ If Pallas had many such votaries she would soon have few
citizens to supply them.
_Epicurus._ And extremely bad ones, if all followed me in retiring
from the offices of magistracy and of war. Having seen that the most
sensible men are the most unhappy, I could not but examine the causes
of it; and, finding that the same sensibility to which they are
indebted for the activity of their intellect is also the restless
mover of their jealousy and ambition, I would lead them aside from
whatever operates upon these, and throw under their feet the terrors
their imagination has created. My philosophy is not for the populace
nor for the proud: the ferocious will never attain it; the gentle will
embrace it, but will not call it mine. I do not desire that they
should: let them rest their heads upon that part of the pillow which
they find the softest, and enjoy their own dreams unbroken.
_Leontion._ The old are all against you, Epicurus, the name of
pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it than
that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the withered stems
have indeed a rueful look.
_Epicurus._ Unhappily the aged are retentive of long-acquired maxims,
and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy or from truth:
in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well might the poet tell
us:
Fewer the gifts that gnarled Age presents
To elegantly-handed Infancy,
Than elegantly-handed Infancy
Presents to gnarled Age. From both they drop;
The middle course of life receives them all,
Save the light few that laughing Youth runs off with,
Unvalued as a mistress or a flower.
_Leontion._ Since, in obedience to your institutions, O Epicurus, I
must not say I am angry, I am offended at least with Theophrastus for
having so misrepresented your opinions, on the necessity of keeping
the mind composed and tranquil, and remote from every object and every
sentiment by which a painful sympathy may be excited. In order to
display his elegance of language, he runs wherever he can lay a
censure on you, whether he believes in its equity or not.
_Epicurus._ This is the case with all eloquent men, and all
disputants. Truth neither warms nor elevates them, neither obtains for
them profit nor applause.
_Ternissa._ I have heard wise remarks very often and very warmly
praised.
_Epicurus._ Not for the truth in them, but for the grace, or because
they touched the spring of some preconception or some passion. Man is
a hater of truth, a lover of fiction.
Theophrastus is a writer of many acquirements and some shrewdness,
usually judicious, often somewhat witty, always elegant; his thoughts
are never confused, his sentences are never incomprehensible. If
Aristoteles thought more highly of him than his due, surely you ought
not to censure Theophrastus with severity on the supposition of his
rating me below mine; unless you argue that a slight error in a short
sum is less pardonable than in a longer. Had Aristoteles been living,
and had he given the same opinion of me, your friendship and perhaps
my self-love might have been wounded; for, if on one occasion he spoke
too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably but with justice. This is
among the indications of orderly and elevated minds; and here stands
the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a
man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to
unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to
overturn it on the road, and has pursued it with gibes and ribaldry?
_Leontion._ Theophrastus would persuade us that, according to your
system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but
avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us.
Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a
friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we
should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when Prometheus and
Oedipus and Philoctetes are introduced, but even when generous and
kindly sentiments are predominant, if they partake of that tenderness
which belongs to pity. I know not what Thracian lord recovers his
daughter from her ravisher; such are among the words they exchange:
_Father._
Insects that dwell in rotten reeds, inert
Upon the surface of a stream or pool,
Then rush into the air on meshy vans,
Are not so different in their varying lives
As we are.--Oh! what father on this earth,
Holding his child's cool cheek within his palms
And kissing his fair front, would wish him man?--
Inheritor of wants and jealousies,
Of labour, of ambition, of distress,
And, cruellest of all the passions, lust.
Who that behold me, persecuted, scorned,
A wanderer, e'er could think what friends were mine,
How numerous, how devoted? with what glee
Smiled my old house, with what acclaim my courts
Rang from without whene'er my war-horse neighed?
_Daughter._
Thy fortieth birthday is not shouted yet
By the young peasantry, with rural gifts
And nightly fires along the pointed hills,
Yet do thy temples glitter with grey hair
Scattered not thinly: ah, what sudden change!
Only thy voice and heart remain the same:
No! that voice trembles, and that heart (I feel),
While it would comfort and console me, breaks.
_Epicurus._ I would never close my bosom against the feelings of
humanity; but I would calmly and well consider by what conduct of life
they may enter it with the least importunity and violence. A
consciousness that we have promoted the happiness of others, to the
uttermost of our power, is certain not only to meet them at the
threshold, but to bring them along with us, and to render them
accurate and faithful prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the
problem of evil figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain
than of pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have delight
for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the highest of
poetry is tragic.
_Leontion._ The epic has been called so.
_Epicurus._ Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of what is
prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian pyramid contains
more materials than an Ionic temple, but requires less contrivance,
and exhibits less beauty of design. My simile is yet a defective one;
for a tragedy must be carried on with an unbroken interest, and,
undecorated by loose foliage or fantastic branches, it must rise,
like the palm-tree, with a lofty unity. On these matters I am unable
to argue at large, or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I
have studied and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that
Theophrastus can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall to your
attention but two axioms.
Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting or of
obtaining the higher.
Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness
in another.
_Leontion._ Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer so much
from ingratitude.
_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we
suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not
deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow
at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus,
to borrow a few words from a poet.
_Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and
may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then;
for she loves it.
_Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and
you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and
leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful
to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw
you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylëa. The
wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive
away the summer insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm,
hanging down beside him.
_Ternissa._ Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man?
_Epicurus._ The sentiment was both more delicate and more august from
being indistinct. You would have done it, even if he _had_ been a
living man; even if he could have clasped you in his arms, imploring
the deities to resemble you in gentleness, you would have done it.
_Ternissa._ He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet so
feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to see if
any one was near me; or else, perhaps----
_Epicurus._ If you could have thought of looking around, you would no
longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have transformed you for it
into some tree.
_Leontion._ And Epicurus had been walking under it this day, perhaps.
_Epicurus._ With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But the walk
would have been earlier or later than the present hour; since the
middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is good for
nothing.
_Leontion._ For dinner, surely?
_Epicurus._ Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many: I dine
alone.
_Ternissa._ Why?
_Epicurus._ To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture both of
odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency of speaking
with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my body (since it is
always in want of repair) in as unobstructed a space as I can, and I
lie down and sleep awhile when the work is over.
_Leontion._ Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt,
to hear more of what you do after dinner--[_Aside to him._] now don't
smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word--yet I would
rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last
that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.
_Epicurus._ I think they should visit it rarely; not because it
excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing
is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes,
and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human
sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and
insensible young officer.
_Leontion._ Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!
_Ternissa._ You quite fire at the idea.
_Leontion._ Not I: I don't care about it.
_Ternissa._ Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?
_Leontion._ I seldom go thither.
_Epicurus._ The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own
house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.
_Leontion._ You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read
the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.
_Epicurus._ I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion
is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no
Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two
imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's
of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the
better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and
willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else
we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give
us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we
receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at:
this is the perfection of their arts.
_Leontion._ Do you derive no pleasure from the representation of a
consummate actor?
_Epicurus._ High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an instant:
pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.
* * * * *
_Leontion._ In my treatise I have only defended your tenets against
Theophrastus.
_Epicurus._ I am certain you have done it with spirit and eloquence,
dear Leontion; and there are but two words in it I would wish you to
erase.
_Leontion._ Which are they?
_Epicurus._ Theophrastus and Epicurus. If you love me, you will do
nothing that may make you uneasy when you grow older; nothing that may
allow my adversary to say, 'Leontion soon forgot her Epicurus.' My
maxim is, never to defend my systems or paradoxes; if you undertake
it, the Athenians will insist that I impelled you secretly, or that my
philosophy and my friendship were ineffectual on you.
_Leontion._ They shall never say that.
_Epicurus._ I am not unmoved by the kindness of your intentions. Most
people, and philosophers, too, among the rest, when their own conduct
or opinions are questioned, are admirably prompt and dexterous in the
science of defence; but when another's are assailed, they parry with
as ill a grace and faltering a hand as if they never had taken a
lesson in it at home. Seldom will they see what they profess to look
for; and, finding it, they pick up with it a thorn under the nail.
They canter over the solid turf, and complain that there is no corn
upon it; they canter over the corn, and curse the ridges and furrows.
All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be
frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought to
acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour. There is none
of them that does not supply some truth useful to every man, and some
untruth equally so to the few that are able to wrestle with it. If
there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if
there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no
wisdom, no knowledge, no genius: and Fancy herself would lie muffled
up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated. I wish we could
demonstrate the existence of utility in some other evils as easily as
in this.
_Leontion._ My remarks on the conduct and on the style of Theophrastus
are not confined to him solely. I have taken at last a general view of
our literature, and traced as far as I am able its deviation and
decline. In ancient works we sometimes see the mark of the chisel; in
modern we might almost suppose that no chisel was employed at all, and
that everything was done by grinding and rubbing. There is an
ordinariness, an indistinctness, a generalization, not even to be
found in a flock of sheep. As most reduce what is sand into dust, the
few that avoid it run to a contrary extreme, and would force us to
believe that what is original must be unpolished and uncouth.