The astonished, the affrighted Theon started from the arm of the sage,
and, staggering backwards, was saved, probably, from falling, by a
statue that stood against the wall on one side of the door: he leaned
against it, pale and almost fainting. He knew not what to do, scarcely
what to feel, and was totally blind to all the objects around him. His
conductor, who had possibly expected his confusion, did not turn to
observe it, but advanced in such a manner as to cover him from the view
of the company, and, still to give time for recollection, stood
receiving and returning salutations.
“Well met, my sons! and I suppose you say well met, also. Are you
starving, or am I to be starved? Have you ate up the supper, or only sat
longing for it, cursing my delay?”
“The latter, only the latter,” cried a lively youth, hurrying to meet
his master. Another and another advanced, and in a moment he was locked
in a close circle.
“Mercy! mercy!” cried the philosopher, “drive me a step further and you
will overturn a couple of statues.” Then, looking over his shoulder, “I
have brought you, if he has not run away, a very pleasant young
Corinthian, for whom, until he gain his own tongue, I shall demand
reception.” He held out his hand with a look of bewitching
encouragement, and the yet faltering Theon advanced. The mist had now
passed from his eyes, and the singing from his ears, and both room and
company stood revealed before him. Perhaps, had it not been for this
motion, and still more this look of the sage, he had just now made a
retreat instead of an advance. “In the hall of Epicurus—in that hall
where Timocrates had beheld”—oh! horrid imagination! “And he a disciple
of Zeno, the friend of Cleanthes—the son of a follower of Plato—had he
crossed the threshhold of vice, the threshhold of the impious
Gargettian!” Yes; he had certainly fled, but for that extended hand, and
that bewitching smile. These however conquered. He advanced, and with an
effort at composure, met the offered hand. The circle made way, and
Epicurus presented “a friend.” “His name you must learn from himself, I
am only acquainted with his heart, and that, on a knowledge of two
hours, I pronounce myself in love with.”
“Then he shall be my brother,” cried the lively youth who had before
spoken, and he ran to the embrace of Theon.
“When shall we use our own eyes, ears, and understandings?” said the
sage, gently stroking his scholar’s head. “See! our new friend knows not
how to meet your premature affection.”
“He waits,” returned the youth archly, “to receive the same commendation
of me that I have of him. Let the master say he is in love with my
heart, and he too will open his arms to a brother.”
“I hope he is not such a fool,” gaily replied the sage. Then with an
accent more serious, but still sweeter, “I hope he will judge all
things, and all people, with his own understanding, and not with that of
Epicurus, or yet of a wiser man. When may I hope this of Sofron,”
smiling and shaking his head, “can Sofron tell me?”
“No, indeed he cannot,” rejoined the scholar, smiling and shaking his
head also, as in mimicry of his master.
“Go, go, you rogue! and show us to our supper: I more than half suspect
you have devoured it.” He turned, and familiarly taking Theon by the
shoulder, walked up the room, or rather gallery, and entered a spacious
rotunda.
A lamp, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, lighted a table spread
beneath it with a simple but elegant repast. Round the walls, in niches
at equal distances, stood twelve statues, the work of the best masters;
on either hand of these burned a lamp on a small tripod. Beside one of
the lamps, a female figure was reclining on a couch, reading with
earnest study from a book that lay upon her knee. Her head was so much
bowed forward as to conceal her face, besides that it was shadowed by
her hand, which, the elbow supported on an arm of the couch, was spread
above her brows as a relief from the glare of the light. At her feet was
seated a young girl, by whose side lay a small cithara, silent, and
forgotten by its mistress. Crete might have lent those eyes their
sparkling jet, but all the soul of tenderness that breathed from them
was pure Ionian. The full and ruddy lips, half parted, showed two rows
of pearls which Thetis might have envied. Still a vulgar eye would not
have rested on the countenance: the features wanted the Doric harmony,
and the complexion was tinged as by an Afric sun. Theon, however, saw
not this, as his eyes fell on those of the girl, uplifted to the
countenance of her studious companion. Never was a book read more
earnestly than was that face by the fond and gentle eyes which seemed to
worship as they gazed. The sound of approaching feet caught the ear of
the maiden. She rose, blushed, half returned the salute of the master,
and timidly drew back some paces. The student was still intent upon the
scroll over which she hung, when the sage advanced towards her, and
laying a finger on her shoulder, “What read you, my daughter?” She
dropped her hand, and looked up in his face. What a countenance was then
revealed! It was not the beauty of blooming, blushing youth, courting
love and desire. It was the self-possessed dignity of ripened womanhood,
and the noble majesty of mind, that asked respect and promised delight
and instruction. The features were not those of Venus, but Minerva. The
eye looked deep and steady from beneath two even brows, that sense, not
years, had slightly knit in the centre of the forehead, which else was
uniformly smooth and polished as marble. The nose was rather Roman than
Grecian, yet perfectly regular, and though not masculine, would have
been severe in expression, but for a mouth where all that was lovely and
graceful habited. The chin was elegantly rounded, and turned in the
Greek manner. The color of the cheeks was of the softest and palest
rose, so pale, indeed, as scarcely to be discernible until deepened by
emotion. It was so at this moment: startled by the address of the sage,
a bright flush passed over her face. She rolled up the book, dropped it
on the couch, and rose. Her stature was much above the female standard,
but every limb and every motion was symmetry and harmony. “A treatise of
Theophrastus;—eloquent, ingenious and chimerical. I have a fancy to
answer it.” Her voice was full and deep, like the tones of a harp when
its chords are struck by the hand of a master.
“No one could do it better,” replied the sage. “But I should have
guessed the aged Peripatetic already silenced by the most acute,
elegant, and subtle pen of Athens.” She bowed to the compliment.
“Is that then the famous Leontium?” muttered Theon. “Timocrates must be
a liar.”
“I know not,” resumed Leontium, “that I should this evening have so
frequently thought Theophrastus wrong, if he had not made me so
continually feel that he thought himself right. Must I seek the cause of
this in the writer’s or the reader’s vanity?”
“Perhaps,” said the master, smiling, “you will find that it lies in
both.”
“I believe you have it,” returned Leontium. “Theophrastus, in betraying
his self-love, hurt mine. He who is about to prove that his own way of
thinking is right, must bear in mind that he is about also to prove that
all other ways of thinking are wrong. And if this should make him slow
to enter on the undertaking, it should make him yet more careful, when
he does enter on it, to do it with becoming modesty. We are surely
imperiously called upon to make a sacrifice of our own vanity, before we
call upon others to make a sacrifice of theirs. But I would not
particularize Theophrastus for sometimes forgetting this, as I have
never known but one who always remembers it. Gentleness and modesty are
qualities at once the most indispensable to a teacher, and the most
rarely possessed by him. It was these that won the ears of the Athenian
youth to Socrates, and it is these,” inclining to the Master, “that will
secure them to Epicurus.”
“Could I accept your praise, my daughter, I should have no doubt of the
truth of your prophecy. For, indeed, the mode of delivering a truth
makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener
as the truth itself. It is as hard to receive the words of wisdom from
the ungentle, as it is to love, or even to recognize virtue in the
austere.” He drew near the table as he spoke. Often during supper were
the eyes of Theon riveted on the face of this female disciple. Such
grace! such majesty! More than all, such intellect! And this—this was
the Leontium Timocrates had called a prostitute without shame or
measure! And this was the Epicurus he had blasted with names too vile
and horrible to repeat even in thought! And these—continuing his inward
soliloquy as he looked round the board—these were the devoted victims of
the vice of an impious master.
“You arrived most seasonably this evening,” cried Sofron, addressing the
Philosopher; “most seasonably for the lungs of two of your scholars.”
“And for the ears of a third,” interrupted Leontium. “I was fairly
driven into exile.”
“What was the subject?” asked Epicurus.
“Whether the vicious were more justly objects of indignation or of
contempt: Metrodorus argued for the first, and I for the latter. Let the
master decide.”
“He will give his opinion certainly; but that is not decision.”
“Well; and your opinion is that of——.”
“Neither.”
“Neither! I had no idea the question had more than two sides.”
“It has yet a third; and I hardly ever heard a question that had not.
Had I regarded the vicious with indignation, I had never gained one to
virtue. Had I viewed them with contempt, I had never sought to gain
one.”
“How is it,” said Leontium, “that the scholars are so little familiar
with the temper of their master? When did Epicurus look on the vicious
with other than compassion?”
“True,” said Metrodorus. “I know not how I forgot this, when perhaps it
is the only point which I have more than once, presumed to argue with
him: and upon which I have persisted in retaining a different opinion.”
“Talk not of presumption, my son. Who has not a right to think for
himself? Or who is he whose voice is infallible, and worthy to silence
those of his fellow-men? And remember, that your remaining unconvinced
by my arguments on one occasion, can only tend to make your conviction
more flattering to me upon others. Yet, on the point in question, were I
anxious to bring you over to my opinion, I know one, whose argument,
better and more forcible than mine, will ere long most effectually do
so.”
“Who mean you?”
“No other than old hoary Time,” said the Master, “who, as he leads us
gently onwards in the path of life, demonstrates to us many truths that
we never heard in the schools, and some that, hearing there, we found
hard to receive. Our knowledge of human life must be acquired by our
passage through it; the lessons of the sage are not sufficient to impart
it. Our knowledge of men must be acquired by our own study of them; the
report of others will never convince us. When you, my son, have seen
more of life, and studied more men, you will find, or at least, I
_think_ you will find, that the judgment is not false which makes us
lenient to the failings—yea! even to the crimes of our fellows. In
youth, we act on the impulse of feeling, and we feel without pausing to
judge. An action, vicious in itself, or that is so merely in our
estimation, fills us with horror, and we turn from its agent without
waiting to listen to the plea which his ignorance could make to our
mercy. In our ripened years, supposing our judgment to have ripened
also, when all the insidious temptations that misguided him, and all the
disadvantages that he has labored under, perhaps from his birth, are
apparent to us—it is then, and not till then, that our indignation at
the crime is lost in our pity of the man.”
“I am the last,” said Metrodorus, a crimson blush spreading over his
face, “who should object to my master his clemency towards the
offending. But there are vices, different from those he saved me from,
which, if not more unworthy, are perhaps more unpardonable, because
committed with less temptation; and more revolting, as springing less
from thoughtless ignorance than calculating depravity.”
“Are we not prone,” said the sage, “to extenuate our foibles, even while
condemning them? And does it not flatter our self-love, to weigh our own
vices against those of more erring neighbors?”
The scholar leaned forwards, and stooping his face towards the hand of
his master, where it rested on the table, laid the deepening crimson of
his cheek upon it. “I mean not to exculpate the early vices of
Metrodorus. I love to consider them in all their enormity; for the more
heinous the vices of his youth, the greater is the debt of gratitude his
manhood has to repay to thee. But tell me,” he added, and lifted his
eyes to the benignant face of the sage, “tell me, oh! my friend and
guide! was the soul of Metrodorus, found base or deceitful; or has his
heart proved false to gratitude and affection?”
“No, my son, no,” said Epicurus, his face beaming with goodness, and a
tear glistening in his eye. “No! Vice never choked the warm feelings of
thy heart, nor clouded the fair ingenuousness of thy soul. But, my son,
a few years later, and who shall say what _might_ have been? Trust me,
none can drink of the cup of vice with impunity. But you will say, that
there are qualities of so mean or so horrible a nature, as to place the
man that is governed by them out of the pale of communion with the
virtuous. Malice, cruelty, deceit, ingratitude—crimes such as these,
should you think, draw down upon those convicted of them no feelings
more mild than abhorrence, execration, and scorn. And yet, perhaps,
these were not always natural to the heart they now sway. Fatal
impressions, vicious example, operating on the plastic frame of
childhood, may have perverted all the fair gifts of nature, may have
distorted the tender plant from the seedling, and crushed all the
blossoms of virtue in the germ. Say, shall we not compassionate the
moral disease of our brother, and try our skill to restore him to
health? But is the evil beyond cure? Is the mind strained into
changeless deformity, and the heart corrupted in the core? Greater then,
much greater, will be our compassion. For is not his wretchedness
complete, when his errors are without hope of correction? Oh! my sons!
the wicked may work mischief to others, but they never can inflict a
pang such as they endure themselves. I am satisfied, that of all the
miseries that tear the heart of man, none may compare with those it
feels beneath the sway of baleful passions.”
“Oh!” cried Theon, turning with a timid blush towards Epicurus, “I have
long owned the power of virtue, but surely till this night I never felt
its persuasion.”
“I see you were not born for a stoic,” said the master smiling, “Why, my
son, what made you fall in love with Zeno?”
“His virtues,” said the youth, proudly.
“His fine face, and fine talking,” returned the philosopher, with a tone
of playful irony. “Nay! don’t be offended;” and stretched his hand to
Theon’s shoulder, who reclined on the sofa next him. “I admire your
master very much, and go to hear him very often.”
“Indeed!”
“Indeed? Yes, indeed. Is it so wonderful?”
“You were not there”—Theon stopped and looked down in confusion.
“To-day, you mean? Yes, I was; and heard a description of myself that
might match in pleasantry with that in ‘_The Clouds_’[2] of old
Socrates. Pray don’t you find it very like?” He leaned over the side of
the couch, and looked in Theon’s face.
Footnote 2:
Alluding to the comedy of Aristophanes, in which Socrates was
indecently ridiculed.
“I—I—” The youth stammered and looked down.
“Think it is,” said the sage, as if concluding the sentence for him.
“No, think it is not; swear it is not;” burst forth the eager youth, and
looked as he would have thrown himself at the philosopher’s feet. “Oh!
why did you not stand forth and silence the liar?”
“Truly, my son, the liar was too pleasant to be angry with, and too
absurd to be answered.”
“And yet he was believed?”
“Of course.”
“But why then not answer him?”
“And so I do. I answer him in my life. The only way in which a
philosopher should ever answer a fool, or, as in this case, a knave.”
“I am really bewildered,” cried Theon, gazing in the philosopher’s, and
then in Leontium’s countenance, and then throwing a glance round the
circle. “I am really bewildered with astonishment and with shame,” he
continued, casting down his eyes, “that I should have listened to that
liar Timocrates! What a fool you must think me!”
“No more of a fool than Zeno,” said the sage, laughing. “What a
philosopher listened to, I cannot much blame a scholar for believing.”
“Oh! that Zeno knew you!”
“And then he would certainly hate me.”
“You joke.”
“Quite serious. Don’t you know that who quarrels with your doctrine,
must always quarrel with your practice? Nothing is so provoking as that
a man should preach viciously and act virtuously.”
“But you do not preach viciously.”
“I hope not. But those will call it so, aye! and in honest heart think
it so, who preach a different, it need not be a _better_, doctrine.”
“But Zeno mistakes your doctrine.”
“I have no doubt he expounds it wrong.”
“He mistakes it altogether. He believes that you own no other law—no
other principle of action—than pleasure.”
“He believes right.”
“Right? Impossible! That you teach men to laugh at virtue, and to riot
in luxury and vice.”
“There he believes wrong.”
Theon looked as he felt, curious and uncertain. He gazed first on the
philosopher, and, when he did not proceed, timidly round the circle.
Every face had a smile on it.
“The orgies are concluded,” said Epicurus, rising, and turning with
affected gravity to the young Corinthian. “You have seen the horrors of
the night; if they have left any curiosity for the mysteries of the day,
seek our garden to-morrow at sunrise, and you shall be initiated.”