Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection

_Epicurus._ Cannot you imagine them to be the feathers from the wings of Zethes and Calaeis, who came hither out of Thrace to behold the favourite haunts of their mother Oreithyia? From the precipice that hangs over the sea a few paces from the pinasters she is reported to have been carried off by Boreas; and these remains of the primeval forest have always been held sacred on that belief. _Leontion._ The story is an idle one. _Ternissa._ Oh no, Leontion! the story is very true. _Leontion._ Indeed! _Ternissa._ I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most ancient hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible here, and the screams of Oreithyia. _Leontion._ The feathers, then, really may belong to Calaeis and Zethes. _Ternissa._ I don't believe it; the winds would have carried them away. _Leontion._ The gods, to manifest their power, as they often do by 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 Calaeis 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.