Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
_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?'