t, 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