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