ese writings can never reach posterity, nor serve better
authors near us; for who would receive as documents the perversions of
venality and party? Alexander we know was intemperate, and Philip both
intemperate and perfidious: we require not a volume of dissertation on
the thread of history, to demonstrate that one or other left a
tailor's bill unpaid, and the immorality of doing so; nor a supplement
to ascertain on the best authorities which of the two it was. History
should explain to us how nations rose and fell, what nurtured them in
their growth, what sustained them in their maturity; not which orator
ran swiftest through the crowd from the right hand to the left, which
assassin was too strong for manacles, or which felon too opulent for
crucifixion.

_Leontion._ It is better, I own it, that such writers should amuse our
idleness than excite our spleen.

_Ternissa._ What is spleen?

_Epicurus._ Do not ask her; she cannot tell you. The spleen, Ternissa,
is to the heart what Arimanes is to Oromazes.

_Ternissa._ I am little the wiser yet. Does he ever use such hard
words with you?

_Leontion._ He means the evil Genius and the good Genius, in the
theogony of the Persians: and would perhaps tell you, as he hath told
me, that the heart in itself is free from evil, but very capable of
receiving and too tenacious of holding it.

_Epicurus._ In our moral system, the spleen hangs about the heart and
renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually keep it in
exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by serious
investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise, it is apt to
adhere and to accumulate, until it deadens the principles of sound
action, and obscures the sight.

_Ternissa._ It must make us very ugly when we grow old.

_Leontion._ In youth it makes us uglier, as not appertaining to it: a
little more or less ugliness in decrepitude is hardly worth
considering, there being quite enough of it from other quarters: I
would stop it here, however.

_Ternissa._ Oh, what a thing is age!

_Leontion._ Death without death's quiet.

_Ternissa._ Leontion said that even bad writers may amuse our idle
hours: alas! even good ones do not much amuse mine, unless they record
an action of love or generosity. As for the graver, why cannot they
come among us and teach us, just as you do?

_Epicurus._ Would you wish it?

_Ternissa._ No, no! I do not want them: only I was imagining how
pleasant it is to converse