_Epicurus._ The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own
house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.

_Leontion._ You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read
the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.

_Epicurus._ I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion
is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no
Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two
imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's
of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the
better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and
willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else
we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give
us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we
receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at:
this is the perfection of their arts.

_Leontion._ Do you derive no pleasure from the representation of a
consummate actor?

_Epicurus._ High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an instant:
pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.

* * * * *

_Leontion._ In my treatise I have only defended your tenets against
Theophrastus.

_Epicurus._ I am certain you have done it with spirit and eloquence,
dear Leontion; and there are but two words in it I would wish you to
erase.

_Leontion._ Which are they?

_Epicurus._ Theophrastus and Epicurus. If you love me, you will do
nothing that may make you uneasy when you grow older; nothing that may
allow my adversary to say, 'Leontion soon forgot her Epicurus.' My
maxim is, never to defend my systems or paradoxes; if you undertake
it, the Athenians will insist that I impelled you secretly, or that my
philosophy and my friendship were ineffectual on you.

_Leontion._ They shall never say that.

_Epicurus._ I am not unmoved by the kindness of your intentions. Most
people, and philosophers, too, among the rest, when their own conduct
or opinions are questioned, are admirably prompt and dexterous in the
science of defence; but when another's are assailed, they parry with
as ill a grace and faltering a hand as if they never had taken a
lesson in it at home. Seldom will they see what they profess to look
for; and, finding it, they pick up with it a thorn under the nail.
They canter over the solid turf, and complain that there is no cor