This doctrine, best known to English readers, perhaps, from Mr Arnold’s not quite fair application of it to Théophile Gautier, is of much more general application in the original (_Enchiridion_, cap. 52). Man being represented as a voyager to a far country, all occupations save duty and philosophy are really mere “inns on the journey,” pleasant perhaps for a night, but not good to stay in. “Eloquence” is specially dwelt on as one of these “inns.” Footnote 61: Who thanks Heaven (i. 17) that he did not make more progress in rhetoric and poetry. Footnote 62: _V. infra_, bk. ii. p. 245 _sq._ The attitude, however, of their principal antagonists is all the more surprising. The Cynic vulgarity and insolence could not be expected to busy itself profitably with letters, and, as we shall see shortly, the ancient Pyrrhonists have at least left us nothing to show that they could combine with their _Que sais-je?_ on philosophical points, the keen literary enjoyment and the discriminating literary appreciation of their great modern champion. But the attitude of the Epicureans to literature is one of the most surprising things in the history of ancient philosophy. One might have supposed, not merely that a Hedonist philosophy would apply itself most joyfully and energetically to the investigation and the vindication of one of the greatest of all sources of _ataraxia_ and _aponia_,[63] but that it would do [Sidenote: _The Epicureans: Philodemus._] so with all the more vigour as thus vindicating itself from the common charge of esteeming only sensual pleasures. Yet, though the scanty wreckage of original Epicurean writing warns us not to be too peremptory, there is absolutely no evidence that Epicurus, or any of his followers, took this side. Nay, the whole evidence available is distinctly against any such supposition. Perhaps we could have no stronger testimony to the reluctance with which antiquity took the view of literature as a pleasure-giver, or rather to the rarity with which such a view even presented itself. If we were here indulging further in speculation, it might not be improper to suggest that the atomic and necessitarian theory of Epicurus deprived the operations of the artist of half their interest. But this would be to travel out of bounds. It is enough to say that Epicurus is accused of slighting critical discussion altogether, that his chief disciple Metrodorus appears to have written a book on poetry which was a general attack on it as a useless and futile thing, and that the fragments of Philodemus of Gadara, which have been salvaged from Herculaneum, go to support the same idea. Footnote 63: Freedom from trouble and pain; the former, especially, being the technical term for the Epicurean _nonchalance_.