_Epicurus._ I think they should visit it rarely; not because it excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes, and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and insensible young officer. _Leontion._ Oh, very bad indeed! horrible! _Ternissa._ You quite fire at the idea. _Leontion._ Not I: I don't care about it. _Ternissa._ Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible? _Leontion._ I seldom go thither. _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.