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Sketches of the Portico in the Gardens of Epicurus.

OF

FOR THE BEE.-JUNE 12. 1793.

TO JOANNES AMADIES*,
Esti me vario jactatum laudis amore,
Irritaque expertum fallacis proemia vulgi,
Cecropius suaveis expirans hortulus auras
Florentis viridi Sophiæ complectitur umbra.

F the portico in the gardens of Epicurus! Yes, Amadies, however paradoxical this may appear, I have seen it and able am to describe it, since I surveyed it this morning with Epicurus himself, who deigned to visit me in an airy dream.

For my sleep

Was airy light, from pure digestion bred

And temperate vapours bland, which th' only

sound

Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan

Lightly dispers'd, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough ;·

I had walked out earlier than usual at the fragrant, cool, and pleasant time, when every herb, and fruit, and flower, was glistening with dew.

John Loveday, Esq. of Caversham, Wiltshire.

A charming stillness, animated by the music of the groves, inclined me to the most chearful and pleasing contemplation of the beauties of nature; and when the sun began to beam more fiercely on me than was agreeable, I retired to the shade of my summer-house, and seated myself on a torse of straw in the niche of Epicurus, which I had chosen by accident. I was tired, and soon afterward I fell asleep. The last sound I heard, in sweetly descending into the arms of the papaverous power, was the twittering of the swallow. Ah, how delightful was this mid-way hovering between the worlds of activity and rest! Ah, how delightful and happy were it to believe this to be an authentic emblem of approaching death to him who has not lived in vain! I dreamed, and I saw, as I thought, advancing towards me, on the verdant meadow near the obelisk + dedicated to the genius of ancient times, a venerable old man, leaning on a staff that seemed to be of maple.

- His mantle was white, and appeared to be of the finest woollen. Sweetly smiling and placid was his countenance, and down unto his girdle was his beard of grey, that yielded to the breeze as he walked forward to salute me. By the trait of his face, and my remembrance of seals and statues, I knew him to be the antagonist of Zeno.

In the Chapter house at Dryburgh Abbey.

† At Dryburgh Abbey, inscribed, GENIO MAJORUM. VOL. I.

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I was overawed, but I was not afraid. In silence I bowed to him, and he saluted me by my name.

Ascanius, said he with a smile beyond the power of a Guercino or a Reynolds to express, I am come to visit you on your birthday *, and to thank you for not listening to the calumniators of my life, my writings, and my character.

From your own happy experience, you are able to sit in judgment on my judges, and to know that dirt, affectation of apathy, maceration of body, obstinacy in opinion, and the imputation of mutability and passion to the Infinite and Eternal Spirit of the universe, are not the ways to reform mankind, and to make them conformable to the eternal and beautiful order of nature, possessing their bodies in healthful vigour by the rational use of all their faculties, and their souls in tranquillity by the practice of virtue.

I came forth into the world at a time when the wealth of nations, founded on free government, and the subdivision of useful employment, had long afforded leisure for fanciful inquiry.

I had a strong propensity to rational curiosity myself, and I wished to promote it in others.--- After much study and contemplation, I founded a school, and finding it impossible, as an honest man, to adopt the supersti

* June 12. 1793.

tion of India and Egypt, which had gradually become so popular in Greece, I entered as it were into the recesses of my own unsophisticated understanding, and applied the rules of common reason and sense to the pedantry of the schools and the superstition of the people. When I taught that superstition had its origin in fear, I taught nothing that has not been evinced by the everlasting experience of mankind. When I represented the universe as infinite and eternal, I showed it in no other light than it must be looked upon for ever by those who consider the infinite power and duration of the Spirit by which it is animated and directed. If I held the tendency of matter to be equal in all directions, and finally convergent no where, I taught only what must necessarily follow from the infinity of worlds. If that nothing in the universe was quiescent, on similar principles founded on the infinite activity of the spirit wherewith matter is universally pervaded and actuated. When I sportively yielded to the doctrines of Moschus, of Leucippus, and Democritus, that all nature was in a constant state of deperition and renovation, but finally inexterminable in its principles, I taught that which seemed at the same time to be most conformable to wisdom and the Eternal Spirit of the universe.

I did not consider the world and worlds as machines that required to be mended and renewed in their primary, or inferior and secondary movements, but as an infinite whole

without error, emanating and acting uniformly from, and with, and around an infinite and intelligent Spirit, whose nature and propensity it was, and is, and ever will be, to connect wisdom and happiness with order, and to bless and make happy continually in the order of wisdom and conformity to universal nature. All these speculations are to me now as the playful mimicries of children, or the wandering dreams of the contemplative Hermit. But heaven has not deceived us. Truth and reason with us are purged of doubt and error, but are the same in substance as when they were dimly seen through the grosser medium of terrestrial organs.

I lived, and I taught, in a garden; not that I might pass my days in indolence and pleasure, but that I might habituate myself and my disciples to the lessons and admonitions of nature, and live contentedly on her simplest productions.

I did not abstain from the use of animal food, like the superstitious Indians, or the selfmacerating disciples of Zeno; or from blood, like the Egyptians, who, fond of flesh, make a compromise with the foolish superstition of the Indians; but I lived upon cakes made of maize, and drank from the living fountain, improving and enjoying, without intemperance, all the cultivated fruits of the earth, and using wine only in the feasts of friendship and commemoration of the illustrious dead. "Occupamvius te Fortuna atque cepimus, omneis aditus

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