"And now the case is that of a man devoted to public ends who, shattering his health by ceaseless application, fails to achieve all he might have achieved by a more reasonable apportionment of his time between labour on behalf of others, and ministration to his own needs."
After this lengthy prose extract, let us turn to the modern Epicurean poets.
At once the best and the worst rendering of Epicureanism into verse is Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam. It is the best because of the frankness with which it draws out to its logical conclusion, in a cynical despair of everything nobler than the pleasure of the moment, the consequences of identifying the self with mere pleasure-seeking. It is the worst because, instead of presenting Epicureanism mixed with nobler elements, as Walt Whitman and Stevenson do, it gives us the pure and undiluted article as a final gospel of life. The fact that it has proved such a fad during the past few years is striking evidence of the husky fare on which our modern prodigals can be content to feed.
"Come fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of repentance fling: The bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.
"Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears _To-day_ of past Regrets and future Fears: _To-morrow!_--Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.
"I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell:
"Heav'n but the vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on Fire, Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."
From this melancholy attempt to offer us Epicureanism as a complete account of life, overshadowed as it is by the gloom of the Infinite which the man who stakes his all on momentary pleasure feels doomed to forego, it is a relief to turn to men who strike cheerfully and firmly the Epicurean note; but pass instantly on to blend it with sterner notes and larger views of life, in which it plays its essential, yet strictly subordinate part.