Convivial Reminiscences

Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716–80), Still Life with Figs

Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour,

Not grave thro' Pride, or Gay thro' Folly,

An equal Mixture of good Humour,

And sensible soft Melancholy.

—Pope

Try as I might, mistakes occur,

Although to virtue I defer.

A troubled heart succumbs as best

It can, and soft melancholy

Submits to humor's measured test:

Zeno refused many dinner invitations.

He liked to eat green figs lying in the sun.

I'd like that, too—if I had some!

What's more pointless than writing verse?

"We Poets are (upon a Poet's word)

Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd:"*

But yet, I guess, one might do worse!

Note: Alexander Pope's lines quoted in the epigraph referred to Henrietta Howard, countess of Suffolk (1681–1767). On the Stoic Zeno of Kition in Cyprus (335–265 BCE), who held that all men who are not wise must be mad, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, citing the Convivial Reminiscences of Zeno's housemate (perhaps originally his slave) Persaeus, who became an important figure at the court of Antigonus II Gonatas in Macedonia.

*Pope, The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated, 358–59.

Monday, February 16, 2026