This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[83]
I came into a gallery hung with a wonderful
collection of various pictures. I saw the works of Zeuxis not yet overcome by the
defacement of time, and I studied with a certain terrified wonder the rough drawings
of Protogenes, which rivalled the truth of Nature herself. But when I came to the
work of Apelles the Greek which is called the One-legged, I positively worshipped
it. For the outlines of his figures were defined with such subtle accuracy, that you
would have declared that he had painted their souls as well. In one the eagle was
carrying the Shepherd of Ida1 on high to heaven, and in another fair Hylas resisted a tormenting
Naiad. Apollo2 passed judgement on his accursed hands, and adorned his unstrung lyre
with the newborn flower. I cried out as if I were in a desert, among these faces of
mere painted lovers, “So even[p. 167] the gods feel love. Jupiter in
his heavenly home could find no object for his passion, and came down on earth
to sin, yet did no one any harm. The Nymph who ravished Hylas would have
restrained her passion had she believed that Hercules would come to dispute her
claim. Apollo recalled the ghost of a boy into a flower, and all the stories
tell of love's embraces without a rival. But I have taken for my comrade a
friend more cruel than Lycurgus himself.”
Suddenly, as I strove thus with the empty air, a white-haired old
man3 came into the gallery. His face was troubled, but there
seemed to be the promise of some great thing about him; though he was shabby in
appearance, so that it was quite plain by this characteristic that he was a man of
letters, of the kind that rich men hate. He came and stood by my side. . . .
“I am a poet,” he said, and one, I hope, of no mean imagination, if one
can reckon at all by crowns of honour, which gratitude can set even on unworthy
heads. 'Why are you so badly dressed, then?' you ask. For that very reason. The
worship of genius never made a man rich.
"The man who trusts the sea consoles himself with high profits; the man who follows
war and the camp is girded with gold; the base flatterer lies drunk on a couch of
purple dye; the man who tempts young wives gets money for his sin; eloquence alone
shivers in rags and cold, and calls upon a neglected art with unprofitable tongue.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.