As for song and verse to which
Maternus wishes to devote his whole life (for this was the starting-point of
his entire argument), they bring no dignity to the author, nor do they
improve his circumstances. Although your ears, Maternus, may loathe what I
am about to say, I ask what good it is if Agamemnon or Jason speaks
eloquently in your composition. Who the more goes back to his home saved
from danger and bound to you? Our friend Saleius is an admirable poet, or,
if the phrase be more complimentary, a most illustrious bard; but who walks
by his side or attends his receptions or follows in his train? Why, if his
friend or relative or even he himself stumbles into some troublesome affair,
he will run to Secundus here, or to you, Maternus, not because you are a
poet or that you may make verses for him; for verses come naturally to
Bassus in his own home, and pretty and charming they are, though the result
of them is that when, with the labour of a whole year, through entire days
and the best part of the nights, he has hammered out, with the midnight oil,
a single book, he is forced actually to beg and canvass for people who will
condescend to be his hearers, and not even this without cost to himself. He
gets the loan of a house, fits up a room, hires benches, and scatters
programmes. Even if his reading is followed by a complete success, all the
glory is, so to say, cut short in the bloom and the flower, and does not
come to any real and substantial fruit. He carries away with him not a
single friendship, not a single client, not an obligation that will abide in
anyone's mind, only idle applause, meaningless acclamations and a fleeting
delight. We lately praised Vespasian's bounty, in giving Bassus four
thousand pounds, as something marvellous and splendid. It is no doubt a fine
thing to win an emperor's favour by talent; but how much finer, if domestic
circumstances so require, to cultivate oneself, to make one's own genius
propitious, to fall back on one's own bounty. Consider too that a poet, if
he wishes to work out and accomplish a worthy result, must leave the society
of his friends, and the attractions of the capital; he must relinquish every
other duty, and must, as poets themselves say, retire to woods and groves,
in fact, into solitude.
