Scaliger.—I have said that I had rather have written the little dialogue between you and Lydia than have been made king of Arragon.
Horace.—If we were in the other world you should give me the kingdom, and take both the ode and the lady in return. But did you always pronounce so favourably for us?
Scaliger.—Send for my works and read them. Mercury will bring them to you with the first learned ghost that arrives here from Europe. There is instruction for you in them. I tell you of your faults. But it was my whim to commend that little ode, and I never do things by halves. When I give praise, I give it liberally, to show my royal bounty. But I generally blame, to exert all the vigour of my censorian power, and keep my subjects in awe.
Horace.—You did not confine your sovereignty to poets; you exercised it, no doubt, over all other writers.
Scaliger.—I was a poet, a philosopher, a statesman, an orator, an historian, a divine without doing the drudgery of any of these, but only censuring those who did, and showing thereby the superiority of my genius over them all.
Horace.—A short way, indeed, to universal fame! And I suppose you were very peremptory in your decisions?
Scaliger.—Peremptory! ay. If any man dared to contradict my opinions I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him out of his wits.
Virgil.—But what said others to this method of disputation?
Scaliger.—They generally believed me because of the confidence of my assertions, and thought I could not be so insolent or so angry if I was not absolutely sure of being in the right. Besides, in my controversies, I had a great help from the language in which I wrote. For one can scold and call names with a much better grace in Latin than in French or any tame modern tongue.
Horace.—Have not I heard that you pretended to derive your descent from the princes of Verona?