Auditur; sed cum fregit subsellia versu,
Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.
SAT. vii. ver. 82.
This was the hard lot of poetry, and this the state of public reading, which Aper describes to his friend Maternus.
Section X.
[a] Horace has the same observation:
——Mediocribus esse poetis
Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnæ.
ART OF POETRY, ver. 372.
But God and man, and letter'd post denies,