"There was an aged freedman, who would run
From shrine to shrine at rising of the sun,
Sober and purified for prayer, and cry
'Save me, me only! sure I need not die;
Heaven can do all things:' ay, the man was sane
In ears and eyes: but how about his brain?
Why, that his master, if not bent to plead
Before a court, could scarce have guaranteed.
Him and all such Chrysippus would assign
To mad Menenius' most prolific line.
"'Almighty Jove, who giv'st and tak'st away
The pains we mortals suffer, hear me pray!'
(So cries the mother of a child whose cold,
Or ague rather, now is five months old)
'Cure my poor boy, and he shall stand all bare
In Tiber, on thy fast, in morning air.'
So if, by chance or treatment, the attack
Should pass away, the wretch will bring it back,
And give the child his death: 'tis madness clear;
But what produced it? superstitious fear."
Such were the arms Stertinius, next in sense
To the seven sages, gave me for defence.
Now he that calls me mad gets paid in kind,
And told to feel the pigtail stuck behind.
H. Good Stoic, may you mend your loss, and sell
All your enormous bargains twice as well.
But pray, since folly's various, just explain
What type is mine? for I believe I'm sane.
D. What? is Agave conscious that she's mad
When she holds up the head of her poor lad?
H. I own I'm foolish—truth must have her will—
Nay, mad: but tell me, what's my form of ill?
D. I'll tell you. First, you build, which means you try
To ape great men, yourself some two feet high,
And yet you laugh to see poor Turbo fight,
When he looks big and strains beyond his height.
What? if Maecenas does a thing, must you,
His weaker every way, attempt it too?
A calf set foot on some young frogs, they say,
Once when the mother chanced to be away:
One 'scapes, and tells his dam with bated breath
How a huge beast had crushed the rest to death:
"How big?" quoth she: "is this as big?" and here
She swelled her body out. "No, nothing near."
Then, seeing her still fain to puff and puff,
"You'll burst," gays he, "before you're large enough."
Methinks the story fits you. Now then, throw
Your verses in, like oil to feed the glow.
If ever poet yet was sane, no doubt,
You may put in your plea, but not without.
Your dreadful temper—
H. Hold.
D. The sums you spend
Beyond your income—
H. Mind yourself, my friend.