What if a man appeared with gown cut short,
Bare feet, grim visage, after Cato's sort?
Would you respect him, hail him from henceforth
The heir of Cato's mind, of Cato's worth?
The wretched Moor, who matched himself in wit
With keen Timagenes, in sunder split.
Faults are soon copied: should my colour fail,
Our bards drink cummin, hoping to look pale.
Mean, miserable apes! the coil you make
Oft gives my heart, and oft my sides, an ache.
Erect and free I walk the virgin sod,
Too proud to tread the paths by others trod.
The man who trusts himself, and dares step out,
Soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout.
'Tis I who first to Italy have shown
Iambics, quarried from the Parian stone;
Following Archilochus in rhythm and stave,
But not the words that dug Lycambes' grave.
Yet think not that I merit scantier bays,
Because in form I reproduce his lays:
Strong Sappho now and then adopts a tone
From that same lyre, to qualify her own;
So does Alcaeus, though in all beside,
Style, order, thought, the difference is wide;
'Gainst no false fair he turns his angry Muse,
Nor for her guilty father twists the noose.
Aye, and Alcaeus' name, before unheard,
My Latian harp has made a household word.
Well may the bard feel proud, whose pen supplies
Unhackneyed strains to gentle hands and eyes.
Ask you what makes the uncourteous reader laud My works at home, but run them down abroad? I stoop not, I, to catch the rabble's votes By cheap refreshments or by cast-off coats, Nor haunt the benches where your pedants swarm, Prepared by turns to listen and perform. That's what this whimpering means. Suppose I say "Your theatres have ne'er been in my way, Nor I in theirs: large audiences require Some heavier metal than my thin-drawn wire:" "You put me off," he answers, "with a sneer: Your works are kept for Jove's imperial ear: Yes, you're a paragon of bards, you think, And no one else brews nectar fit to drink." What can I do? 'tis an unequal match; For if my nose can sniff, his nails can scratch: I say the place won't snit me, and cry shame; "E'en fencers get a break 'twixt game and game." Games oft have ugly issue: they beget Unhealthy competition, fume and fret: And fume and fret engender in their turn Battles that bleed, and enmities that burn.
XX. TO HIS BOOK.
VERTUMNUM JANUMQUE.
To street and market-place I see you look
With wistful longing, my adventurous book,
That on the stalls for sale you may be seen,
Rubbed by the binder's pumice smooth and clean.
You chafe at look and key, and court the view
Of all the world, disdainful of the few.
Was this your breeding? go where you would go;
When once sent out, you won't come back, you know.
"What mischief have I done?" I hear you whine,
When some one hurts those feelings, now so fine;
For hurt you're sure to be; when people pall
Of reading you, they'll crush and fold you small.
If my prophetic soul be not at fault
From indignation at your rude revolt,
Your doom, methinks, is easy to foretell:
While you've your gloss on, Rome will like you well:
Then, when you're thumbed and soiled by vulgar hands,
You'll feed the moths, or go to distant lands.
Ah, then you'll mind your monitor too late,
While he looks on and chuckles at your fate,
Like him who, pestered by his donkey's vice,
Got off and pushed it down the precipice;
For who would lose his temper and his breath
To keep a brute alive that's bent on death?
Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach
In some suburban school the parts of speech,
And, maundering over grammar day by day,
Lisp, prattle, drawl, grow childish, and decay.
Well, when in summer afternoons you see
Men fain to listen, tell them about me:
Tell them that, born a freedman's son, possessed
Of slender means, I soared beyond my nest,
That so whate'er's deducted for my birth
May count as assets on the score of worth;
Say that I pleased the greatest of my day:
Then draw my picture;—prematurely grey,
Of little person, fond of sunny ease,
Lightly provoked, but easy to appease.
Last, if my age they ask you, let them know
That I was forty-four not long ago,
In the December of last year, the same
That goes by Lepidus' and Lollius' name.