Requiring each to gratify his taste
With different food.
Our writings are as so many dishes, our readers guests, our books like beauty, that which one admires another rejects; so are we approved as men's fancies are inclined. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.. That which is most pleasing to one is amaracum sui, most harsh to another. Quot homines, tot sententiae, so many men, so many minds: that which thou condemnest he commends. [110]Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus. He respects matter, thou art wholly for words; he loves a loose and free style, thou art all for neat composition, strong lines, hyperboles, allegories; he desires a fine frontispiece, enticing pictures, such as [111]Hieron. Natali the Jesuit hath cut to the Dominicals, to draw on the reader's attention, which thou rejectest; that which one admires, another explodes as most absurd and ridiculous. If it be not point blank to his humour, his method, his conceit, [112]si quid, forsan omissum, quod is animo conceperit, si quae dictio, &c. If aught be omitted, or added, which he likes, or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucae lectionis, an idiot, an ass, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else it is a thing of mere industry, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. [113]Facilia sic putant omnes quae jam facta, nec de salebris cogitant, ubi via strata; so men are valued, their labours vilified by fellows of no worth themselves, as things of nought, who could not have done as much. Unusquisque abundat sensu suo, every man abounds in his own sense; and whilst each particular party is so affected, how should one please all?
[114]Quid dem? quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet ille.
———What courses must I choose?
What not? What both would order you refuse.
[132]———laudatus abunde,
Non fastiditus si tibi, lector, ero.
[133]———et linguas mancipiorum
Contemno.———