"Nature is ever various in her name;
Each has a different will, and few the same."


The comic poet also says, "Quot capita tot sententiae, suus cuique
mos est." "As many men, so many minds, each has his way." Young
soldiers exult in war, and pleaders delight in the gown; others
aspire after riches, and think them the supreme good. Some approve
Galen, some Justinian. Those who are desirous of honours follow the
court, and from their ambitious pursuits meet with more
mortification than satisfaction. Some, indeed, but very few, take
pleasure in the liberal arts, amongst whom we cannot but admire
logicians, who, when they have made only a trifling progress, are as
much enchanted with the images of Dialectics, as if they were
listening to the songs of the Syrens.

But among so many species of men, where are to be found divine
poets? Where the noble assertors of morals? Where the masters of
the Latin tongue? Who in the present times displays lettered
eloquence, either in history or poetry? Who, I say, in our own age,
either builds a system of ethics, or consigns illustrious actions to
immortality? Literary fame, which used to be placed in the highest
rank, is now, because of the depravity of the times, tending to ruin
and degraded to the lowest, so that persons attached to study are at
present not only not imitated nor venerated, but even detested.
"Happy indeed would be the arts," observes Fabius, "if artists alone
judged of the arts;" but, as Sydonius says, "it is a fixed principle
in the human mind, that they who are ignorant of the arts despise
the artist."