advantage. What I have said, and am going to add, may probably, my
good friend Maternus, be unwelcome to your ear; and yet I must take
the liberty to ask you, if Agamemnon [a] or Jason speaks in your piece
with dignity of language, what useful consequence follows from it?
What client has been defended? Who confesses an obligation? In that
whole audience, who returns to his own house with a grateful heart?
Our friend Saleius Bassus [b] is, beyond all question, a poet of
eminence, or, to use a warmer expression, he has the god within him:
but who attends his levee? who seeks his patronage, or follows in his
train? Should he himself, or his intimate friend, or his near
relation, happen to be involved in a troublesome litigation, what
course do you imagine he would take? He would, most probably, apply to
his friend, Secundus; or to you, Maternus; not because you are a poet,
nor yet to obtain a copy of verses from you; of those he has a
sufficient stock at home, elegant, it must be owned, and exquisite in
the kind. But after all his labour and waste of genius, what is his
reward?

When in the course of a year, after toiling day and night, he has
brought a single poem to perfection, he is obliged to solicit his
friends and exert his interest, in order to bring together an audience
[c], so obliging as to hear a recital of the piece. Nor can this be
done without expence. A room must be hired, a stage or pulpit must be
erected; benches must be arranged, and hand-bills distributed
throughout the city. What if the reading succeeds to the height of his
wishes? Pass but a day or two, and the whole harvest of praise and
admiration fades away, like a flower that withers in its bloom, and
never ripens into fruit. By the event, however flattering, he gains no
friend, he obtains no patronage, nor does a single person go away
impressed with the idea of an obligation conferred upon him. The poet