bad writers, and that was somewhat better than to be martyrs for
their reputation. Lucan's example was enough to teach them manners;
and after he was put to death, for overcoming Nero, the emperor
carried it without dispute for the best poet in his dominions.
No man was ambitious of that grinning honour; for if he heard the
malicious trumpeter proclaiming his name before his betters, he knew
there was but one way with him. Maecenas took another course, and we
know he was more than a great man, for he was witty too: But finding
himself far gone in poetry, which Seneca assures us was not his
talent, he thought it his best way to be well with Virgil and with
Horace; that at least he might be a poet at the second hand; and we
see how happily it has succeeded with him; for his own bad poetry is
forgotten, and their panegyrics of him still remain. But they who
should be our patrons are for no such expensive ways to fame; they
have much of the poetry of Maecenas, but little of his liberality.
They are for prosecuting Horace and Virgil, in the persons of their
successors; for such is every man who has any part of their soul and
fire, though in a less degree. Some of their little zanies yet go
further; for they are persecutors even of Horace himself, as far as
they are able, by their ignorant and vile imitations of him; by
making an unjust use of his authority, and turning his artillery
against his friends. But how would he disdain to be copied by such
hands! I dare answer for him, he would be more uneasy in their
company, than he was with Crispinus, their forefather, in the Holy
Way; and would no more have allowed them a place amongst the critics,
than he would Demetrius the mimic, and Tigellius the buffoon;

------- Demetri, teque, Tigelli,
Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.