life. In every age there will be twenty bad writers for one good
one; and every bad writer will think himself a good one. A ruler
who neglects all men of letters alike does not wound the self
love of any man of letters. But a ruler who shows favour to the
few men of letters who deserve it inflicts on the many the
miseries of disappointed hope, of affronted pride, of jealousy
cruel as the grave. All the rage of a multitude of authors,
irritated at once by the sting of want and by the sting of
vanity, is directed against the unfortunate patron. It is true
that the thanks and eulogies of those whom he has befriended will
be remembered when the invectives of those whom he has neglected
are forgotten. But in his own time the obloquy will probably make
as much noise and find as much credit as the panegyric. The name
of Maecenas has been made immortal by Horace and Virgil, and is
popularly used to designate an accomplished statesman, who lives
in close intimacy with the greatest poets and wits of his time,
and heaps benefits on them with the most delicate generosity. But
it may well be suspected that, if the verses of Alpinus and
Fannius, of Bavius and Maevius, had come down to us, we might see
Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and tasteless of human
beings, nay as a man who, on system, neglected and persecuted all
intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague was thus
represented by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in
essays, in letters, in dialogues, in ballads, that he would do
nothing for anybody without being paid either in money or in some
vile services; that he not only never rewarded merit, but hated
it whenever he saw it; that he practised the meanest arts for the
purpose of depressing it; that those whom he protected and
enriched were not men of ability and virtue, but wretches
distinguished only by their sycophancy and their low