Such are the caprices, nay, the insults, let me rather say, with which
the patron gradually breaks the spirit of his dependants. I know myself
of an orator, a very free speaker, who was actually ordered to stand up
and deliver a speech at table; and a masterly speech it was, trenchant
and terse. He received the congratulations of the company on being timed
by a _wine_--instead of a _water_-clock; and this affront, it is said, he
was content to put up, for the consideration of 8 pounds. But what of
that? Wait till you get a patron who has poetical or historical
tendencies, and spouts passages of his own works all through dinner: you
must praise, you must flatter, you must devise original compliments for
him,--or die in the attempt. Then there are the beaux, the Adonises and
Hyacinths, as you must be careful to call them, undeterred by the
eighteen inches or so of nose that some of them carry on their faces. Do
your praises halt? 'Tis envy, 'tis treason! Away with you, Philoxenus
that you are, to Syracusan quarries!--Let them be orators, let them be
philosophers, if they will: what matter for a solecism here and there?
Find Attic elegance, find honey of Hymettus in every word; and pronounce
it law henceforth, to speak as they speak.

If we had only men to deal with, it would be something: but there are the
women too. For among the objects of feminine ambition is this, of having
a scholar or two in their pay, to dance attendance at the litter's side;
it adds one more to the list of their adornments, if they can get the
reputation of culture and philosophy, of turning a song which will bear
comparison with Sappho's. So they too keep their philosopher, their
orator, or their _litterateur_; and give him audience--when, think
you? Why, at the toilet, by all that is ridiculous, among the rouge-pots
and hair-brushes; or else at the dinner-table. They have no leisure at
other times. As it is, the philosopher is often interrupted by the
entrance of a maid with a billet-doux. Virtue has then to bide her time;