[2008] “Ducetur Planta velut ictus ab Hercule Cacus,
        Poneturque foras, si quid tentaverit unquam
        Hiscere”------

as Hercules did by Cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the heels, away with him.  If he bend his forces to some other studies, with an intent to be a secretis to some nobleman, or in such a place with an ambassador, he shall find that these persons rise like apprentices one under another, and in so many tradesmen’s shops, when the master is dead, the foreman of the shop commonly steps in his place.  Now for poets, rhetoricians, historians, philosophers, [2009]mathematicians, sophisters, &c.; they are like grasshoppers, sing they must in summer, and pine in the winter, for there is no preferment for them.  Even so they were at first, if you will believe that pleasant tale of Socrates, which he told fair Phaedrus under a plane-tree, at the banks of the river Iseus; about noon when it was hot, and the grasshoppers made a noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him a tale, how grasshoppers were once scholars, musicians, poets, &c., before the Muses were born, and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause were turned by Jupiter into grasshoppers.  And may be turned again, In Tythoni Cicadas, aut Lyciorum ranas, for any reward I see they are like to have:  or else in the mean time, I would they could live, as they did, without any viaticum, like so many [2010]manucodiatae, those Indian birds of paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that live with the air and dew of heaven, and need no other food; for being as they are, their [2011]"rhetoric only serves them to curse their bad fortunes,” and many of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from grasshoppers they turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses, mules, to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal’s meat.  To say truth, ’tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless patrons, as [2012]Cardan doth, as [2013]Xilander and many others:  and which is too common in those dedicatory epistles, for hope of gain, to lie, flatter, and with hyperbolical eulogiums and commendations, to magnify and extol an illiterate unworthy idiot, for his excellent virtues, whom they should rather, as [2014]Machiavel observes, vilify, and rail at downright for his most notorious villainies and vices.  So they prostitute themselves as fiddlers, or mercenary tradesmen, to serve great men’s turns for a small reward.  They are like [2015]Indians, they have store of gold, but know not the worth of it:  for I am of Synesius’s opinion, [2016]"King Hieron got more by Simonides’ acquaintance, than Simonides did by his;” they have their best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when they have done well, their honour and immortality from us:  we are the living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fames:  what was Achilles without Homer?  Alexander without Arian and Curtius? who had known the Caesars, but for Suetonius and Dion?