[2017] “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona
        Multi:  sed omnes illachrymabiles
        Urgentur, ignotique longa
        Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.”

       “Before great Agamemnon reign’d,
          Reign’d kings as great as he, and brave,
        Whose huge ambition’s now contain’d
          In the small compass of a grave:” 

       “In endless night, they sleep, unwept, unknown,
        No bard they had to make all time their own.”

they are more beholden to scholars, than scholars to them; but they undervalue themselves, and so by those great men are kept down.  Let them have that encyclopaedian, all the learning in the world; they must keep it to themselves, [2018]"live in base esteem, and starve, except they will submit,” as Budaeus well hath it, “so many good parts, so many ensigns of arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate potentate, and live under his insolent worship, or honour, like parasites,” Qui tanquam mures alienum panem comedunt.  For to say truth, artes hae, non sunt Lucrativae, as Guido Bonat that great astrologer could foresee, they be not gainful arts these, sed esurientes et famelicae, but poor and hungry.

[2019] “Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores,
          Sed genus et species cogitur ire pedes:” 

       “The rich physician, honour’d lawyers ride,
        Whilst the poor scholar foots it by their side.”

Poverty is the muses’ patrimony, and as that poetical divinity teacheth us, when Jupiter’s daughters were each of them married to the gods, the muses alone were left solitary, Helicon forsaken of all suitors, and I believe it was, because they had no portion.

       “Calliope longum caelebs cur vixit in aevum? 
          Nempe nihil dotis, quod numeraret, erat.”

       “Why did Calliope live so long a maid? 
        Because she had no dowry to be paid.”

Ever since all their followers are poor, forsaken and left unto themselves.  Insomuch, that as [2020]Petronius argues, you shall likely know them by their clothes.  “There came,” saith he, “by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a scholar, whom commonly rich men hate:  I asked him what he was, he answered, a poet:  I demanded again why he was so ragged, he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich.”

[2021] “Qui Pelago credit, magno se faenore tollit,
        Qui pugnas et rostra petit, praecingitur auro: 
        Vilis adulator picto jacet ebrius ostro,
        Sola pruinosis horret facundia pannis.”

       “A merchant’s gain is great, that goes to sea;
          A soldier embossed all in gold;
        A flatterer lies fox’d in brave array;
          A scholar only ragged to behold.”