IX.  But to come to the point, from which we started:  poetry, to which my friend Maternus wishes to dedicate all his time, has none of these advantages.  It confers no dignity, nor does it serve any useful purpose.  It is attended with some pleasure, but it is the pleasure of a moment, springing from vain applause, and bringing with it no solid advantage.  What I have said, and am going to add, may probably, my good friend Maternus, be unwelcome to your ear; and yet I must take the liberty to ask you, if Agamemnon [a] or Jason speaks in your piece with dignity of language, what useful consequence follows from it?  What client has been defended?  Who confesses an obligation?  In that whole audience, who returns to his own house with a grateful heart?  Our friend Saleius Bassus [b] is, beyond all question, a poet of eminence, or, to use a warmer expression, he has the god within him:  but who attends his levee? who seeks his patronage, or follows in his train?  Should he himself, or his intimate friend, or his near relation, happen to be involved in a troublesome litigation, what course do you imagine he would take?  He would, most probably, apply to his friend, Secundus; or to you, Maternus; not because you are a poet, nor yet to obtain a copy of verses from you; of those he has a sufficient stock at home, elegant, it must be owned, and exquisite in the kind.  But after all his labour and waste of genius, what is his reward?

When in the course of a year, after toiling day and night, he has brought a single poem to perfection, he is obliged to solicit his friends and exert his interest, in order to bring together an audience [c], so obliging as to hear a recital of the piece.  Nor can this be done without expence.  A room must be hired, a stage or pulpit must be erected; benches must be arranged, and hand-bills distributed throughout the city.  What if the reading succeeds to the height of his wishes?  Pass but a day or two, and the whole harvest of praise and admiration fades away, like a flower that withers in its bloom, and never ripens into fruit.  By the event, however flattering, he gains no friend, he obtains no patronage, nor does a single person go away impressed with the idea of an obligation conferred upon him.  The poet has been heard with applause; he has been received with acclamations; and he has enjoyed a short-lived transport.

Bassus, it is true, has lately received from Vespasian a present of fifty thousand sesterces.  Upon that occasion, we all admired the generosity of the prince.  To deserve so distinguished a proof of the sovereign’s esteem is, no doubt, highly honourable; but is it not still more honourable, if your circumstances require it, to serve yourself by your talents? to cultivate your genius, for your own advantage? and to owe every thing to your own industry, indebted to the bounty of no man whatever?  It must not be forgotten, that the poet, who would produce any thing truly excellent in the kind, must bid farewell to the conversation of his friends; he must renounce, not only the pleasures of Rome, but also the duties of social life; he must retire from the world; as the poets say, “to groves and grottos every muse’s son.”  In other words, he must condemn himself to a sequestered life in the gloom of solitude.