Tib. Rufus Laberius Crispinus, and Demetrius Fannius, lay your hands on your hearts. You shall here solemnly attest and swear, that never, after this instant, either at booksellers’ stalls, in taverns, two-penny rooms, tyring-houses, noblemen’s butteries, puisents chambers, (the best and farthest places where you are admitted to come,) you shall once offer or dare (thereby to endear yourself the more to any player, enghle, or guilty gull in your company) to malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or any other eminent men, transcending you in merit, whom your envy shall find cause to work upon, either for that, or for keeping himself in better acquaintance, or enjoying better friends, or if, transported by any sudden and desperate resolution, you do, that then you shall not under the batoon, or in the next presence, being an honourable assembly of his favourers, be brought as voluntary gentlemen to undertake the for-swearing of it. Neither shall you, at any time, ambitiously affecting the title of the Untrussers or Whippers of the age, suffer the itch of writing to over-run your performance in libel, upon pain of being taken up for lepers in wit, and, losing both your time and your papers, be irrecoverably forfeited to the hospital of fools. So help you our Roman gods and the Genius of great Caesar.
Virg. So! now dissolve the court.
Bor. Tib. Gal. Mec. And thanks to Caesar, That thus hath exercised his patience.
Caes.
We have, indeed, you worthiest friends
of Caesar.
It is the bane and torment of our
ears,
To hear the discords of those jangling
rhymers,
That with their bad and scandalous
practices
Bring all true arts and learning
in contempt.
But let not your high thoughts descend
so low
As these despised objects; let them
fall,
With their flat grovelling souls:
be you yourselves;
And as with our best favours you
stand crown’d,
So let your mutual loves be still
renown’d.
Envy will dwell where there is want
of merit,
Though the deserving man should
crack his spirit.
Blush, folly,
blush; here’s none that fears
The wagging
of an ass’s ears,
Although
a wolfish case he wears.
Detraction
is but baseness’ varlet;
And apes
are apes, though clothed in scarlet. [Exeunt.
Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur invidi!
“Here, reader, in place of the epilogue, was meant to thee an apology from the author, with his reasons for the publishing of this book: but, since he is no less restrained than thou deprived of it by authority, he prays thee to think charitably of what thou hast read. till thou mayest hear him speak what he hath written.”
Horaceand Trebatius.
A dialogue.
Sat. 1. Lib. 2.