No More Learning

Expectes eadem a summo minimoque poetâ.
SAT. i. ver. 12.

The same author observes, that the poet, who aspired to literary
fame, might borrow an house for the purpose of a public reading; and
the great man who accommodated the writer, might arrange his friends
and freedmen on the back seats, with direction not to be sparing of
their applause; but still a stage or pulpit, with convenient benches,
was to be procured, and that expence the patrons of letters would not
supply.

----At si dulcedine famæ
Contentus recites, Maculonus commodat ædes.
Scit dare libertos extremâ in parte sedentes
Ordinis, et magnas comitum disponere voces.
Nemo dabit procerum, quanti subsellia constent.
SAT. vii. ver. 39.

Statius, in Juvenal's time, was a favourite poet. If he announced a
reading, his auditors went in crowds.
He delighted all degrees and
ranks of men; but, when the hour of applause was over, the author was
obliged to sell a tragedy to Paris, the famous actor, in order to
procure a dinner,

Curritur ad vocem jucundam, et carmen amicæ?
Thebaidos, lætam fecit cum Statius urbem?
Promisitque diem: tantâ dulcedine vulgi
Auditur; sed cum fregit subsellia versu,
Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.
SAT. vii. ver. 82.

This was the hard lot of poetry, and this the state of public reading,
which Aper describes to his friend Maternus.


Section X.

[a] Horace has the same observation:

----Mediocribus esse poetis
Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnæ.
ART OF POETRY, ver. 372.

But God and man, and letter'd post denies,
That poets ever are of middling size.
FRANCIS'S HORACE.

[b] Notwithstanding all that is said, in this Dialogue, of Saleius
Bassus, it does not appear, in the judgement of Quintilian, that he
was a poet whose fame could extend itself to the distant provinces.
Perfection in the kind is necessary.