No More Learning

This year, he says, has produced poets in great
abundance. Scarce a day has passed in the month of April, without the
recital of a poem. But the greater part of the audience comes with
reluctance; they loiter in the lobbies, and there enter into idle
chat, occasionally desiring to know, whether the poet is in his
pulpit? has he begun? is his preface over? has he almost finished?
They condescended, at last, to enter the room; they looked round with
an air of indifference, and soon retired, some by stealth, and others
with open contempt. Hence the greater praise is due to those authors,
who do not suffer their genius to droop, but, on the contrary, amidst
the most discouraging circumstances, still persist to cultivate the
liberal arts. Pliny adds, that he himself attended all the public
readings, and, for that purpose, staid longer in the city than was
usual with him. Being, at length, released, he intended, in his rural
retreat, to finish a work of his own, but not to read it in public,
lest he should be thought to claim a return of the civility which he
had shewn to others. He was a bearer, and not a creditor. The favour
conferred, if redemanded, ceases to be a favour. _Magnum proventum
poetarum annus hic attulit. Toto mense Aprili nullus fere dies, quo
non recitaret aliquis. Tametsi ad audiendum pigre coitur.
Plerique in
stationibus sedent, tempusque audiendis fabulis conterunt, ac subinde
sibi nuntiari jubent, an jam recitator intraverit, an dixerit
præfationem, an ex magná parte evolverit librum? Tum demum, ac tune
quoque lentè, cunctanterque veniunt, nec tamen remanent, sed ante
finem recedunt; alii dissimulanter, ac furtim, alii, simpliciter, ac
liberè. Sed tanto magis laudandi probandique sunt, quos a scribendi
recitandique studio hæc auditorum vel desidia, vel superbia non
retardat. Equidem prope nemini defui: his ex causis longius, quam
destinaveram, tempus in urbe consumpsi. Possum jam repetere secessum,
et scribere aliquid, quod non recitem, ne videar, quorum
recitationibus affui, non auditor fuisse, sed creditor. Nam, ut in
cæteris rebus, ita in audiendi officio, perit gratia si reposcatur. _
Pliny, lib. i. ep. 13. Such was the state of literature under the
worst of the emperors. The Augustan age was over. In the reigns of
Tiberius and Caligula learning drooped, but in some degree revived
under the dull and stupid Claudius. Pliny, in the letter above cited,
says of that emperor, that, one day hearing a noise in his palace, he
enquired what was the cause, and, being informed that Nonianus was
reciting in public, went immediately to the place, and became one of
the audience. After that time letters met with no encouragement from
the great. Lord Shaftesbury says, he cannot but wonder how the Romans,
after the extinction of the _Cæsarean_ and _Claudian_ family, and a
short interval of princes raised and destroyed with much disorder and
public ruin, were able to regain their perishing dominion, and
retrieve their sinking state, by an after-race of wise and able
princes, successively adopted, and taken from a private state to rule
the empire of the world.