so may you, after your damage, sell all your merchandise the
better: what folly (for, [it seems,] there are more kinds than one) do
you think I am infatuated with? For to myself I seem sound. What--when
mad Agave carries the amputated head of her unhappy son, does she then
seem mad to herself? I allow myself a fool (let me yield to the truth)
and a madman likewise: only declare this, with what distemper of mind
you think me afflicted. Hear, then: in the first place you build; that
is, though from top to bottom you are but of the two-foot size you
imitate the tall: and you, the same person, laugh at the spirit and
strut of Turbo in armor, too great for his [little] body: how are you
less ridiculous than him? What--is it fitting that, in every thing
Maecenas does, you, who are so very much unlike him and so much his
inferior, should vie with him? The young ones of a frog being in her
absence crushed by the foot of a calf, when one of them had made his
escape, he told his mother what a huge beast had dashed his brethren to
pieces. She began to ask, how big? Whether it were so great? puffing
herself up. Greater by half. What, so big? when she had swelled herself
more and more. If you should burst yourself, says he, you will not be
equal to it. This image bears no great dissimilitude to you. Now add
poems (that is, add oil to the fire), which if ever any man in his
senses made, why so do you. I do not mention your horrid rage. At
length, have done--your way of living beyond your fortune--confine
yourself to your own affairs, Damasippus--those thousand passions for
the fair, the young. Thou greater madman, at last, spare thy inferior.

* * * * *

SATIRE IV.

_He ridicules the absurdity of one Catius, who placed the summit of
human felicity in the culinary art_.

Whence, and whither, Catius? I have not time [to converse with you],
being desirous of impressing on my memory some new precepts; such as
excel Pythagoras, and him that was accused by Anytus, and the learned
Plato. I acknowledge my offense, since I have interrupted you at so
unlucky a juncture: but grant me your pardon, good sir, I beseech you.
If any thing should have slipped you now, you will presently recollect
it: whether this talent of yours be of nature, or of art, you are
amazing in both. Nay, but I was anxious, how I might retain all [these
precepts]; as being things of a delicate nature, and in a delicate
style. Tell