curse their bad fortunes," and many of
them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from grasshoppers they
turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses, mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat. To say truth,
'tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile and poor, to
complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless patrons,
as [2012]Cardan doth, as [2013]Xilander and many others: and which is too
common in those dedicatory epistles, for hope of gain, to lie, flatter, and
with hyperbolical eulogiums and commendations, to magnify and extol an
illiterate unworthy idiot, for his excellent virtues, whom they should
rather, as [2014]Machiavel observes, vilify, and rail at downright for his
most notorious villainies and vices. So they prostitute themselves as
fiddlers, or mercenary tradesmen, to serve great men's turns for a small
reward. They are like [2015]Indians, they have store of gold, but know not
the worth of it: for I am of Synesius's opinion, [2016]"King Hieron got
more by Simonides' acquaintance, than Simonides did by his;" they have
their best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and
when they have done well, their honour and immortality from us: we are the
living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fames: what was
Achilles without Homer? Alexander without Arian and Curtius? who had known
the Caesars, but for Suetonius and Dion?

[2017] "Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

"Before great Agamemnon reign'd,
Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave,
Whose huge ambition's now contain'd
In the small compass of a grave:"

"In endless night, they sleep, unwept, unknown,
No bard they had to make all time their own."

they are more beholden to scholars, than scholars to them; but they
undervalue themselves, and so by those great men are kept down. Let them
have that encyclopaedian, all the learning in the world; they must keep it
to themselves, [2018]"live in base esteem, and starve, except they will
submit," as Budaeus well hath it, "so many good parts, so many ensigns of
arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate potentate, and
live under his insolent worship, or honour, like parasites," _Qui tanquam
mures alienum panem comedunt_