e their compositions in public; a practice which seems
to have been carried even to a ridiculous excess.--Such was now the rage
for poetical composition in the Roman capital, that Horace describes it
in the following terms:

Mutavit mentem populus levis, et calet uno
Scribendi studio: pueri patresque severi
Fronde comas vincti coenant, et carmina dictant.--Epist. ii. 1.
* * * * * *

Now the light people bend to other aims;
A lust of scribbling every breast inflames;
Our youth, our senators, with bays are crowned,
And rhymes eternal as our feasts go round.

(190) Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim.--Hor. Epeat. ii. 1.

But every desperate blockhead dares to write,
Verse is the trade of every living wight.--Francis.

The thirst of fame above mentioned, was a powerful incentive, and is
avowed both by Virgil and Horace. The former, in the third book of his
Georgics, announces a resolution of rendering himself celebrated, if
possible.

--------tentanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora.

I, too, will strive o'er earth my flight to raise,
And wing'd by victory, catch the gale of praise.--Sotheby.

And Horace, in the conclusion of his first Ode, expresses himself in
terms which indicate a similar purpose.

Quad si me lyricis vatibis inseres,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.

But if you rank me with the choir,
Who tuned with art the Grecian lyre;
Swift to the noblest heights of fame,
Shall rise thy poet's deathless name.--Francis.

Even Sallust, a historian, in his introduction to Catiline's Conspiracy,
scruples not to insinuate the same kind of ambition. Quo mihi rectius
videtur ingenii quam virium opibus gloriam quaerere; et quoniam vita
ipsa, qua fruimur, brevis est, memoriam nostri quam maxume longam
efficere. [283]

Another circumstance of great importance, towards the production of such
poetry as might live through every age, was the extreme attention which
the great poets of this period displayed, both in the composition, and
the polishing of their works. Virgil, when employed upon the Georgics,
usually wrote in the morning, and applied much of the subsequent part of
the day to correction and improvement. He compared himself to a bear,
that licks her cub into form. If this was his regular practice in the
G