Now for Poets, Rhetoricians, Historians, Philosophers, Mathematicians, Sophisters, &c. they are like Grashoppers, sing they must in Summer, and pine in the Winter, for there is no preferment for them. Even so they were at first, if you will believe that pleasant Tale of Socrates, which he told fair Phædrus under a Plane-tree, at the banks of the river Ilissus; about noon when it was hot, and the Grashoppers made a noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him a Tale, how Grashoppers were once Scholars, Musitians, Poets, &c. before the Muses were born, and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause were turned by Iupiter into Grashoppers.

And may be turned again, In Tythoni Cicadas, aut Lyciorum ranas, for any reward I see they are like to have: or else in the mean time, I would they could live, as they did, without any viaticum, like so many Manucodiatæ those Indian Birds of Paradise, as we commonly call them; those I mean that live with the Air, and dew of Heaven, and need other food:

for being as they are, their Rhetorick onely serves them, to curse their bad fortunes, and many of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from Grashoppers they turn Humble-Bees and Wasps, plain Parasites, and make the Muses, Mules, to satisfie their hunger starved panches, and get a meals meat.

To say truth, ’tis the common fortune of most Scholars, to be servile and poor, to complain pittifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless Patrons, as Cardan doth, as Xilander, and many others: And which is too common in those Dedicatory Epistles, for hope of gain, to lye, flatter, and with hyperbolical elogiums and commendations, to magnifie and extol an illiterate unworthy Idiot, for his excellent vertues, whom they should rather, as Machiavel observes, vilifie, and rail at down right for his most notorious villanies and vices.

So they prostitute themselves as Fidlers, or mercenary Tradesmen, to serve great mens turns for a small reward. They are like Indians, they have store of gold, but know not the worth of it: for I am of Synesius opinion, King Hieron got more by Simonides acquaintance, then Simonides did by his: they have their best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when they have done well, their honor and immortality from us; we are the living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpetors of their fames: what was Achilles without Homer? Alexander without Arrian and Curtius? who had known the Cæsars, but for Suetonius and Dion?

Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona Multi: sed omnes illachrymabiles Urgentur, ignotique longâ Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.

they are more beholden to Scholars, then Scholars to them; but they under-value themselves, and so by those great men are kept down. Let them have that Encyclopædian, all the learning in the world; they must keep it to themselves, live in base esteem, and starve, except they will submit, as Budæus well hath it, so many good parts, so many ensigns of Arts, vertues, be slavishly obnoxius to some illiterate Potentate, and live under his insolent Worship, or Honor, like Parasites, Qui tanquam mures alienum panem comedunt. For to say truth, artes hæ non sunt Lucrativæ, as Guido Bonat that great Astrologer could fore-see, they be not gainful Arts these, sed esurientes & famelicæ, but poor and hungry.

Dat Galenus opes, dat Iustinianus honores, Sed genus & species cogitur ire pedes:

The rich Physitian, honor’d Lawyers ride, Whil’st the poor Scholar foots it by their side.

Poverty is the Muses Patrimony, and as that Poetical divinity teacheth us, when Iupiters daughters were each of them married to the Gods, the Muses alone were left solitary, Helicon forsaken of all Suters, and I believe it was, because they had no portion.

Calliope longum cælebs cur vixit in ævum? Nempe nihil dotis, quod numeraret, erat.

Why did Calliope live so long a maid? Because she had no dowry to be paid.

Ever since all their followers are poor, forsaken and left unto themselves. In so much, that as Petronius argues, you shall likely know them by their clothes. There came, saith he, by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a Scholar, whom commonly rich men hate: I asked him what he was, he answered; a Poet; I demanded again why he was so ragged, he told me this kinde of learning never made any man rich.

Qui Pelago credit, magno se fænore tollit, Qui pugnas & rostra petit, præcingitur auro: Vilis adulator picto jacet ebrius ostro, Sola pruinosis horret facundia pannis.

A Marchants gain is great that goes to Sea, A Souldier embossed all in gold: A Flatterer lyes fox’d in brave array, A Scholar onely ragged to behold.

All which our ordinary Students, right well perceiving in the Universities, how unprofitable these Poeticall, Mathematical, and Philosophicall Studies are, how little respected, how few Patrons; apply themselves in all haste to those three commodious Professions of Law, Physick, and Divinity, sharing themselves between them, rejecting these Arts in the mean time, History, Philosophy, Philology, or lightly passing them over, as pleasant toyes fitting onely table talk, and to furnish them with discourse.