Now, because they are commonly subject to such dangers and disadvantages as loss of judgement, madness, simplicity, and so on, Johannes Vossius would have good scholars richly rewarded and held in exceptional esteem above other men. Those who risk themselves and shorten their lives for the public good should enjoy greater privileges than the rest.

But nowadays our patrons of learning are so far from respecting the Muses and giving scholars the honour or reward they deserve—and which the generous privileges granted by many noble princes entitle them to—that, after all their labour at the universities, cost and expense, tedious hours, demanding tasks, weary days, dangers and risks, they end by being rejected and despised. Meanwhile they are denied all the pleasures other men enjoy, shut up like hawks all their lives. If they manage to struggle through these hardships, their greatest misery still awaits them: they are left to fend for themselves, exposed to want, poverty and beggary. Their constant companions are:

Pale diseases, grief, cares and toil, And fear, hunger that counsels evil, and squalid poverty: Shapes terrible to see.

Grief, toil, care, pale sickness, miseries, Fear, filthy poverty, hunger that cries, Terrible monsters for the eyes to see.

If nothing else troubled them, the thought of this alone would be enough to make them all melancholic. In most other trades and professions, some seven years of apprenticeship give people the skill to support themselves. A merchant risks his goods at sea, and though the risk is great, if one ship out of four returns he will probably recover his costs.

A farmer’s profits are almost certain: “Jupiter himself cannot harm them”—Cato’s exaggeration, and he was a great husbandman himself. Only scholars, it seems to me, face the greatest uncertainty, receive no respect, and are exposed to every accident and risk. First, not one in many becomes a scholar; not everyone has the ability or is teachable: “Not every piece of wood can be made into a Mercury.”

We can appoint mayors and officials every year, but cannot make scholars. Kings can invest knights and barons, as the Emperor Sigismund admitted; universities can confer degrees; and “anyone from the crowd can become what you are.” But neither he nor they, nor all the world together, can bestow learning or create philosophers, masters of the arts, orators and poets.

We can readily say, as Seneca well observes, “What a good man! What a rich man!” We can point to a rich man, a good man, a fortunate man, a handsome man, “expensively dressed, with curled hair, sweetly scented.” But “this praise costs a great expenditure of time: ‘What a man of learning!’” Finding a learned man is not so easy. Learning is not quickly acquired. People may be willing to work, adequately instructed for the purpose, and generously supported by their patrons and parents, yet few can attain it.

Or, if they are teachable, their will does not always match their intelligence. They can understand but will not work. They are led astray by bad companions, “or stumble into a girl’s arms, or into the wine cup,” and so spend their time to the grief of their friends and their own ruin.

Or suppose they are studious, industrious, mature in judgement and perhaps well endowed with ability: how many diseases of body and mind must they then encounter? No labour in the world compares with study. Their constitution may be unable to bear it; striving to excel and know everything, they lose health, wealth, reason, life and all.

Yet let him escape all these hazards by good fortune, “with bowels of bronze,” with a body of brass. Suppose he is now fully accomplished and mature, has benefited from his studies and taken his degrees to general applause. After so much expense, he is ready for advancement—but where will he find it? After twenty years at the university, he is as far from finding it as on the day he first arrived.

What course can he take, now that he is qualified and ready? The most readily available and easiest, which employs many, is teaching a school or becoming a lecturer or curate. For that he will receive a falconer’s wages: ten pounds a year and his food, or some small stipend, for as long as he can please his patron or the parish. If they cease to approve of him—as they usually do after a year or two, as fickle as those who cried “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify him” the next—he must find a new master, like a serving man. If they remain satisfied, what is his reward?

This too awaits you: while you teach boys their first lessons, White-haired old age will overtake you in the farthest streets.

Like a donkey, he wears out his life for fodder, and all he can show is a worn-down rod and, as Haedus says, “a threadbare and tattered gown”—an old torn gown, the badge of his misfortune. His labour earns him nothing but more trouble, a pittance to keep him until he is decrepit, and that is all. “A schoolmaster is not fortunate,” and so on.

If he is a chaplain serving at a gentleman’s table, as happened to Euphormio, after some seven years’ service he may perhaps obtain a living with only half its income, or eventually a small rectory accompanied by marriage to the woman in charge of the maids, a poor female relative, or a chambermaid whose sexual reputation has been damaged—to have and to hold for the rest of his life. But if in the meantime he offends his good patron or displeases the lady of the house:

He will be dragged by the foot like Cacus struck down by Hercules, And thrown outside if he ever dares To open his mouth.

As Hercules treated Cacus, he will be dragged out of doors by the heels: away with him! If he directs his efforts to other studies, intending to become a private secretary to a nobleman or to hold such a post with an ambassador, he will find that these men rise through the ranks like apprentices, one beneath another. In many tradesmen’s shops, when the master dies the foreman usually steps into his place.