Let sailors learn astronomy, merchants’ agents study arithmetic, surveyors acquire geometry, spectacle-makers optics, wanderers geography, and town clerks rhetoric. What should a man do with a spade when he has no ground to dig, or they with learning when they have no use for it? That is how they reason, unashamed to let sailors, apprentices and the lowliest servants be better qualified than themselves. In former times, kings, princes and emperors were the foremost scholars, accomplished in every field.

Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and wrote his own Commentaries:

Even in the midst of battles he always found time For the regions of the stars and sky, and the powers above.

Antonius, Hadrian, Nero, Severus, Julian and others, the Emperor Michael and Isaac were so devoted to their studies that no lowly fellow would have taken so much trouble. Orion, Perseus, Alfonso and Ptolemy were famous astronomers; Sabor, Mithridates and Lysimachus admired physicians: Plato’s kings, all of them. Evax, that Arabian prince, was an expert in precious stones and an accomplished philosopher. The kings of Egypt in ancient times were priests, chosen from among them: “At once king of men and priest of Phoebus.”

But those heroic times are past. In this degenerate age the Muses are banished “to squalid little huts”, to people of lower station, and confined almost entirely to universities. In those days scholars were greatly loved, honoured and esteemed: old Ennius by Scipio Africanus, Virgil by Augustus, Horace by Maecenas. They were companions of princes, dear to them, as Anacreon was to Polycrates and Philoxenus to Dionysius, and richly rewarded.

Alexander sent the philosopher Xenocrates fifty talents because he was poor. “Men distinguished by their knowledge of affairs or their learning were once admitted to kings’ tables,” as Philostratus relates of Hadrian and Lampridius of Alexander Severus. Famous scholars came to these princes’ courts “as to a Lyceum”—as to a university—and were admitted to their tables, “as though reclining at the banquets of the gods”.

Archelaus, the Macedonian king, was reluctant to dine without Euripides. Among his other kindnesses, one evening at supper he drank to him and gave him a golden cup for his pains, “delighted by the poet’s charming conversation”. And it was fitting that this should be so, because, as Plato says well in his Protagoras, a good philosopher excels other men as much as a great king excels the common people of his country.

And again, “because they lack nothing and are least accustomed to want, they alone can rescue the disciplines they profess from contempt”. They had no need to beg so abjectly, as scholars in our times are compelled to complain of poverty or cringe before a rich boor for a meal. They could defend themselves and the arts they professed. Now they would do so, but cannot.

For some of these patrons take it as an axiom that keeping scholars poor will make them study. They must be put on a strict diet like horses before a race, not pampered: “They want them fed, not fattened, lest the little flame of the nobler mind be extinguished.” A fat bird will not sing; a fat dog cannot hunt. And so, because scholars are kept down in this way, some lack the means, others the will, and all lack encouragement, being almost abandoned and generally despised. “Let there be patrons like Maecenas, Flaccus, and Virgils will not be lacking” is an old saying, and it remains true.

Yet often—I cannot deny it—the chief fault lies in ourselves. Our university scholars too frequently go wrong by neglecting patrons, as Erasmus justly reproaches them, or by choosing them badly: “We neglect those who offer themselves, or embrace those who are unsuitable.” Or, if we obtain a good one, “we do not take pains to nourish his favour through services in return”: we do not attend and follow him as we should.

“The same thing happened to me as a young man,” says Erasmus, acknowledging his fault, “and I was very much to blame.” I too may say that I have offended in this, as perhaps many others have. We did not “respond to the favours of great men who had begun to embrace us”, or apply ourselves as readily as we should. Idleness, love of liberty—“an excessive love of liberty made me struggle long with treacherous friends”, as he confesses, “and stubborn poverty”—bashfulness, melancholy and timidity make many of us too hesitant and negligent.

Some therefore err at one extreme, but too many at the other. For the most part we are too forward, too importunate, too ambitious, too shameless. We commonly complain that “Maecenases are lacking”, that we lack encouragement and means, when the real defect is our own lack of merit, our inadequacy. Did Maecenas notice Horace or Virgil before they had proved themselves? And did Bavius and Mevius have any patrons?

“Let them give an excellent proof of themselves,” says Erasmus. Let them first show themselves worthy, sufficiently qualified in learning and conduct, before they presume to intrude shamelessly and thrust themselves upon great men, as too many do. They usually ingratiate themselves through such abject flattery, such parasitical coaxing, such extravagant praise that it is shameful to hear and see. “Excessive praises win resentment rather than praise.” Empty commendations detract from the truth, and in the end we think “no better of the person praised, and worse of the person praising”—ill of both, the praiser and the praised.

So we are at fault; but the chief fault lies in their harshness, in the failure of patrons. How beloved and respected Plato once was by Dionysius! How dear Aristotle was to Alexander, Demaratus to Philip, Solon to Croesus, Anaxarchus and Trebatius to Augustus, Cassius to Vespasian, Plutarch to Trajan, Seneca to Nero, Simonides to Hieron! How honoured!

But these things were long ago; now, laid away, They grow old in quiet.

Those days are gone: