The Anatomy of Melancholy

Great men owe more to scholars than scholars owe to them. But scholars undervalue themselves and so are kept down by those great men. Let them possess the whole circle of knowledge, all the learning in the world: they must keep it to themselves, live despised and starve, unless they submit all their abilities, all their distinctions in arts and virtues, as Budé well puts it, to servile dependence on some unlearned ruler. They must live beneath his insolent Worship or Honour like parasites “who eat another’s bread like mice.” For, in truth, as that great astrologer Guido Bonatti could foresee, “these arts are not profitable”: these are no money-making arts, “but starving and famished”—poor and hungry.

Galen gives wealth, Justinian gives honours, But genus and species are forced to go on foot.

The rich physician and honoured lawyers ride, While the poor scholar walks beside them.

Poverty is the Muses’ inheritance. As poetic theology teaches us, when Jupiter’s daughters were each married to the gods, the Muses alone were left unmarried, Helicon abandoned by every suitor. I believe the reason was that they had no dowries.

Why did Calliope live unmarried for so long? Because she had no dowry to count out.

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

Ever since, all their followers have been poor, abandoned and left to fend for themselves. So much so that, as Petronius argues, you will probably recognize them by their clothes. “A fellow happened to join me,” he says, “whose appearance was far from smart. That sign alone told me he was a scholar, one of those whom rich men commonly hate. I asked what he was; he answered, ‘A poet.’ I then asked why he was so ragged. He told me that this kind of learning had never made anyone rich.”

He who trusts the sea raises himself on great returns; He who seeks battles and the public platform is girded with gold. The worthless flatterer lies drunk in embroidered purple; Eloquence alone shivers in frost-covered rags.

A merchant earns great profits at sea; A soldier is covered in gold. A flatterer lies drunk in splendid clothes; Only a scholar is ragged to behold.

Our ordinary university students see all this very clearly: how unprofitable poetic, mathematical and philosophical studies are, how little respect they receive, how few patrons they have. They hasten into the three lucrative professions of law, medicine and divinity, dividing themselves among them. Meanwhile they reject these other arts—history, philosophy, philology—or pass lightly over them as amusing trifles fit only for table talk and material for conversation.