TO HIS BOOK.
Horace
_In vain he endeavors to retain his book, desirous of getting abroad;
tells it what trouble it is to undergo, and imparts some things to be
said of him to posterity._
You seem, my book, to look wistfully at Janus and Vertumnus; to the end
that you may be set out for sale, neatly polished by the pumice-stone of
the Sosii. You hate keys and seals, which are agreeable to a modest
[volume]; you grieve that you are shown but to a few, and extol public
places; though educated in another manner. Away with you, whither you
are so solicitous of going down: there will be no returning for you,
when you are once sent out. "Wretch that I am, what have I done? What
did I want?"--you will say: when any one gives you ill treatment, and
you know that you will be squeezed into small compass, as soon as the
eager reader is satiated. But, if the augur be not prejudiced by
resentment of your error, you shall be caressed at Rome [only] till your
youth be passed. When, thumbed by the hands of the vulgar, you begin to
grow dirty; either you shall in silence feed the grovelling book-worms,
or you shall make your escape to Utica, or shall be sent bound to
Ilerda. Your disregarded adviser shall then laugh [at you]: as he, who
in a passion pushed his refractory ass over the precipice. For who would
save [an ass] against his will? This too awaits you, that faltering
dotage shall seize on you, to teach boys their rudiments in the skirts
of the city. But when the abating warmth of the sun shall attract more
ears, you shall tell them, that I was the son of a freedman, and
extended my wings beyond my nest; so that, as much as you take away from
my family, you may add to my merit: that I was in favor with the first
men in the state, both in war and peace; of a short stature, gray
before my time, calculated for sustaining heat, prone to passion, yet so
as to be soon appeased. If any one should chance to inquire my age; let
him know that I had completed four times eleven Decembers, in the year
in which Lollius admitted Lepidus as his colleague.
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