Cornelius Gallus borrowed it to read.

OVI. SEN. Cornelius Gallus? There's another gallant, too, hath drunk of the same poison: and Tibullus, and Propertius. But these are gentlemen of means, and revenue now. Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition: which I protest shall be bare indeed, if thou forsake not these unprofitable by-courses, and that timely too. Name me a professed poet that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Aye, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose wormeaten statue must not be spewed against but with hallowed lips, and grovelling adoration, what was he? What was he?

TUC. Marry, I'll tell thee, old swaggerer; he was a poor, blind, rhyming rascal, that lived obscurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep, the whoreson hungry beggar.

OVI. SEN. He says well: nay, I know this nettles you now, but answer me; is't not true? You'll tell me his name shall live; and that, now being dead, his works have eternized him, and made him divine. But could this divinity feed him, while he lived? Could his name feast him?

TUC. Or purchase him a senator's revenue? Could it?

OVI. SEN. Aye, or give him place in the commonwealth? Worship, or attendants? Make him be carried in his litter?

TUC. Thou speakest sentences, old Bias.

LUP. All this the law will do, young sir, if you'll follow it.

OVI. SEN. If he be mine, he shall follow and observe what I will apt him to, or I profess here openly and utterly to disclaim in him.

OVI. JUN.

Sir, let me crave you will forgo these moods;

I will be anything, or study anything:

I'll prove the unfashioned body of the law

Pure elegance, and make her ruggedest strains

Run smoothly as Propertius' elegies.

OVI. SEN. Propertius' elegies? Good!

LUP. Nay, you take him too quickly, Marcus.

OVI. SEN. Why, he cannot speak, he cannot think out of poetry, he is bewitched with it.

LUP. Come, do not misprize him.

OVI. SEN. Misprize? Aye, marry, I would have him use some such words now: they have some touch, some taste of the law. He should make himself a style out of these, and let his Propertius' elegies go by.

LUP. Indeed, young Publius, he that will now hit the mark must shoot thorough the law, we have no other planet reigns, and in that sphere, you may sit and sing with angels. Why, the law makes a man happy, without respecting any other merit: a simple scholar, or none at all may be a lawyer.

TUC.