From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.
[Here and there, in the vast abyss, a swimmer is seen.]
There are amongst you, I do ingeniously confess, many well deserving patrons, and true patriots, of my knowledge, besides many hundreds which I never saw, no doubt, or heard of, pillars of our commonwealth, whose worth, bounty, learning, forwardness, true seal in religion, and good esteem of all scholars, ought to be consecrated to all posterity: but of your rank there are a debauched, corrupt, covetous, illiterate crew again, no better than stocks, mere cattle… There is no hope, no good to be done without money. If after long expectation, much expense, travel, earnest suit of ourselves and friends, we obtain a small benefice at last: our misery begins afresh, we are suddenly encountered with the flesh, world, and devil, with a new onset, we change a quiet life for an ocean of troubles… Honest men make the best of it, as often it falls out, from a polite and terse academic, he must turn rustic, rude, melancholize alone, learn to forget, or else, as many do become maltsters, graziers, chapmen, &c. (now banished from the academy, all commerce of the Muses, and confined to a county village, as Ovid was from Rome to Pontus), and daily converse with a company of idiots and clowns.
Ovid writes, from exile on the Black Sea:
ipse mihi-quid enim faciam? –
scriboque legoque, tutaque ivdicio
littera nostra suo est
[I write for myself –
What else can I do? –
and I read to myself,
and my writing is
secure in its own criticism]
OVID, Tristia IV
. . . . .