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And what should a man do? Seek some grandee, take him for patron, and like the obscure creeper clasping a tree-trunk, and licking the bark of that which props it up, attain to height by craft instead of strength? No, I thank you.
Dedicate, as they all do, poems to financiers? Wear motley in the humble hope of seeing the lips of a minister distend for once in a smile not ominous of ill? -No, I thank you. Eat every day a toad? Be threadbare at the belly with grovelling? Have his skin dirty soonest at the knees?
Practice feats of dorsal elasticity? No, I thank you. With one hand stroke the goat while with the other he waters the
cabbage? Make gifts of senna that countergifts of rhubarb may accrue, and indefatigably swing his censer in some beard? No, I thank you. Push himself from lap to lap, become a little great man in a great little circle, propel his ship with madrigals for oars and in his sails the sighs of the
elderly ladies? No, I thank you. Get the good editor Sercy to print his verses at proper expense? No, I thank you. Con
trive to be nominated Pope in conclaves held by imbeciles in wineshops? No, I thank you. Work to construct a name upon the basis of a sonnet, instead of constructing other sonnets? No, I thank you. Discover talent in tyros, and in them alone? Stand in terror of what gazettes may please
to say, and say to himself, “At whatever cost, may I figure in the Paris Mercury!” No, I thank you. Calculate, cringe, peak, prefer making a call to a poem, petition, solicit, apply? No, I thank you! No, I thank you! No, I thank you!