Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/153

Rh would consider it to do his own dancing, it was desirable to have it done for him. A swarm of small sciolists, and worse than mediocre poets, and littérateurs of all varieties, rose to meet the demand, and sought places at great men's tables. Conscious that their services were scarcely worth the wages, they learnt to be not too fastidious as to the circumstances under which they were paid: while the patron, feeling that after all he had not got the genuine article, was not always careful to make the payment in the most gracious manner.

With this in his mind, Lucian writes his bitter essay "," cast in the form of a letter to a friend who is supposed to be under some temptation to adopt that line of life. He draws a vivid picture of the humiliations and indignities to which the Greek scholar is likely to be subjected who enters the family of a wealthy nobleman at Rome, in the capacity either of tutor to his children or humble literary companion to the master himself. They are curiously similar in character to those which, if we trust our own satirists, existed in English society a century ago. First, there is the difficulty of securing a proper introduction to the patron. The candidate must be early at the great man's door, and wait his leisure, and fee the porter well; must dress more expensively than his purse can well afford, to make a good figure in his eyes; must dance attendance at his levee perhaps for days, and at last, when he suddenly condescends to notice and address his humble servant, nervousness and embarrassment will so overcome the