return me any answer, all running away from me as if I had been
seized with some contagiousdistemper. I now found by

experience, that as none can be so civil, so none can be ruder
than a courtier.

"A few moments after the king's retiring I was left alone in the
room to consider what I should do or whither I should turn

myself. My reception in the city promised itself to be equal at
least with what I found at court. However, there was my home,

and thither it was necessary I should retreat for the present.
"But, indeed, bad as I apprehended my treatment in the city would

be, it exceeded my expectation. I rode home on an ambling pad
through crowds who expressed every kind of disregard and

contempt; pelting me not only with the most abusive language, but
with dirt. However, with much difficulty I arrived at last at my

own house, with my bones whole, but covered over with filth.
"When I was got within my doors, and had shut them against the

mob, who had pretty well vented their spleen, and seemed now
contented to retire, my wife, whom I found crying over her

children, and from whom I had hoped some comfort in my
afflictions, fell upon me in the most outrageous manner. She

asked me why I would venture on such a step, without consulting
her; she said her advice might have been civilly asked, if I was

resolved not to have been guided by it. That, whatever opinion I
might have conceived of her understanding, the rest of the world

thought better of it. That I had never failed when I had asked
her counsel, nor ever succeeded without it;--with much more of

the same kind, too tedious to mention; concluding that it was a
monstrous behavior to desert my party and come over to the court.

An abuse which I took worse than all the rest, as she had been
constantly for several years assiduous in railing at the

opposition, in siding with the court-party, and begging me to
come over to it; and especially after my mentioning the offer of

knighthood to her, since which time she had continually
interrupted my repose with dinning in my ears the folly of

refusing honors and of adhering to a party and to principles by
which I was certain of procuring no advantage to myself and my

family.
"I had now entirely lost my trade, so that I had not the least

temptation to stay longer in a city where I was certain of
receiving daily affronts and rebukes. I therefore made up my

affairs with the utmostexpedition, and, scraping together all I
could, retired into the country, where I spent the remainder of

my days in universalcontempt, being shunned by everybody,
perpetually abused by my wife, and not much respected by my

children.
"Minos told me, though I had been a very vile fellow, he thought

my sufferings made some atonement, and so bid me take the other
trial."

CHAPTER XXIV
Julian recounts what happened to him while he was a poet.

"Rome was now the seat of my nativity, where I was born of a
family more remarkable for honor than riches. I was intended for

the church, and had a pretty good education; but my father dying
while I was young, and leaving me nothing, for he had wasted his

whole patrimony, I was forced to enter myself in the order of
mendicants.

"When I was at school I had a knack of rhyming, which I unhappily
mistook for genius, and indulged to my cost; for my verses drew

on me only ridicule, and I was in contempt called the poet.
"This humor pursued me through my life. My first composition

after I left school was a panegyric on pope Alexander IV, who
then pretended a project of dethroning the king of Sicily. On

this subject I composed a poem of about fifteen thousand lines,
which with much difficulty I got to be presented to his holiness,

of whom I expected great preferment as my reward; but I was
cruelly disappointed: for when I had waited a year, without

hearing any of the commendation" target="_blank" title="n.称赞，表扬；推荐">commendations I had flattered myself with
receiving, and being now able to contain no longer, I applied to

a Jesuit who was my relation, and had the pope's ear, to know
what his holiness's opinion was of my work: he coldly answered

me that he was at that time busied in concerns of too much
importance to attend the reading of poems.

"However dissatisfied I might be, and really was, with this
reception, and however angry I was with the pope? for whose

understanding I entertained an immoderate contempt, I was not yet
discouraged from a second attempt. Accordingly, I soon after

produced another work, entitled, The Trojan Horse. This was an
allegorical work, in which the church was introduced into the

world in the same manner as that machine had been into Troy. The
priests were the soldiers in its belly, and the heathen

superstition the city to be destroyed by them. This poem was
written in Latin. I remember some of the lines:--

Mundanos scandit fatalis machina muros,
Farta sacerdotum turmis: exinde per alvum

Visi exire omnes, maguo cum murmure olentes.
Non aliter quam cum llumanis furibundus ab antris

It sonus et nares simul aura invadit hiantes.
Mille scatent et mille alii; trepidare timore

Ethnica gens coepit: falsi per inane volantes
Effugere Dei--Desertaque templa relinquunt.

Jam magnum crepitavit equus, mox orbis et alti
Ingemuere poli: tunc tu pater, ultimus omnium

Maxime Alexander, ventrem maturus equinum
Deseris, heu proles meliori digne parente."

I believe Julian, had I not stopped him, would have gone through
the whole poem (for, as I observed in most of the characters he

related, the affections he had enjoyed while he personated them
on earth still made some impression on him); but I begged him to

omit the sequel of the poem, and proceed with his history. He
then recollected himself, and, smiling at the observation which

by intuition he perceived I had made, continued his narration as
follows:--

"I confess to you," says he, "that the delight in repeating our
own works is so predominant in a poet, that I find nothing can

totally root it out of the soul. Happy would it be for those
persons if their hearers could be delighted in the same manner:

but alas! hence that ingens solitudo complained of by Horace:
for the vanity of mankind is so much greedier and more general

than their avarice, that no beggar is so ill received by them as
he who solicits their praise.

"This I sufficientlyexperienced in the character of a poet; for
my company was shunned (I believe on this account chiefly) by my

whole house: nay, there were few who would submit to hearing me
read my poetry, even at the price of sharing in my provisions.

The only person who gave me audience was a brother poet; he
indeed fed me with commendation" target="_blank" title="n.称赞，表扬；推荐">commendation very liberally: but, as I was

forced to hear and commend in my turn, I perhaps bought his
attention dear enough.

"Well, sir, if my expectations of the reward I hoped from my
first poem had balked me, I had now still greater reason to

complain; for, instead of being preferred or commended for the
second, I was enjoined a very severepenance by my superior, for

ludicrously comparing the pope to a f--t. My poetry was now the
jest of every company, except some few who spoke of it with

detestation; and I found that, instead of recommending me to
preferment, it had effectually barred me from all probability of

attaining it.
"These discouragements had now induced me to lay down my pen and

write no more. But, as Juvenal says,
--Si discedas, Laqueo tenet ambitiosi

Consuetudo mali.
I was an example of the truth of this assertion, for I soon

betook myself again to my muse. Indeed, a poet hath the same
happiness with a man who is dotingly fond of an ugly woman. The

one enjoys his muse, and the other his mistress, with a pleasure
very little abated by the esteem of the world, and only

undervalues their taste for not corresponding with his own.