All this indeed may be compassed, but we ourselves are the cause of our
not having time enough. How small a portion of it do we allot to our
studies! A good part of it is spent in frivolous compliments and paying
and returning visits, a good part of it is taken up in the telling of
idle stories, a good part at the public spectacles, and a good part in
the pleasures of the table. Add to these our great variety of
amusements, and that extravagant indulgence we bestow upon our bodies.
One time we must go on a course of travels, another time we wish
recreation amidst the pleasures of rural life, and another time we are
full of painful solicitude regarding the state of our fortune,
calculating and balancing our loss and gain; and together with these,
how often do we give ourselves up to the intoxication of wine, and in
what a multiplicity of voluptuousness does our profligate mind suffer
itself to be immersed? Should there be an interval for study amidst
these avocations, can it be said to be proper? But were we to devote all
this idle or ill-spent time to study, should we not find life long
enough and time more than enough for becoming learned? This is evident
by only computing the time of the day, besides the advantages of the
night, of which a good part is more than sufficient for sleep. But we
now preposterously compute not the years we have studied, but the years
we have lived. Tho geometricians and grammarians, and the professors of
other arts, spent all their lives, however long, in treating and
discussing their respective arts, does it thence follow that we must
have as many lives as there are things to be learned? But they did not
extend the learning of them to old age, being content with learning them
only, and they spent so many years not so much in their study as in
their practise.
Now, tho one should despair of reaching to the height of perfection, a
groundless hope even in a person of genius, health, talent, and with
masters to assist him; yet it is noble, as Cicero says, to have a place
in the second, or third, rank. He who can not rival the glory of
Achilles in military exploits, shall not therefore have a mean opinion
of the praise due to Ajax, or Diomedes, and he who can not approach
Homer, need not despise the fame of Tyrteus. If men were to yield to the
thought of imagining none capable of exceeding such eminent persons as
went before them, then they even who are deemed excellent would not have
been so. Vergil would not have excelled Lucretius and Macer; nor Cicero,
Crassus and Hortensius; and no one for the future would pretend to any
advantage over his predecessor.
Tho the hope of surpassing these great men be but faint, yet it is an
honor to follow them. Have Pollio and Messala, who began to appear at
the bar when Cicero was already possest of the empire of eloquence,
acquired little dignity in their life-time, and left but a small degree
of glory for the remembrance of posterity? True it is that arts brought
to perfection would deserve very ill of human affairs if afterward they
could not at least be kept to the same standard.