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of so unhonoured a name. If you call it mechanical because it is by manual work and that the hand represents the conception of the imagination, you writers put down with the pen the con- ceptions of your mind. And if you say that it is mechanical because it is done for money, who is more guilty of this error—if error it can be called—than you? If you lecture in the schools, do you not go to whomsoever rewards you most? Do you perform any work without some pay? Although I do not say this to blame such opinions, because all labour expects its reward; and if a poet were to say: "I will devise with my fancy a work which shall be pregnant with meaning," the painter can do the same, as Apelles did when he painted The Calumny.

20.

On the birthday of King Matthias, a poet brought him a work made in praise of the royal birthday for the benefit of the world, and a painter presented him with a portrait of his lady-love. The king immediately shut the book of the poet and turned to the picture, and remained gazing on it with profoundadmiration.Then the poet, greatly slighted, said: "O king, read, read, and thou wilt hear something of far greater substance than a dumb picture!" Then the king, hearing himself blamed for contemplating a mute object, said: " O poet, be silent, thou knowest not what thou

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