from the
wreck seconded this opinion of the people: to which also the oracle that
foretold his death seemed to subscribe; which was, "that Dionysius should
be near his end, when he should have overcome those who were better than
himself," which he interpreted of the Carthaginians, who surpassed him in
power; and having war with them, often declined the victory, not to incur
the sense of this prediction; but he understood it ill; for the god
indicated the time of the advantage, that by favour and injustice he
obtained at Athens over the tragic poets, better than himself, having
caused his own play called the Leneians to be acted in emulation;
presently after which victory he died, and partly of the excessive joy he
conceived at the success.

[Diodorus Siculus, xv. 7.--The play, however, was called the
"Ransom of Hector." It was the games at which it was acted that
were called Leneian; they were one of the four Dionysiac festivals.]

What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but in
comparison of other worse things, that I see well enough received. I
envy the happiness of those who can please and hug themselves in what
they do; for 'tis an easy thing to be so pleased, because a man extracts
that pleasure from himself, especially if he be constant in his
self-conceit. I know a poet, against whom the intelligent and the
ignorant, abroad and at home, both heaven and earth exclaim that he has
but very little notion of it; and yet, for all that, he has never a whit
the worse opinion of himself; but is always falling upon some new piece,
always contriving some new invention, and still persists in his opinion,
by so much the more obstinately, as it only concerns him to maintain it.

My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as I review them,
they disgust me:

"Cum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,
Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini."

["When I reperuse, I blush at what I have written; I ever see one
passage after another that I, the author, being the judge, consider
should be erased."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 5, 15.]

I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed image which
presents me as in a dream with a better form than that I have made use
of; but I cannot catch it nor fit it to my purpose; and even that idea is
but of the meaner sort. Hence I conclude that the productions of those
great and rich souls of former