heretics and infidels, whose poison we always dread
above everything, and by whom it is well known that some of our parents
have been infected with pestiferous venom. In sooth, we who should be
treated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics
who should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the government
of subordinates, as though some supremely noble monarch should be
trodden under foot by rustic heels. Any seamster or cobbler or tailor
or artificer of any trade keeps us shut up in prison for the luxurious
and wanton pleasures of the clergy.

Now we would pursue a new kind of injury by which we suffer alike in
person and in fame, the dearest thing we have. Our purity of race is
diminished every day, while new authors' names are imposed upon us by
worthless compilers, translators, and transformers, and losing our
ancient nobility, while we are reborn in successive generations, we
become wholly degenerate; and thus against our will the name of some
wretched stepfather is affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of the
names of their true fathers. The verses of Virgil, while he was yet
living, were claimed by an impostor; and a certain Fidentinus
mendaciously usurped the works of Martial, whom Martial thus deservedly
rebuked:

"The book you read is, Fidentinus! mine,
Though read so badly, 't well may pass for thine!"

What marvel, then, if when our authors are dead clerical apes use us to
make broad their phylacteries, since even while they are alive they try
to seize us as soon as we are published? Ah! how often ye pretend that
we who are ancient are but lately born, and try to pass us off as sons
who are really fathers, calling us who have made you clerks the
production of your studies. Indeed, we derived our origin from Athens,
though we are now supposed to be from Rome; for Carmentis was always
the pilferer of Cadmus, and we who were but lately born in England,
will to-morrow be born again in Paris; and thence being carried to
Bologna, will obtain an Italian origin, based upon no affinity of
blood. Alas! how ye commit us to treacherous copyists to be written,
how corruptly ye read us and kill us by medication, while ye supposed
ye were correcting us with pious zeal. Oftentimes we have to endure
barbarous interpreters, and those who are ignorant of foreign idioms
presume to translate us from one language into another; and thus all
propriety of speech is lost and our sense