But I do say he flows muddily, often carrying What you'd rather remove than let remain. Well, As a scholar do you never criticise Homer? Wouldn't dear Lucilius mend Accius' tragedies? Doesn't he mock Ennius' less dignified verses, Though he considers himself no greater than them? What forbids us readers of Lucilius' writings To ask whether it was a harshness in himself, Or in his times, denied more finish to his verse, A smoother flow, he who's content merely to stuff His thoughts into six feet, cheerfully penning two hundred Lines before dinner, and the same after? So Etruscan Ca**ius did too, whose own nature was fiercer Than a raging river, his shelves of books, so it's said, Forming his funeral pyre. Let's agree, I admit Lucilius was pleasant and witty, more polished Than a maker of rough forms the Greeks never touched And than the crowd of older poets: but he, had he Happened to be destined to live in our age, he too Would have rubbed away, cutting out whatever was Less than perfect, scratching his head as he made His verses, and often biting his nails to the quick.