Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
1.10.3.
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
Cassius 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.