Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/88

Is not more wise, but wears his pigtail too.
One class of fools sees reason for alarm
In trivial matters, innocent of harm:
Stroll in the open plain, you'll hear them talk
Of fires, rocks, torrents, that obstruct their walk:
Another, unlike these, but not more sane,
Takes fires and torrents for the open plain:
Let mother, sister, father, wife combined
Cry 'There's a pitfall! there's a rock! pray mind!'
They'll hear no more than drunken Fufius, he
Who slept the part of queen Ilione,
While Catienus, shouting in his ear,
Roared like a Stentor, 'Hearken, mother dear!'
"Well, now, I'll prove the mass of humankind
Have judgments just as jaundiced, just as blind.
That Damasippus shows himself insane
By buying ancient statues, all think plain:
But he that lends him money, is he free
From the same charge? 'O, surely.' Let us see.
I bid you take a sum you won't return:
You take it: is this madness, I would learn?
Were it not greater madness to renounce
The prey that Mercury puts within your pounce?
Secure him with ten bonds; a hundred; nay,
Clap on a thousand; still he'll slip away,
This Protean scoundrel: drag him into court,
You'll only find yourself the more his sport:
He'll laugh till scarce you'd think his jaws his own,
And turn to boar or bird, to tree or stone.
If prudence in affairs denotes men sane