The Charlatan by Jean de La Fontaine — Read

The world has never lack'd its charlatans, / More than themselves have lack'd their plans. / One sees them on the stage at tricks / Which mock the claims of sullen Styx. / What talents in the streets they post! / One of them used to boast / Such mastership of eloquence / That he could make the greatest dunce / Another Tully Cicero / In all the arts that lawyers know. / 'Ay, sirs, a dunce, a country clown, / The greatest blockhead of your town, -- / Nay more, an animal, an ass, -- / The stupidest that nibbles grass, -- / Needs only through my course to pass, / And he shall wear the gown / With credit, honour, and renown. ' / The prince heard of it, call'd the man, thus spake: / 'My stable holds a steed / Of the Arcadian breed,[1] / Of which an orator I wish to make. ' / 'Well, sire, you can,' / Replied our man. / At once his majesty / Paid the tuition fee. / Ten years must roll, and then the learned ass / Should his examination pass, / According to the rules / Adopted in the schools; / If not, his teacher was to tread the air, / With halter'd neck, above the public square, -- / His rhetoric bound on his back, / And on his head the ears of jack. / A courtier told the rhetorician, / With bows and terms polite, / He would not miss the sight / Of that last pendent exhibition; / For that his grace and dignity / Would well become such high degree; / And, on the point of being hung, / He would bethink him of his tongue, / And show the glory of his art, -- / The power to melt the hardest heart, -- / And wage a war with time / By periods sublime -- / A pattern speech for orators thus leaving, / Whose work is vulgarly call'd thieving. / 'Ah! ' was the charlatan's reply, / 'Ere that, the king, the ass, or I, / Shall, one or other of us, die. ' / And reason good had he; / We count on life most foolishly, / Though hale and hearty we may be. / In each ten years, death cuts down one in three.[2]

[1]: _Steed of the Arcadian breed_. -- An ass, as in Fable XVII, Book VIII.