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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The relation of poet to patron is one which we today find rather difficult to understand. In our present society the theory, and to a considerable degree the practice, is that everyone has an equal opportunity and owes his position to his merits. It was not always so. The old way of doing things was by influence and interest and patronage. It was thought only right to do the best for your relations and friends and those who had done you some service, and those without wealth and power could only get on with the help of the wealthy and powerful. And as talent does not always go with wealth and power, men of talent such as writers often found themselves in a position of dependence. The invention of printing, the spread of literacy, and the establishment of a system of copyright, have now made it possible for a writer to be independent—dependent, that is, on the general public instead of on individuals. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no one would have had any difficulty in understanding Virgil's and Horace's relation to Maecenas.
1. There was also plenty of opportunity for the exercise of patronage in the church, but here it was learning rather than literature that was rewarded. The language of patronage still survives in the church; the incumbent of a parish is presented to it by the patron, and it is called, or can be called, a benefice—a beneficium or favour conferred by the patron. Similarly a lawyer, or other professional man, speaks of his clients, as if he was a Roman patronus doing a favour to his dependants without expecting a fee. The Oxford English Dictionary paradoxically defines ‘client’ as ‘employer’.
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