When we pass to the graceful graceless crowd of motes, or rather midges (for they have a very distinct bite), which composes [Sidenote: _Martial._] the works of Martial, we find, as has been said, very much the same general attitude towards styles in literature. But the expression is differentiated, not merely by the existence in the writer of a different moral complexion, but by the necessary conditions of his form. _They_ could discuss; _he_ can only glance. Further, the avowed purpose of amusement, of composing the verses of a very peculiar society, which animates the epigrams practically throughout, affects the result very considerably. Their author resembles both Persius and Juvenal in paying very elaborate attention to the outside of things, to the accidents of the literary business. We hear in him continually the echo of the _sophos_, the “bravo!” which the reciter and the rhetorician sought for, and which they sometimes, if not often, procured by the agency of a regular _claque_. We learn (not in the least to our surprise) that then, as now, there existed the kind literary friend who was quite eager to receive presentation copies, but who was by no means ready to go to the publishers and exchange even an extremely moderate number of his own denarii for a nice clean book, on polished vellum and neatly rubricated.[323] There were also then, as now, readers or reviewers who would take copyists’ (_lege_ “printers’”) errors very seriously, and upbraid the poet for them[324]—which he did not bear patiently. Footnote 323: i. 117. Footnote 324: ii. 8.