Letter 9006: Your name promises what I hope your character delivers: blessedness.

Ennodius to Beatus. If you had stored away in the granary of your breast the harvest of learning that ought to be brought forth in due season, the right hands of those who travel back and forth would not come to us empty of your letters. But since your abstinence from speech betrays your negligence and barrenness, we must rise up once more to the cultivation of admonition, and press your unproductive back, infertile as it is, with furrows for the seeds cast again, that it may come to abundance. Where are the precepts which you used to maintain were destined to live on within you? Where is the zeal for conversation, through which both knowledge is made plain and affection? Your silences cry out that you have not attained anything that could be worthy of a good man's judgment. For just as rare speech betrays the learned, so continual taciturnity betrays the unskilled. Therefore blush, and at long last break the chains and the hindrances of your discourse. Show how strong you are, show what progress you have made, provided that the grace from above does not, in keeping with our wish, abandon you. Now receive the honor of a greeting, and, contented with a brief letter, acknowledge that to your father there were entrusted matters that are being disclosed only by a long rebuke.

VI. BEATO ENNODIVS. Si proferenda temporibus de eruditionis messe pectoris horreo condidisses, ieiunae ab epistolis tuis commeantium dexterae non uenirent. sed quia neglegentiam et sterilitatem tuam sermonis prodit abstinentia, nos necesse est iterum ad culturam admonitionis adsurgere et terga iactis infecunda seminibus recidiuis ad ubertatem sulcis urguere. ubi sunt monita quae apud te adserebas esse uictura P ubi studium conloquendi, per quod et scientia patescit et caritas ? clamant silentia tua, te non adsecutum quod boni dignum possit esse iudicio. nam sicut rara doctos, ita continua prodit taciturnitas inperitos. ergo erubesce et tandem aliquando rumpe uincula et impedimenta sermonum. ostende quam ualeas, ostende quid promoueris, si tamen te iuxta uotum nostrum gratia superna non deserit. nunc salutationis honorem accipe et breui contentus epistula agnosce patri tuo quae longa conreptione reserentur fuisse mandata. 4 oportune LTV, oportunae jB; oportuna Pb, inportune fort . loquares B garroli B garruli imitatione uulgo coniungunt re- Q spode B 5 poscit B 7 naleret L VI. 11 peccatoris B 12 condedissis B ad L 13 detterare L aeniret B negligentiam B et st. tuam om. L I 16 siminibus B urgere LTV 18 patiscet B, patescat V, patesoat Pb 19 posit B 20 iuditio B, indicio coni. Schottus sicutrara (tra corr . ex tic ?) L doctus B 21 erubisce B . 22 indimenta B quam B, quid LPTVb 24 deserit] dent B 25 correctione T