Letter 59
So you boast of your leisure and your hunting. It's a pleasant claim, but you make it more in jest than in earnest. I know you spend your free time happily chewing over the works of the ancients. You can fool other people — those who've only just met you. I can judge both your daily business, which occupies you night and day, and the daily nourishment of your mind from the flavor of the letters you send me.
Unless perhaps you've confined Apollo to the forests, like that shepherd Hesiod, whom the Muses crowned with poetic laurel [referring to Hesiod's account of the Muses appearing to him while he tended sheep on Mount Helicon].
For where does this freshness of thought and this old-fashioned richness of language in your letters come from, if you've truly abandoned everything for knotted nets, feathered scarecrows, keen-nosed dogs, and the whole business of the hunt?
So when you write, remember to keep your eloquence within bounds. Let your letters be rustic and rough — so you'll actually be believed to be the hunter you claim. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.