Sir, - The frenetic scrambling for Seamus Heaney's poetry (Christmas `95) calls to mind what Juvenal said about the Neapolitan poet Publius Papinius Statius (age of Domitian):
All Rome is pleased when Statius will rehearse,
And longing crowds expect the promised verse;
His lofty numbers with so great a gust
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They hear and swallow with such eager lust.
But, while the common suffrage gain'd his cause,
And broke the benches with their loud applause
Statius obtained the prize of poetry in the Alban Games, on the subject of Minerva. Plus ca change. - Yours, etc.,
Grosvenor Place, Rathmines, Dublin 6.