"Rash author, 'tis a vain presumptuous crime
To undertake the sacred art of rime;
If at thy birth the stars that ruled thy sense
Shone not wih a poetic influence,
In thy strait genius thou wilt still be bound,
Find Phoebus deaf, and Pegasus unsound."

--Boil*au's "Art of Po*try" (tr Soam*) in: The Art of Po*try (ed Albert S Cook, 1892)