Certainly Fortune smiled upon her favourite, but
Envy raised up many enemies, who were eager to find occasion against the
successful poet. He afforded them a pretext in his work _De laudibus vitae
rusticae_, which, in spite of its innocent title, grievously offended the
nobles, who were already embittered against him on account of his
arrogance and turbulence, and his keen and unsparing satire. So bitter was
their hostility that the poet was compelled to leave Tubingen, and became
a wandering philosopher, sometimes teaching in schools, always pouring
forth poems, elegies, satires, tragedies, comedies, and epics. Being eager
to publish some of his works and not having sufficient means, he applied
to the Duke of Wuertemberg for a subsidy, at the same time furiously
attacking his old opponents. This so exasperated the chief men of the
Court, that they persuaded the Duke to recall Frischlin; but instead of
finding a welcome from his old patron, he was cast into prison, in order
that he might unlearn his presumption, and acquire the useful knowledge
that modesty is the chief ornament of a learned man. But Frischlin did not
agree with another poet's assertion:--
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage."
Having raged and stormed, and tried in vain to obtain release, he resolved
to escape. From his prison window he let himself down by a rope made out
of his bed-clothes, but unfortunately the rope broke and the poor poet
fell upon the hard rocks beneath his chamber window and was injured
fatally.
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