The full text of the verse associated with this image is below:
Lo, here QUINCTILIUS sittes, a grave and reverende sire:
And pulles a younglinge by the arme, that did for fame desire.
For, hee with pace of snayle, proceeded to his pen;
Lest haste shoulde make him wishe (too late) it weare to write againe.
And therfore still with care, woulde everie thinge amende:
Yea, ofte eche worde, and line survaye, before hee made an ende.
And, yf he any sawe, whose care to wryte was small:
To him, like wordes to these hee us’d, which hee did meane to all.
My sonne, what worke thou writes, correcte, reforme, amende,
But if thou like thy first assaye, then not QUINCTILIUS frende?
The fruicte at firste is sower, till time give pleasante taste:
And verie rare is that attempte, that is not harm’d with haste.
Perfection comes in time, and forme and fashion gives:
And ever rashenes, yeeldes repente, and most dispised lives.
Then, alter ofte, and chaunge, peruse, and reade, and marke:
The man that softlie settes his steppes, goes safest in the darke.
But if that thirst of fame, doe pricke thee forthe too faste:
Thou shalt (when it is all to late) repente therefore at laste.
This image and its accompanying verse are part of the emblem tradition popular during the Renaissance. Emblems have much in common with allegorical poetry. In the emblem tradition, the image presented a story–often with pictorial symbols–and the verse below the image drove home the picture-story’s moral instruction.
In this image, the famous Roman rhetorician Quintilian is sitting at a desk, and trying to keep a younger writer from handing his work too soon over to fame, who bears wings and a trumpet.