In his odes, the love always exceeds the
hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the
poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.
A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first,
Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the
condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong
the enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust
into regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer;
for after searching nature through, we conclude that he must be
both plaintiff and defendant too, and so had best come to a
settlement without a hearing. He who receives an injury is to
some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.
Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the
muse is essentially plaintive. The saint's are still _tears_ of
joy. Who has ever heard the _Innocent_ sing?
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the
severest satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like the
sighs of her winds in the woods, which convey ever a slight
reproof to the hearer. The greater the genius, the keener the
edge of the satire.
Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits,
which least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are the properest
utterances of his muse; since that which he says best at any time
is what he can best say at all times. The Spectators and
Ramblers have not failed to cull some quotable sentences from
this garden too, so pleasant is it to meet even the most familiar
truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor had said it, we
should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six satires,
you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as
readily as a natural image; though when translated into familiar
language, they lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for
quotation. Such lines as the following, translation cannot
render commonplace. Contrasting the man of true religion with
those who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on a secret
commerce with the gods, he says: -
"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto."
It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only _sanctum sanctorum_,
and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his
existence. Why should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt,
as if it were the only holy ground in all the world which he had
left unprofaned?
