Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance
and vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed to remind
you, that from those older Greek poets there is a sad descent to
Persius. You can scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid
this unmusical bickering with the follies of men.
One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet
in language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould
language, and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse
groans and labors with its load, and goes not forward blithely,
singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied, indeed is
itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like a man
stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and Shakespeare and
Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves
and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the
sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to
sing. Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or
Persius do not marry music to their verse, but are measured
fault-finders at best; stand but just outside the faults they
condemn, and so are concerned rather about the monster which they
have escaped, than the fair prospect before them. Let them live
on an age, and they will have travelled out of his shadow and
reach, and found other objects to ponder.
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, _particeps
criminis_. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of
itself, and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If
you light on the least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of
the whole body still which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity
will not suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you
grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth never turns to
rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest
correction. Horace would not have written satire so well if he
had not been inspired by it, as by a passion, and fondly
cherished his vein. 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? The obedient soul would only the more discover
and familiarize things, and escape more and more into light and
air, as having henceforth done with secrecy, so that the universe
shall not seem open enough for it. At length, it is neglectful
even of that silence which is consistent with true modesty, but
by its independence of all confidence in its disclosures, makes
that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that it becomes
the care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still
greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be
matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost
truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be
transparent as light.
In the third satire, he asks: -
"Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove,
Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?"
Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which thou
directest thy bow?
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay,
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live _ex tempore_?
The bad sense is always a secondary one.
