SATIRE I.
ARGUMENT.
Under the color of declaring his purpose of writing Satire and the plan he intends to adopt, and of defending himself against the idle criticism of an imaginary and nameless adversary, Persius lashes the miserable poets of his own day, and in no very obscure terms, their Coryphæus himself, Nero. The subject of the Satire is not very unlike the first of the second book of Horace's Satires, and comes very near in some points to the first Satire of Juvenal. But the manner of treatment is distinct in each, and quite characteristic of the three great Satirists. Horace's is more full of personality, one might say, of egotism, and his own dislike and contempt of the authors of his time, more lively and brilliant, more pungent and witty, than either of the others; more pregnant with jokes, and yet rising to a higher tone than the Satire of Persius. That of Juvenal is in a more majestic strain, as befits the stern censor of the depraved morals of his day; full of commanding dignity and grave rebuke, of fiery indignation and fierce invective; and is therefore more declamatory and oratorical in its style, more elevated in its sentiment, more refined in its diction. While in that of Persius we trace the workings of a young and ardent mind, devoted to literature and intellectual pleasures, of a philosophical turn, and a chastened though somewhat fastidious taste. We see the student and devotee of literature quite as much as the censor of morals, and can see that he grieves over the corruption of the public taste almost as deeply as over the general depravity of public morals. Still there breathes through the whole a tone of high and right feeling, of just and stringent criticism, of keen and pungent sarcasm, which deservedly places this Satire very high in the rank of intellectual productions.
The Satire opens with a dialogue between the poet himself and some one who breaks in upon his meditations. This person is usually described as his "Monitor;" some well-meaning acquaintance, who endeavors to dissuade the poet from his purpose of writing Satire. But D'Achaintre's notion, that he is rather an ill-natured critic than a good-natured adviser, seems the more tenable one, and the divisions of the first few lines have been ingeniously made to support that view. After expressing supreme contempt for the poet's opening line, he advises him, if he must needs give vent to verse, to write something more suited to the taste and spirit of the age he lives in. Persius acknowledges that this would be the more likely way to gain applause, but maintains that such approbation is not the end at which a true poet ought to aim. And this leads him to expose the miserable and corrupt taste of the poetasters of his day, and to express supreme contempt for the mania for recitation then prevalent, which had already provoked the sneers of Horace, and afterward drew down the more majestic condemnation of Juvenal. He draws a vivid picture of these depraved poets, who pander to the gross lusts of their hearers by their lascivious strains. Their affectation of speech and manner, their costly and effeminate dress, the vanity of their exalted seat, and the degraded character of their compositions; and on the other hand, the excessive and counterfeited applause of their hearers, expressed by extravagance of language and lasciviousness of gesture corresponding to the nature of the compositions, are touched with a masterly hand. He then ridicules the pretensions of these courtly votaries of the Muses, whose vanity is fostered by the interested praise of dependents and sycophants, who are the first to ridicule them behind their backs. He then makes a digression to the bar; and shows that the manly and vigorous eloquence of Cicero and Hortensius and Cato, as well as the masculine energy and dignity of Virgil, is frittered away, and diluted by the introduction of redundant and misplaced metaphor, labored antitheses, trifling conceits, accumulated epithets, and bombastic and obsolete words, and a substitution of rhetorical subtleties for that energetic simplicity which speaks from and to the heart. Returning to the poets, he brings in a passage of Nero's own composition as a most glaring example of these defects. This excites his friend's alarm, and elicits some cautious advice respecting the risk he encounters; which serves to draw forth a more daring avowal of his bold purpose, and an animated description of the persons whom he would wish to have for his readers.
Persius. "Oh the cares of men![1181] Oh how much vanity is there in human affairs!"—
Adversarius.[1182] Who will read this?[1183]
P. Is it to me you say this?
A. Nobody, by Hercules!
P. Nobody! Say two perhaps, or—
A. Nobody. It is mean and pitiful stuff!