Pure in mind and chaste in life, Persius was free from the corrupt taint of an immoral age. He exhibited all the self-denial, the control of the passions, and the stern uncompromising principles of the philosophy which he admired, but not its hypocrisy. Stoicism was not, in his case, as in that of so many others, a cloak for vice and profligacy.

Although Lucretius was, to a certain extent, his model, he does not attack vice with the biting severity of the old satirist. He rather adopts the caustic irony of the old Greek comedy, as more in accordance with that style of attack which he himself terms—

petulanti splene cachinno.[[1057]]

Nor do we find in his writings the fiery ardour, the enthusiastic indignation, which burn in the verses of Juvenal; but this resulted from the tenderness of his heart and the gentleness of his disposition, and not from any disqualification for the duties of a moral instructor, such as weak moral principle, or irresolute timidity.

Although he must have been conscious that the dangerous times during which his short life was passed rendered caution necessary, still it is far more probable that his purity of mind and kindliness of heart disinclined him to portray vice in its hideous and loathsome forms, and to indulge in bitterness of invective which prevalent enormities of his times deserved. It may be questioned whether obscenities like those of Juvenal, notwithstanding purity of intention, best promote the interests of virtue. It is to be feared that often the passions are excited and the human heart rendered more corrupt by descriptions of vice, whilst the moral lesson is disregarded.

Persius evidently believed that reserve and silence, or those abominations which make the pure-minded shudder with horror, and call up a blush upon the cheek of innocence, would more safely maintain the dignity and purity of virtue, than the divesting himself of that virgin modesty (virgineus ille pudor) which constituted the great charm of his character. His uprightness and love of virtue are shown by the uncompromising severity with which he rebukes sins of not so deep a die; and the heart which was capable of being moulded by his example, and influenced by his purity, would have shrunk from the fearful crimes which defile the pages of Juvenal.

The greatest defect in Persius, as a satirist, is, that the philosophy in which he was educated rendered him too indifferent to the affairs which were going on in the world around him. Politics had little interest for him: he lived within himself a meditative life; wealth and splendour he despised. His contemplative habits led him to criticise, as his favourite subjects, false taste in poetry and empty pretensions to philosophy. His modest and retiring nature found little sympathy with the passions, the tumults, the business, or the pleasures which agitated Rome. He was more a student of the closet than a man of the world. Horace mingled in the society of the profligate; he considered them as fools; and laughed their folly to scorn. Juvenal looked down upon the corruption of the age from an eminence, where, involved in his virtue, he was safe from moral pollution, and punished it like an avenging deity. Persius, pure in heart and passionless by education, whilst he lashes wickedness in the abstract, almost ignores its existence, and modestly shrinks from laying bare the secret pollutions of the human heart, and from probing its vileness to the bottom. The amiability, and above all the disinterestedness, which characterize his Satires, fully account for the popularity which they attained immediately on their publication by Cornutus, and the panegyrics of which he was the subject in later times. “Persius,” writes Quintilian,[[1058]] “multum et veræ gloriæ, quamvis uno libro meruit.” Many of the early Christian writers thought that his merits fully compensated for the obscurity of his style; and Gifford[[1059]] observes, “The virtue he recommends he practised in the fullest extent; and, at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth.”

The works of Persius are comprised within the compass of six Satires, containing, in all, about 650 lines. And from the expression of Quintilian, already cited, and supported by a passage of Martial, there is reason to suppose that all he wrote is now extant. To his Satires is prefixed a short but spirited introduction in choliambics, i. e. lame iambics, in which, for the iambus in the sixth place, there is substituted a spondee.

This proëmium bears but little relation to his work; but he was accustomed to similar irrelevancy in the parabases of the old Attic comedy, which he had studied. In his first Satire he exposes and accounts for the false and immoral taste which affected poetry and forensic eloquence, attacks the coxcombry of public recitation, and parodies the style of contemporary writers, in language which our ignorance of them prevents us from appreciating. In the second, which is a congratulatory address to his dear friend Macrinus on his birthday, he imbodies the subject-matter of the second Alcibiades of Plato;[[1060]] a dialogue which Juvenal also had in view in the composition of his tenth Satire. In this poem, the degrading ideas which men have formed respecting the Deity, the consequent selfishness and even impiety of their prayers, are followed by sentiments on the true nature of prayer, which even a Christian can read with admiration:—

Quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance