First, then, for the verse; neither Casaubon himself, nor any for
him, can defend either his numbers or the purity of his Latin.
Casaubon gives this point for lost, and pretends not to justify
either the measures or the words of Persius; he is evidently beneath
Horace and Juvenal in both.
Then, as his verse is scabrous and hobbling, and his words not
everywhere well chosen (the purity of Latin being more corrupted
than in the time of Juvenal, and consequently of Horace, who wrote
when the language was in the height of its perfection), so his
diction is hard, his figures are generally too bold and daring, and
his tropes, particularly his metaphors, insufferably strained.
In the third place, notwithstanding all the diligence of Casaubon,
Stelluti, and a Scotch gentleman whom I have heard extremely
commended for his illustrations of him, yet he is still obscure;
whether he affected not to be understood but with difficulty; or
whether the fear of his safety under Nero compelled him to this
darkness in some places, or that it was occasioned by his close way
of thinking, and the brevity of his style and crowding of his
figures; or lastly, whether after so long a time many of his words
have been corrupted, and many customs and stories relating to them
lost to us; whether some of these reasons, or all, concurred to
render him so cloudy, we may be bold to affirm that the best of
commentators can but guess at his meaning in many passages, and none
can be certain that he has divined rightly.
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