After all he was a young man, like his friend and contemporary
Lucan--both of them men of extraordinary parts and great acquired
knowledge, considering their youth; but neither of them had arrived
to that maturity of judgment which is necessary to the accomplishing
of a formed poet. And this consideration, as on the one hand it
lays some imperfections to their charge, so on the other side it is
a candid excuse for those failings which are incident to youth and
inexperience; and we have more reason to wonder how they, who died
before the thirtieth year of their age, could write so well and
think so strongly, than to accuse them of those faults from which
human nature (and more especially in youth) can never possibly be
exempted.
To consider Persius yet more closely: he rather insulted over vice
and folly than exposed them like Juvenal and Horace; and as chaste
and modest as he is esteemed, it cannot be denied but that in some
places he is broad and fulsome, as the latter verses of the fourth
satire and of the sixth sufficiently witness.
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