A man who is resolved to praise an author with any appearance of
justice must be sure to take him on the strongest side, and where he
is least liable to exceptions; he is therefore obliged to choose his
mediums accordingly. Casaubon (who saw that Persius could not laugh
with a becoming grace, that he was not made for jesting, and that a
merry conceit was not his talent) turned his feather, like an
Indian, to another light, that he might give it the better gloss.
"Moral doctrine," says he, "and urbanity or well-mannered wit are
the two things which constitute the Roman satire; but of the two,
that which is most essential to this poem, and is, as it were, the
very soul which animates it, is the scourging of vice and
exhortation to virtue." Thus wit, for a good reason, is already
almost out of doors, and allowed only for an instrument--a kind of
tool or a weapon, as he calls it--of which the satirist makes use in
the compassing of his design. The end and aim of our three rivals
is consequently the same; but by what methods they have prosecuted
their intention is further to be considered.
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