Herein, then, it is that Persius has excelled both Juvenal and
Horace. He sticks to his own philosophy; he shifts not sides, like
Horace (who is sometimes an Epicurean, sometimes a Stoic, sometimes
an Eclectic, as his present humour leads him), nor declaims, like
Juvenal, against vices more like an orator than a philosopher.
Persius is everywhere the same--true to the dogmas of his master.
What he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches, that
he practises himself. There is a spirit of sincerity in all he
says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded
of that truth which he inculcates. In this I am of opinion that he
excels Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he
instructs; and is equal to Juvenal, who was as honest and serious as
Persius, and more he could not be.
Hitherto I have followed Casaubon, and enlarged upon him, because I
am satisfied that he says no more than truth; the rest is almost all
frivolous. For he says that Horace, being the son of a tax-gatherer
(or a collector, as we call it) smells everywhere of the meanness of
his birth and education; his conceits are vulgar, like the subjects
of his satires; that he does plebeium sepere, and writes not with
that elevation which becomes a satirist; that Persius, being nobly
born and of an opulent family, had likewise the advantage of a
better master (Cornutus being the most learned of his time, a man of
a most holy life, the chief of the Stoic sect at Rome, and not only
a great philosopher, but a poet himself, and in probability a
coadjutor of Persius: that as for Juvenal, he was long a declaimer,
came late to poetry, and had not been much conversant in philosophy.
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