Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookessing supreme contempt for the poet's opening line, he advises him, if he must needs give vent to verse, to write something more suited to the taste and spirit of the age he lives in. Persius acknowledges that this would be the more likely way to gain applause, but maintains that such approbation is not the end at which a true poet ought to aim. And this leads him to expose the miserable and corrupt taste of the poetasters of his day, and to express supreme contempt for the mania for recitation then prevalent, which had already provoked the sneers of Horace, and afterward drew down the more majestic condemnation of Juvenal. He draws a vivid picture of these depraved poets, who pander to the gross lusts of their hearers by their lascivious strains. Their affectation of speech and manner, their costly and effeminate dress, the vanity of their exalted seat, and the degraded character of their compositions; and on the other hand, the excessive and counterfeited applause of their hearers, expressed by extravagance of language and lasciviousness of gesture corresponding to the nature of the compositions, are touched with a masterly hand. He then ridicules the pretensions of these courtly votaries of the Muses, whose vanity is fostered by the interested praise of dependents and sycophants, who are the first to ridicule them behind their backs. He then makes a digression to the bar; and shows that the manly and vigorous eloquence of Cicero and Hortensius and Cato, as well as the masculine energy and dignity of Virgil, is frittered away, and diluted by the introduction of redundant and misplaced metaphor, labored antitheses, trifling conceits, accumulated epithets, and bombastic and obsolete words, and a substitution of rhetorical subtleties for that energetic simplicity which speaks _from_ and _to_ the heart. Returning to the poets, he brings in a passage of Nero's own composition as a most glaring example of these defects. This excites his friend's alarm, and elicits some cautious advice respecting the risk he encounters; which serves to draw forth a more daring avowal of his bold purpose, and an animated description of the persons whom he would wish to have for his readers. PERSIUS. "Oh the cares of men![1181] Oh how much vanity is there in human affairs!"-- ADVERSARIUS.[1182] Who will read this?[1183] P. Is it to me you say this? A. Nobody, by Hercules! P. Nobody! Say two perhaps, or-- A. Nobody. It is mean and pitiful stuff! P. Wherefore? No doubt "Polydamas[1184] and Trojan dames" will prefer Labeo to me-- A. It is all stuff! P. Whatever turbid Rome[1185] may disparage, do not thou join their number; nor by that scale of theirs seek to correct thy own false balance, nor seek[1186] thyself out of thyself. For who is there at Rome that is not[1187]--Ah! if I might but speak![1188] But I may,[1189] when I look at our gray hairs,[1190] and our severe way of life, and all that we commit since we abandoned our childhood's nuts.[1191] When we savor of uncles,[1192] then--then forgive! A. I will not! P. What must I do?[1193] For I am a hearty laugher with a saucy spleen. We write, having shut ourselves in,[1194] one man verses, another free from the trammels of metre, something grandiloquent, which the lungs widely distended with breath may give vent to. And this, of course, some day, with your hair combed and a new toga,[1195] all in white with your birthday Sardonyx,[1196] you will read out from your lofty seat,[1197] to the people, when you have rinsed[1198] your throat, made flexible by the liquid gargle; languidly leering with lascivious eye! Here you may see the tall Titi[1199] in trembling excitement, with lewdness of manner and agitation of voice, when the verses enter their loins,[1200] and their inmost parts are titillated with the lascivious strain. P. And dost thou, in thy old age,[1201] collect dainty bits for the ears of others? Ears to which even thou, bursting[1202] with vanity, wouldst say, "Hold, enough!" A. To what purpose is your learning, unless this leaven, and this wild fig-tree[1203] which has once taken life within, shall burst through your liver and shoot forth? P. See that pallor and premature old age![1204] Oh Morals![1205] Is then your knowledge so absolutely naught, unless another know you have that knowledge?[1206] A. But it is a fine thing to be pointed at with the finger,[1207] and that it should be said, "That's he!" Do you value it at nothing, that your works should form the studies[1208] of a hundred curly-headed[1209] youths? P. See![1210] over their cups,[1211] the well-filled Romans[1212] inquire of what the divine poems tell. Here some one, who has a hyacinthine robe round his shoulders, snuffling through his nose[1213] some stale ditty, distills and from his dainty palate lisps trippingly[1214] his Phyllises,[1215] Hypsipyles, and all the deplorable strains of the poets. The heroes hum assent![1216] Now are not the ashes[1217] of the poet blest? Does not a tomb-stone press with lighter weight[1218] upon his bones? The guests applaud. Now from those Manes of his, now from his tomb and favored ashes, will not violets spring?[1219] A. You are mocking and indulging in too scornful a sneer.[1220] Lives there the man who would disown the wish to deserve the people's praise,[1221] and having uttered words worthy of the cedar,[1222] to leave behind him verses that dread neither herrings[1223] nor frankincense? P. Whoever thou art that hast just spoken, and that hast a fair right[1224] to plead on the opposite side, I, for my part, when I write, if any thing perchance comes forth[1225] aptly expressed (though this is, I own, a rare bird[1226]), yet if any thing does come forth, I would not shrink from being praised: for indeed my heart is not of horn. But I deny that that "excellently!" and "beautifully!"[1227] of yours is the end and object of what is right. For sift thoroughly all this "beautifully!" and what does it not comprise within it! Is there not to be found in it the Iliad of Accius,[1228] intoxicated with hellebore? are there not all the paltry sonnets our crude[1229] nobles have dictated? in fine, is there not all that is composed on couches of citron?[1230] You know how to set before your guests the hot paunch;[1231] and how to make a present of your threadbare cloak to your companion shivering with cold,[1232] and then you say, "I do love the truth![1233] tell me the truth about myself!" How is that possible? Would you like me to tell it you? Thou drivelest,[1234] Bald-pate, while thy bloated paunch projects a good foot and a half hanging in front! O Janus! whom no stork[1235] pecks at from behind, no hand that with rapid motion imitates the white ass's ears, no tongue mocks, projecting as far as that of the thirsting hound of Apulia! Ye, O patrician blood![1236] whose privilege[1237] it is to live with no eyes at the back of your head, prevent[1238] the scoffs[1239] that are m |