This man Suffenus, whom you know,
Varrus, is not without some show
Of parts, and gift of speech befitting
A man of sense. Yet he mistakes
His talents wondrously, and makes
His thousand verses at a sitting.
And troth, he makes them _look_ their best:
For, not content with palimpsest,
He has them writ on royal vellum,
Emboss'd and gilded, rubb'd and polish'd:
But read 'em, and you wish abolish'd
The privilege to make or sell 'em.
You read them, and the man is quite
Another man: no more polite--
No more "the man about the town,"
But metamorphosed to a clown--
Milker of goats, a hedger, digger,
So thoroughly is changed his figure,
So quite unlike himself. 'Tis odd,
Most strange, the man for wit so noted,
Whose repartees so much were quoted,
Is changed into a very clod!
And stranger still--he never seems
Quite to himself to be himself,
As when of poetry he dreams,
And writes and writes, and fills his reams
With poems destined for the shelf.
We are deceived--in this twin-brothers
All. There's one vanity between us,
And our self-knowledge stands to screen us
From our true portraits. Knowing others,
We ticket each man with his vice;
And find, most accurately nice,
In all a something of Suffenus.
Thus every man one knowledge lacks;
Our error is--we read the score
Of each man as he walks before,
And bear our tickets at our backs.
GRATIAN.--True, indeed--as old fables mostly are. There is in them the
depth of wisdom acquired by experience.
CURATE.--I fear experience alone won't do much. It seems thrown away
upon most people. They continue follies to the end. I suppose Cicero
thought himself a poet; though it may be doubted if he wrote the line as
Juvenal gives it,
"O fortunatam natam me consule Romam."
Perhaps most men's natural common sense has a less wide range than they
think. For there are some things obvious to all besides, that the wisest
cannot see.
AQUILIUS.--Cicero was less likely to see any defect in himself than most
men. He had consummate vanity--which must have led him into many a
ridiculous position. But there were no Boswells in those days. I never
could understand how it is that so great an admiration of Cicero has
come over mankind. Even in language he has had an evil influence; and
our literature for a long period was tainted with it. Sensible himself,
he taught the art of writing fluently without sense. The flow and
period--the _esse videatur_--a style too common with us less than half a
century ago--you might read page after page, and pause to wonder what
you had been reading about. The upper current of the book did not
disturb the under current of your own thoughts, perhaps aided by the
lulling music.
CURATE.--The vanity of Cicero was too manifest. It is a pity, for the
sake of his reputation, that the letter to his friend, in which he
requested him to write his life, is extant. To tell him plainly that it
is the duty of a friend to exaggerate his virtues, is a mean
vanity--unworthy such a man.
GRATIAN.--Come, come! let him rest; our business is with Catullus.
Curate, let us have your translation.
CURATE.--I pass by the account of Suffenus, as well as some other
pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the
mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word
"opponere," and was scarcely worth translating;--take it, however: