If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet, and
approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length
fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the
prologue,
“Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”
I half pagan
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.
Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and
vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed to remind you, that
from those older Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You can
scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid this unmusical bickering
with the follies of men.
One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet in
language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould language,
and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and labors
with its load, and goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The
best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and
trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and
Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling
of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet
the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry
music to their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best; stand but
just outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about
the monster which they have escaped, than the fair prospect before
them. Let them live on an age, and they will have travelled out of his
shadow and reach, and found other objects to ponder.
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, _particeps
criminis_. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of itself,
and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the
least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still
which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol
it, while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment
of hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own
straightforwardness is the severest correction. Horace would not have
written satire so well if he had not been inspired by it, as by a
passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love always
exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and
the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.
A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first,
Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the
condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the
enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into
regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after
searching nature through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff
and defendant too, and so had best come to a settlement without a
hearing. He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of
the wrong-doer.
Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the muse
is essentially plaintive. The saint’s are still _tears_ of joy. Who has
ever heard the _Innocent_ sing?
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest
satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like the sighs of her
winds in the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer.
The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits, which
least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are the properest utterances
of his muse; since that which he says best at any time is what he can
best say at all times. The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to
cull some quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to
meet even the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor
had said it, we should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six
satires, you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as
a natural image; though when translated into familiar language, they
lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines
as the following, translation cannot render commonplace. Contrasting
the man of true religion with those who, with jealous privacy, would
fain carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says:—
“Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto.”
It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only _sanctum sanctorum_, and
the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence. Why
should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were the
only holy ground in all the world which he had left unprofaned? The
obedient soul would only the more discover and familiarize things, and
escape more and more into light and air, as having henceforth done with
secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem open enough for it. At
length, it is neglectful even of that silence which is consistent with
true modesty, but by its independence of all confidence in its
disclosures, makes that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that
it becomes the care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still
greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be matter for
secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity,
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.