Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 7

of the _Ars Poetica_ (102) reappears in the far less natural

verum nec nocte paratum plorabit, qui me volet incurva.s.se querela (_Pers_. i. 91).

A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON.

He speaks of his verses so finely turned and polished--

ut per leve severos effundat iunctura unguis (i. 64).

So that the critical nail runs glibly along even where the parts join. CONINGTON.

In this fantastically contorted and affected phrase we may espy an ingenious blending of two Horatian phrases,

totus teres atque rotundus, externi ne quid valeat per leve morari (_Sat._ ii. 7. 86),

and the simple

ad unguem factus

f _Sat._ i. 5. 32.[237]

There is no need to multiply instances. Horace appears everywhere, but _quantum mutatus ab illo!_ As the result of this particular method of borrowing, a.s.sisted by affectations and obscurities which are all his own, Persius attains to a kind of spurious originality of diction, which often degenerates into sheer eccentricity. In spite of the fact that the original text can almost everywhere be reconstructed with certainty, he is almost the most obscure of Latin poets to the modern reader. A few instances will suffice. There were, it appears, three ways of mocking a person behind his back: one might tap the fingers against the lower portion of the hand in imitation of a stork's beak, one might imitate a donkey's ears, or one might put out one's tongue. When Persius wishes to say 'Ja.n.u.s, I envy you your luck, for no one can mock at you behind your back!' he writes (i. 58):

O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit, nec ma.n.u.s auriculas imitari mobilis albas, nec linguae, quantum sitiat canis Apula, tantae.

Happy Ja.n.u.s, whom no stork's bill batters from behind, no nimble hand quick to imitate the a.s.s's white ears, no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian b.i.t.c.h.

The obscurity of the first line springs in part from the fact that the custom is not elsewhere spoken of. The second line may pa.s.s. The third defies literal translation. It means 'no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian b.i.t.c.h'. But the omission of all mention both of 'protrusion' and of the 'dog days' makes the Latin almost without meaning. The epithet _Apula_ becomes absurd. A 'thirsty Apulian dog' is barely sufficient to suggest the midsummer drought of Apulia.

This is an extreme case; it is perhaps fairer to quote lines such as

si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas (iv. 49),

'if in your zeal for the main chance you flog the exchange with many a stripe,' a mysterious pa.s.sage generally supposed to mean 'if you exact exorbitant usury'. A little less enigmatic, but fully as forced and unnatural is

dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (v. 92),

'while I pull your old grandmotherly views from your heart,' or the extraordinarily harsh metaphor of the first satire (24)--

quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?

What is the good of past study, unless this leaven--unless the wild fig-tree which has once struck its root into the breast, break through and come out? CONINGTON.

which means nothing more than 'What is the good of study unless a man brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity, however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the pa.s.sage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This Persius refuses us. The difficulties which he presents are--as in the case of Robert Browning--in part due to his adoption of the traditional dramatic form in satire, a form in which clearness of expression is as difficult as it is desirable. But we cannot excuse his obscurity as we sometimes can in Browning--either as being to some extent a realistic representation of the discursiveness and lack of method that characterize the reasonings of the average intelligent man, or on the other hand as springing from the intensity of the poet's thought. It is not the case with Persius that his thoughts press so thick and quick upon him, or are of so deep and complicated a character, as to be incapable of simple and lucid expression. It is sheer waywardness and perversity springing from the absence of true artistic feeling to which we must attribute this cardinal defect. For his thought is commonplace, and his observation of the minds and ways of men is limited.

The qualities that go to the making of the true satirist are many. He must be dominated by a moral ideal, not necessarily of the highest kind, but sufficiently exalted to lend dignity to his work and sufficiently strongly realized to permeate it. He must have a wide and comprehensive knowledge of his fellow men. A knowledge of the broad outlines of the cardinal virtues and of the deadly sins is not sufficient. The satirist must know them in their countless manifestations in the life of man, as they move our awe or our contempt, our admiration or our terror, our love or our loathing, our laughter or our tears. He must be able to paint society in all its myriad hues. He must have a sense of humour, even if he lacks the sense of proportion; he must have the gift of laughter, even though his laughter ring harsh and painful. He must have the gift of mordant speech, of epigram, and of rhetoric. He must drive his points home with directness and lucidity. Mere denunciation of vice is not enough. Few prophets are satirists; few satirists are prophets.

Of these qualities Persius has all too few. The man who has become the pupil of a Cornutus at the age of sixteen, who has shunned a public career, and is characterized by a _virginalis verecundia_, is not likely, even in a long life, to acquire the knowledge of the world required for genuine satire. The satirist, it might almost be said, must not only have walked abroad in the great world, but must have pa.s.sed through the fire himself, and in some sense experienced the vices he has set himself to lash. But Persius is young and, as far as might be in that age, innocent. His outlook is from the seclusion of literary and philosophic circles, and his satire lacks the peculiar vigour that can only be got from jostling one's way in the wider world. In consequence the picture of life which he presents lacks vividness. A few brilliant sketches there are; but they are drawn from but a narrow range of experience. There is nothing better of its kind than the description in the first satire of the omnipresent poetaster of the reign of Nero, with his affected recitations of tawdry, sensuous, and soulless verse (15):

Scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti et natalicia tandem c.u.m sardonyche albus sede leges celsa, liquido c.u.m plasmate guttur mobile conlueris, patranti fractus ocello.

tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena ingentis trepidare t.i.tos, c.u.m carmina lumb.u.m intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.

Yes--you hope to read this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple of the measure. CONINGTON.

A few lines later comes a similar and equally vivid picture (30):

ecce inter pocula quaerunt Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent.

hic aliquis, cui circ.u.m umeros hyacinthina laena est, rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus, Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile siquid, cliquat ac tenero subplantat verba palato.

Listen. The sons of Rome are sitting after a full meal, and inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles, or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled, filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the roof of his delicate mouth. CONINGTON.

Here the poet is describing what he has seen; in the world of letters he is at home. He can laugh pungently enough at the style of oratory prevailing in the courts--

nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire 'decenter'.

'fur es', ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis librat in ant.i.thetis, doctas posuisse figuras laudatur, 'bellum hoc?' (i. 83).

Are you not ashamed not to be able to plead against perils threatening your grey hairs, but you must needs be ambitious of hearing mawkish compliments to your 'good taste'? The accuser tells Pedius point blank, 'You are a thief.' What does Pedius do? Oh, he balances the charges in polished ant.i.theses-- he is deservedly praised for the artfulness of his tropes.

Monstrous fine that! CONINGTON.

He can parody the decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary of the genius of Lucilius and Horace--

secuit Lucilius urbem, te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico tangit et admissus circ.u.m praecordia ludit, callidus excusso populum suspendere naso (i. 114).

Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue, manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it.

CONINGTON.

But the first satire stands alone _qua_ satire. It is not, perhaps, the most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead, he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a certain violence and even coa.r.s.eness[241] of description which does duty for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit, the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal.

We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same subject (_Sat._ ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure; and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal.

But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a n.o.bler man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ign.o.ble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine.

Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion of the second satire (61):

O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes, quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?

haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo et Calabrum c.o.xit vitiato murice vellus, haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis ma.s.sae crudo de pulvere iussit.

peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen ut.i.tur. at vos dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum?

nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae.

quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance non possit magni Messalae lippa propago?

compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto: haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo.

O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age into the temple-service and infer what the G.o.ds like from this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it--to steep Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins--yes, it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you, reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young girl offers to Venus. Give _we_ rather to the G.o.ds such an offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no means of giving, even out of his great dish--duty to G.o.d and man well blended in the mind--purity in the shrine of the heart, and a manly flavour of n.o.bleness pervading the bosom. Let me have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall win me acceptance. CONINGTON.

This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes straight to the point without obscurity or circ.u.mlocution. Here alone does the second satire of Persius surpa.s.s the more famous tenth satire of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpa.s.sed by the deservedly well-known pa.s.sage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and strenuously (23):

udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno est tibi far modic.u.m, purum et sine labe salinum (quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est.

hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis, stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis, censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas?

ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi.

non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae.

sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda.

magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos haut alia ratione velis, c.u.m dira libido moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno: virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.