but generally obscure; and therefore Casaubon at last is forced to
excuse him by alleging that it was se defendendo, for fear of Nero,
and that he was commanded to write so cloudily by Cornutus, in
virtue of holy obedience to his master. I cannot help my own
opinion; I think Cornutus needed not to have read many lectures to
him on that subject. Persius was an apt scholar, and when he was
bidden to be obscure in some places where his life and safety were
in question, took the same counsel for all his book, and never
afterwards wrote ten lines together clearly. Casaubon, being upon
this chapter, has not failed, we may be sure, of making a compliment
to his own dear comment. "If Persius," says he, "be in himself
obscure, yet my interpretation has made him intelligible." There is
no question but he deserves that praise which he has given to
himself; but the nature of the thing, as Lucretius says, will not
admit of a perfect explanation. Besides many examples which I could
urge, the very last verse of his last satire (upon which he
particularly values himself in his preface) is not yet sufficiently
explicated. It is true, Holyday has endeavoured to justify his
construction; but Stelluti is against it: and, for my part, I can
have but a very dark notion of it. As for the chastity of his
thoughts, Casaubon denies not but that one particular passage in the
fourth satire (At, si unctus cesses, &c.) is not only the most
obscure, but the most obscene, of all his works. I understood it,
but for that reason turned it over. In defence of his boisterous
metaphors he quotes Longinus, who accounts them as instruments of
the sublime, fit to move and stir up the affections, particularly in
narration; to which it may be replied that where the trope is far-
fetched and hard, it is fit for nothing but to puzzle the
understanding, and may be reckoned amongst those things of
Demosthenes which AEschines called [Greek text which cannot be