he practises himself. There is a spirit of sincerity in all he
says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded
of that truth which he inculcates. In this I am of opinion that he
excels Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he
instructs; and is equal to Juvenal, who was as honest and serious as
Persius, and more he could not be.

Hitherto I have followed Casaubon, and enlarged upon him, because I
am satisfied that he says no more than truth; the rest is almost all
frivolous. For he says that Horace, being the son of a tax-gatherer
(or a collector, as we call it) smells everywhere of the meanness of
his birth and education; his conceits are vulgar, like the subjects
of his satires; that he does plebeium sepere, and writes not with
that elevation which becomes a satirist; that Persius, being nobly
born and of an opulent family, had likewise the advantage of a
better master (Cornutus being the most learned of his time, a man of
a most holy life, the chief of the Stoic sect at Rome, and not only
a great philosopher, but a poet himself, and in probability a
coadjutor of Persius: that as for Juvenal, he was long a declaimer,
came late to poetry, and had not been much conversant in philosophy.

It is granted that the father of Horace was libertinus--that is, one
degree removed from his grandfather, who had been once a slave. But
Horace, speaking of him, gives him the best character of a father
which I ever read in history; and I wish a witty friend of mine, now
living, had such another. He bred him in the best school, and with
the best company of young noblemen; and Horace, by his gratitude to
his memory, gives a certain testimony that his education was
ingenuous. After this he formed himself abroad by the conversation
of great men. Brutus found him at Athens, and was so pleased with