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.
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