translated, and who has cost me more labour and time than Juvenal, but according to what I judge to be his own merit; which I think not equal, in the main, to that of Juvenal or Horace, and yet in some things to be preferred to both of them. [Pg 68] First, then, for the verse; neither Casaubon himself, nor any for him, can defend either his numbers, or the purity of his Latin. Casaubon gives this point for lost, and pretends not to justify either the measures, or the words of Persius; he is evidently [Pg 69]beneath Horace and Juvenal in both. [Pg 69] Then, as his verse is scabrous, and hobbling, and his words not every where well chosen, the purity of Latin being more corrupted than in the time of Juvenal,[29] and consequently of Horace, who writ when the language was in the height of its perfection, so his diction is hard, his figures are generally too bold and daring, and his tropes, particularly his metaphors, insufferably strained. In the third place, notwithstanding all the diligence of Casaubon, Stelluti, and a Scotch gentleman,[30] whom I have heard extremely commended for his illustrations of him, yet he is still obscure: whether he affected not to be understood, but with difficulty; or whether the fear of his safety under Nero compelled him to this darkness in some places; or that it was occasioned by his close way of thinking, and the brevity of his style, and crowding of his figures; or lastly, whether, after so long a time, many of his words have been corrupted, and many customs, and stories relating to them, lost to us: whether some of these reasons, or all, concurred to render him so cloudy, we may be bold to affirm, that the best of commentators can but guess at his meaning, in many passages; and none can be certain that he has divined rightly. After all, he was a young man, like his friend and contemporary Lucan; both of them men of extraordinary parts, and great acquired knowledge, considering their youth:[31] But neither of them had [Pg 70]arrived to that maturity of judgment, which is necessary to the accomplishing of a formed poet. And this consideration, as, on the one hand, it lays some imperfections to their charge, so, on the other side, it is a candid excuse for those failings, which are incident to youth and inexperience; and we have more reason to wonder how they, who died before the thirtieth year of their age, could write so well, and think so strongly, than to accuse them of those faults, from which human nature, and more especially in youth, can never possibly be
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