And Persius was moral and philosophical in a high degree: he was also a poet of no mean order. But while he grew pale over the page of Zeno, and Cleanthes, and Chrysippus; while he imbibed, with all the ardor of a youthful mind, the paradoxes of those great masters, together with their principles, the foundations of civil society were crumbling around him, and soliciting his attention in vain. To judge from what he has left us, it might almost be affirmed that he was a stranger in his own country. The degradation of Rome was now complete; yet he felt, at least he expresses, no indignation at the means by which it was effected: a sanguinary buffoon was lording it over the prostrate world; yet he continued to waste his most elaborate efforts on the miserable pretensions of pedants in prose and verse! If this savor of the impassibility of Stoicism, it is entitled to no great praise on the score of outraged humanity, which has stronger claims on a well-regulated mind, than criticism, or even philosophy. Dryden gives that praise to the dogmas of Persius, which he denies to his poetry. "His verse," he says, "is scabrous and hobbling, and his measures beneath those of Horace." This is too severe; for Persius has many exquisite passages, which nothing in Horace will be found to equal or approach. The charge of obscurity has been urged against him with more justice; though this, perhaps, is not so great as it is usually represented. Casaubon could, without question, have defended him more successfully than he has done; but he was overawed by the brutal violence of the elder Scaliger; for I can scarcely persuade myself that he really believed this obscurity to be owing to "the fear of Nero, or the advice of Cornutus." The cause of it should be rather sought in his natural disposition, and in his habits of thinking. Generally speaking, however, it springs from a too frequent use of tropes, approaching in almost every instance to a catachresis, an anxiety of compression, and a quick and unexpected transition from one overstrained figure to another. After all, with the exception of the sixth Satire, which, from its abruptness, does not appear to have received the author's last touches, I do not think there is much to confound an attentive reader: some acquaintance, indeed, with the porch "braccatis illita Medis," is previously necessary. His life may be contemplated with unabated pleasure: the virtue he recommends, he practiced in the fullest extent; and at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth.