The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 13Dryden, John
General
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 13
Dryden, John
Poetry
to be informed in the other. There are blind sides and follies, even
in the professors of moral philosophy; and there is not any one sect
of them that Horace has not exposed: which, as it was not the design
of Juvenal, who was wholly employed in lashing vices, some of them the
most enormous that can be imagined, so, perhaps, it was not so much his
talent.
_Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit._
This was the commendation which Persius gave him: where, by _vitium_,
he means those little vices which we call follies, the defects of human
understanding, or, at most, the peccadillos of life, rather than the
tragical vices, to which men are hurried by their unruly passions
and exorbitant desires. But, in the word _omne_, which is universal,
he concludes with me, that the divine wit of Horace left nothing
untouched; that he entered into the inmost recesses of nature; found
out the imperfections even of the most wise and grave, as well as of
the common people; discovering, even in the great Trebatius, to whom he
addresses the first Satire, his hunting after business, and following
the court, as well as in the persecutor Crispinus, his impertinence
and importunity. It is true, he exposes Crispinus openly, as a common
nuisance; but he rallies the other, as a friend, more finely. The
exhortations of Persius are confined to noblemen; and the stoick
philosophy is that alone which he recommends to them; Juvenal exhorts
to particular virtues, as they are opposed to those vices against which
he declaims; but Horace laughs to shame all follies, and insinuates
virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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