| 
| 
| 
) 
32 Lyceum of Ancient Literature.x—No. X AP HIT. 
ene substance, would form an uniform 
series of coloured lines, without any 
space between them. 
It appears, from what I have stated 
Before, that it might be possible, by the 
method here proposed, to exhibit even 
the difference of the 60,000th part of an 
Foch, on a scale; but for ordinary use, I 
believe from one hundred to one or two 
thousand are sufficient: and this, I can 
venture to say, a scale formed on this 
_ principle will give with the utmost per- 
Spicuity, without the use of a vernier, 
but which, when minuter divisiuns are re- 
gitired,might be conveniently adapted to it, 
Having given an account of my expe- 
riments on this subject, which were nade 
merely for the sake of putting my plan 
to some kind of practical test, I shall 
Feave it to others to determine on the 
practicability and utility of it in general 
lication. 
RicHarD WALKER, 
Queen-street, Oxford. 
April 5, 1810. 
P. S. I first contrived this new mode of . 
division for the purpose of measuring small 
¥ariations in the barometer, to which instru 
ment it seems particularly applicable. 
LYCEUM OF ANCIENT LITERA- 
TURE.—No. XXVILU. 
PERSIUS. ~ 
AVING already in a late num- 
Ef ber trespassed so Jargely upon 
the tield of satire, we hasten to close 
this part of our subject with an account 
of Persius, the only remaining poetical 
_ satirist of antiquity. Upon his merits it 
-will not be necessary to descant much at 
large; his life was short, and his remains 
are unusually scanty. 
There is a life of A. Persius Flaccus, 
supposed to have been written by Probus, 
which, though abounding in errors ac- 
cording to Casaubon, yet seems to be 
the source from which every account of 
him has been taken, He was born in 
the 22d year of Tiberius, and of Rome 
787, while Fabius Persicus and Lucius 
Vitellius were consuls. The place of lis 
birth has been contested; some assigning. 
Volaterra, a town of Etruria; and others, 
the province of Liguria, but apparently 
upon no other authority than these lines, 
which occur in the sixth of his Satires: 
mihi nunc Ligus ora 
Kntepet, hibernatque meum mare, qua latus 
ingens . 
Dant scopuli, et mult litus se valle receptat. 
At ail events, he continued in the former 
[May ly 
place till he was removed to Rome in 
his twelfth year, where he studied under 
Palemon the grammarian, and Virginias 
Flaccus the rhetorician. He imbibed 
those: austere principles of the stoic 
which’are so frequently displayed in his 
writings, from Cornutus, his friend and 
master in philosophy. He is said to have 
written many things in very early youth j 
but it was by reading the tenth book of 
Lucilius that he was led to the pursuit 
of satire. We was the intimate friend of - 
Lucan, and shared with that young and 
interes:ing poet a just detestation of the 
arrogance and tyranny of Nero. The 
character of Persius appears to have 
been. very amiable. Contrary to what 
might be expected from the_harsh styles 
sarcastic severity, and the indecent al- 
lusions, which too frequently occur in his 
Satires, he was mild in his manners, 
warmly attached to his family and friends, 
and of a dispasition so reserved and 
modest as to excite the wonder of his 
licentious contemporaries. His state of 
health was generajly weak, and he died 
of a complaint in his chest (witio sto- 
machi*) before he-had attained his thir= 
tieth year. ; \ 
Six Satires are all that remain of this 
young and rigid poet. They appear to 
have been well received in his own time, 
and admired by those whose serious 
tempers and virtuous dispositions in- 
spired them with a love of study and 
a contempt for pleasure. That they 
were not calculated to please the greater 
part of his countrymen, may be teadily 
supposed. The fastidious Romans, 
among whom vice and corruption were 
completely naturalized, might be laughed 
into decency by the delicate raillery of 
Horace, but they turned with fear and 
disgust from the keen invectives and 
harsh pictures of Persius. Severity was 
foreign to Horace; he disclaimed it al. 
together. His sharpest touches were 
comparatively innocent. Admissus cir- 
cum precordia ludit. He endeavoured 
to laugh men out of their vices; and, to 
use aliomely expression of Creech} he 
did not lance or cauterize the sores, but 
tickled till he healed. But the stern 
maxims of Persius, his rigid virtue, lis 
insulting sneers, and cutting reproaches, 
alarmed without correcting, and provoked 
instead of-amending. And if he failed 
as a moralist, still less was he likely to 
please as a poet. Superior to Horace, 
* See Casaubon in Vit. Pers, 
+ Creech, Pref. to Har. 
and 
