Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/229

 whose pieces are struck from no common mint—such an one as I cannot point to, and only feel—is the product of a soul free from care, that knows no bitterness, that loves the woodlands, and is fitted to drink at the Muses' spring. For how can unhappy Poverty sing songs in the Pierian cave and grasp the thyrsus when it is short of cash, which the body has need of both by night and day? Horace's stomach was well filled when he shouted his cry of Evoe! Where can genius find a place except in a heart stirred by song alone, that shuts out every thought but one, and is swept along by the lords of Cirrha and of Nysa! It needs a lofty soul, not one that is dismayed at the cost of a coverlet, to have visions of chariots and horses and Gods' faces, or to tell with what a mien the Fury confounded the Rutulian ; had Virgil possessed no slave, and no decent roof over his head, all the snakes would have fallen from the Fury's hair; no dread note would have boomed from her voiceless trumpet. Do we expect Rubrenus Lappa to be as great in the buskin as the ancients, when his Atreus has to be pawned for his cloak and crockery? Numitor, poor man, has nothing to give to a needy friend, though he is rich enough to send presents to his mistress, and he had enough, too, to buy a tamed lion that needed masses of meat for his keep. It costs less, no doubt, to keep a lion than a poet; the poet's belly is more capacious!

Lucan, indeed, reclining amid the statues of his gardens, may be content with fame; but what will ever so much glory bring in to Serranus, or to the starving Saleius, if it be glory only? When 143