17. “But they seemed there
to make absurd statements.” On whose assertion? Forsooth on that
of enemies, for whatever cause, for whatever reason, for this is
not now the question, still enemies. Upon reading, I found it so of
myself. Is it so? Without having received any instruction in
poetry, you would not dare to essay to read Terentianus Maurus
without a master: Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, and others without
number are needed, that any poet whatever may be understood, whose
strains seem to court even the applause of the theatre; do you in
the case of those books, which, however they may be, yet by the
confession of well-nigh the whole human race are commonly reported
to be sacred and full of divine things, rush upon them without a
guide, and dare to deliver an opinion on them without a teacher;
and, if there meet you any matters, which seem absurd, do not
accuse rather your own dullness, and mind decayed by the corruption
of this world, such as is that of all that are foolish, than those
[books] which haply cannot be understood by such persons! You
should seek some one at once pious and learned, or who by consent
of many was said to be such, that you might be both bettered by his
advice, and instructed by his learning. Was he not easy to find? He
should be searched out with pains. Was there no one in the country
in which you lived? What cause could more profitably force to
travel? Was he quite hidden, or did he not exist on the continent1730
? One
should
cross the
sea. If across the
sea he was not found in any
place near to us, you should proceed even as
far as those
lands, in
which the things related in those books are said to have taken
place. What, Honoratus, have we done of this
kind? And yet a
religion perhaps the most holy, (for as yet I am speaking as though
it were matter of doubt,) the opinion whereof hath by this time
taken possession of the whole
world, we
wretched boys condemned at
our own discretion and sentence. What if those things which in
those same Scriptures seem to offend some
unlearned persons, were
so set there for this purpose, that when things were read of such
as are abhorrent from the feeling of ordinary men, not to say of
wise and holy men, we might with much more earnestness
seek the
hidden meaning. Perceive you not how the Catamite of the
Bucolics,
1731
for whom
the
rough shepherd gushed forth into
tears, men essay to
interpret,
and
affirm that the
boy Alexis, on whom Plato also is said to have
composed a
love strain, hath some great meaning or other, but
escapes the
judgment of the
unlearned; whereas without any
sacrilege a
poet however rich may seem to have published wanton
songs?
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
