But each line, each word in
Catullus has its merit; and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It
is sufficient to rim over Cowley once; but Parnel, after the fiftieth
reading, is fresh as at the first. Besides, it is with books as with
women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging
than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye
but reaches not the affections. Terence is a modest and bashful beauty,
to whom we grant every thing, because he assumes nothing, and whose
purity and nature make a durable though not a violent impression upon
us.
But refinement, as it is the less beautiful, so it is the more dangerous
extreme, and what we are the aptest to fall into. Simplicity passes for
dulness when it is not accompanied with great elegance and propriety.
On the contrary, there is something surprising in a blaze of wit
and conceit. Ordinary readers are mightily struck with it, and
falsely imagine it to be the most difficult, as well as most
excellent way of writing. Seneca abounds with agreeable faults, says
Quinctilian--_abundat dulcibus vitiis_; and for that reason is the more
dangerous and the more apt to pervert the taste of the young and
inconsiderate.
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