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for searching only. JUVENAL AND PERSIUS 529
Aud. Would you not have me honest?
Touch. No, truly, unless thou Wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.?
These passages from Hamlet and u s You Like It Theobald paralleled
with :
rara est adeo concordia formae atque pudicitiae,8
and with Ovid, who has a somewhat similar sentiment, the two being regularly yoked together in the quotation books.
aut faciem mutes aut sis non dura, necesse est; lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae.9
We need to put Juvenal's statement into its background in order to understand Hamlet's meaning, which puzzled Ophelia and has exer-
cised the critics no little.
Juvenal is arguing that beauty should not be desired, because of its perils.
Formam optat modico pueris, maiore puellis murmure, cum Veneris fanum videt, anxia mater usque ad delicias votorum. "cur tamen," inquit, "corripias? pulchra gaudet Latona Diana." sed vetat optari faciem Lucretia qualem ipsa habuit, cuperet Rutilae Verginia gibbum accipere atque suum Rutilae dare. filius autem corporis egregii miseros trepidosque parentes semper habet; rara est adeo concordia formae atque pudicitiae.
When the loving mother passes the temple of Venus, she prays in whispered breath for her boys-more loudly, and entering into the most trifling particulars, for her daughters-that they may have beauty. "And why should I not?" she asks; "did not Latona rejoice in Diana's beauty?" Yes: but Lucretia forbids us to pray for a face like her own; and Verginia would gladly take Rutila's hump and give her own fair form to Rutila. A hand-some son keeps his parents in constant fear and misery; so rarely do modesty and good looks go together.'Î
Juvenal goes on to show at greater length that
the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.
7 As You Like It, III, 3, 28-31. Juvenal, X, 297-298.
Heroides, XVI, 289-290.
10 Ramsay, G. G., 7uuenal and Persius (Loeb), pp. 214-215; Satire X, 289-298. Cf. Guazzo, Civilc Conversation (Pet tie, in Tudor Translations), Vol. II, pp. 10 ff.
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