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Facit indignatio versum. M. Huchon is himself engaged upon a study of the Life and Poetry of Crabbe, and in the course of a conversation with me in London, first called my attention to the volume containing this letter.
He wrote down the simple thoughts that came up into his own eager mind at the sight of so much inequality and injustice; and the motto that Arthur prefixed upon the title-page, 'Facit indignatio versum, aptly described the key-note of that fierce and angry final denunciation.
We have, however, an early and barbarous Latin translation, and there has recently been printed an Arabic commentary. G. Bergstrasser, Pseudogaleni in Hippocratis de septimanis commentarium ab Hunnino Q. F. arabice versum, Leipzig, 1914.
"Facit indignatio versum Qualemcunque potest, quales ego vel Cluvienus." How far the vexation was righteous, the indignation sincere, is a question hard to answer. There is no denying the power with which they are expressed. But to submit to this power is one thing, to sift its author's heart is another.
"Primum ego me illorum, dederim quibus esse poetis, Excerpam numero: neque enim concludere versum Dixeris esse satis; neque si quis scribat, uti nos, Sermoni propiora, pates hunc esse poetam."
"Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum " But, thanks to Popes who have wisely prohibited satirists and satire, ye are free to follow, unscathed by the Iambic muse, this or any other pastime you please, however unsuited in character to the dignity of your descent.
Thus on one occasion he is led into this error from the desire to express a poetical idea by a poetical word: just as Statius writes "distinctus" in the sense that his predecessors of ages before had used "distinctio": "Viridis quum regula longo Synnada distinctu variat:" Sylv. "penna/rum a cete/ris avi/bus di/versum."
Facit indignatio versum, he truly says of his own work; with far less flexibility, he has all the remorselessness of Swift. That singular product of the last days of paganism, the epigrammatist Palladas of Alexandria, is the only ancient author who shows the same spirit.
Are not these dispositions of the mind fertile in artifices, stratagems, inventions of all kinds? To keep even to esthetic creation, is it necessary to recall the saying facit indignatio versum? It is not necessary to demonstrate the fecundity of joy.
The play of the same name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781. No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. Ante, p. 148. This 'penurious gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315. Molière's play of L'Avare. ...facit indignatio versum. Juvenal, Sat. i. 79. See ante, iii. 252. He was sixty-four. Still, perhaps, in the Western Isles, 'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles. Tennyson's Ulysses.
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