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Besides the hint that this gave him to set his house in order, a distinct consideration drew Isaac now to England. He had trusted much larger interests to old Cohen than he was at all disposed to leave in the hands of Cohen's successors, men of another generation, "progeniem vitiosiorem," he sincerely believed.
Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that "Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem." The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the present is worst than the last.
But that Statius had no design of extending the plan of the Achilleis beyond this period, is expressly declared in the exordium of the poem: Magnanimum Aeaciden, formidatamque Tonanti Progeniem, et patrio vetitam succedere coelo, Diva, refer; quanquam acta viri multum inclyta cantu Maeonio; sed plura vacant.
In the very moment in which the empire was ordering itself, civil wars ended; in that solemn Pax Romana which was to have endured so many ages, in the very moment in which the heart should have opened itself to hope and to joy, Horace describes, in three fine, terrible verses, four successive generations, each corrupting Rome, which grew ever the worse, ever the more perverse and evil-disposed: Aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem.
But restrain my idea within its due limits, and dictate like Solon the best laws which the infancy of the nineteenth century can bear or receive; this will abundantly suffice. Today the mox progeniem daturos vitiosiorem would make one's hair stand on end.
Every thing is debased and sophisticated, and "nothing is but what is not." All things are mixed, lowered, debased, deteriorated, by our cozening dealers and shopkeepers; and, bad as they are, there is every reason to fear that they are "mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem."
Thus, what little virtue may remain in the mind of youth is contaminated by precept, as well as example; and the rising generation is in a fair way of being even more corrupted than that which has preceded it. "AEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem."
Deinde a paucis initio facto, Deum, Deo natum, regem parentemque urbis Romanae, salvere universi Romulum jubent; pacem precibus exposcunt, uti volens propitius suam semper sospitet progeniem. Fuisse credo tum quoque aliquos, qui discerptum regem Patrum manibus taciti arguerent; manavit enim haec quoque, et perobscura, fama. Illam alteram admiratio viri, et pavor praesens nobilitavit.
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