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rience, or my own, suffered us to suspect for a moment the labour, and the talents of more than one kind, absolutely necessary to its success in any tolerable degree. Such as I could make it, it is now before the Public.

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THE

LIFE OF JUVENAL.

DECIMUS ECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS,* the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, a considerable town of the Volsci, about the year of Christ 38.† He

Junius Juvenalis liberti loeupletis incertum filius an alumnus, ad mediam ætatem declamavit, animi magis causâ, quam quod scholæ aut foro se præpararet. The learned reader knows that this is taken from the brief account of Juvenal, commonly attributed to Suetonius, but which is probably posterior to his time; as it bears very few marks of being written by a contemporary author: it is, however, the earliest extant. The old critics, struck with its deficiencies, have attempted to render it more complete by variations, which take from its authenticity, without adding to its probability.

† I have adopted Dodwell's chronology. Sic autem (says he) se rem illam totam habuisse censeo. Exul Erat Juv. cum Satiram scriberet xv. Hoc confirmat etiam in v. 27. scholiastes. "De se Juv. dicit, quia in Ægypto militem tenuit, et ea promittit se relaturum quæ ipse vidit." Had not Dodwell been predisposed to believe this, he would have seen that the scholium "confirmed" nothing: for Juvenal makes no such promise. Proinde rixæ illi ipse adfuit quam describit. So error is built up! How does it appear that Juvenal was present at the quarrel he describes? He was in Egypt, we know; he had passed through the Ombite nome, and he speaks of the face of the country, as falling under his own inspection but this is all; and he might have heard of the quarrel, at Rome, or elsewhere. Tempus autem ipse designavit rixæ illius cum et “nuper"‡ illam contigisse dicit, et quidem “Consule Junio." Jun. duplicem habent fasti, alium Domit. in x. Consulatu collegam App. Junium Sabinum A. D. lxxxiv; alium Hadriani in suo itidem consulatu 111 collegam Q. Junium Rusticum. Quo minus prior intelligi possit, obstant illa omnia quæ in his ipsis Satiris occurrunt Domitiani temporibus recentiora. Yet, such is the capricious nature of criticism,

:

This nuper is a very convenient word. Here, we see, it signifies lately but when it is necessary to bring the works of our author down to a late period, it means, as Britannicus explains it, de longo tempore, long ago.

was either the son, or the fosterson, of a wealthy freedman, who gave him a liberal education. From the period of his birth, till he had attained the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence, by declaiming, according to the practice of those days: yet more for his own amusement, than from any intention to prepare himself, either for the schools, or the courts. of law. About this time, he seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken himself to poetry. Domitian was now at the head of the government, and shewed symptoms of reviving that system of favouritism which *. had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that satire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble, and

Dodwell's chief argument to prove the late period at which Juvenal was banished, is a passage confessedly written under Domitian, and foisted into a satire published, as he himself maintains, many years after that emperor's death! Posteriorem ergo intellexerit oportet. Hoc ergo anno (cxIx.) erat in exilio. Sed verò Româ illum ejicere non potuit Trajanus, qui ab anno usque cx11. Romæ ipse non adfuit; nec etiam ante cxv111. quo Romam venit imperator Hadriamus. Sic ante anni cxv111. finem, aut cx1x. initium, mitti vix potuit in exilium Juvenalis: erat autem cum relegaretur, octogenarius. Proinde natus fuerit vel anni xxxv111. fine, vel XXXIX. initio. Annal. 157-159.

I have made this copious extract from Dodwell, because it contains a summary of the chief arguments which induced Pythæus, Henninius, Lipsius, Salmanius, &c. to attribute the banishment of the author to Hadrian. To me they appear any thing but conclusive; for, to omit other objections for the present, why may not the Junius of the fifteenth satire be the one who was Consul with Domitian in 84, when Juvenal, by Dodwell's own calculation, was in his 47th year?

shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines on the influence of Paris, with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry: he had the prudence, however, not to trust himself to any auditory, in a reign which swarmed with informers; and his compositions were, therefore, secretly handed about amongst his friends.†

*Deinde paucorum versuum satira non absurde composita in Paridem pantomimum, poetamque Claudii Neronis, (the writer seems, in this and the following clause, to have referred to Juvenal's words; it is therefore probable that we should read Calvi Neronis, i. e. Domitian; otherwise the phrase must be given up as an absurd interpolation) ejus semestribus militiolis tumentem: genus scripture industriose excoluit. Suet.

† Et tamen diù, ne modico quidem auditorio quicquam committere ausus est. Suet. On this Dodwell observes, Tam longè aberant illa à Paridis ira concitanda, si vel superstite Paride fuissent scripta, eum irritare non possent, cum nondum emanassent in publicum. 161. He then adds that "Martial knew nothing of his poetical studies, who boasted that he was as familiar with Juvenal as Pylades with Orestes!" It appears indeed that they were acquainted; but I suspect, notwithstanding the vehemence of Martial's assertions, that there was no great cordiality between minds so very dissimilar. Some one, it seems, had accused the epigrammatist to our author, not improbably, of making too free with his thoughts and expressions. He was seriously offended; and Martial, instead of justifying himself, (whatever the charge might be) imprecates shame on his accuser in a strain of idle rant, not much above the level of a school-boy. Lib. VII. 24.

But if he had been acquainted, say they, with his friend's poetry, he would certainly have spoken of it. Not quite so certainly. These learned critics seem to think that Juvenal, like the poets he ridicules, wrote nothing but trite fooleries

But how is this made out? O, very easily; he calls him facundus Juvenalis. Here the question is finally left: for none of the commentators suppose it pos sible that the epithet can be applied to any but a rhetorician. Yet it is applied, by the author himself, to a poet of no ordinary kind;

tunc seque suamque

Terpsichoren odit facunda et nuda senectus.”

Let it me remembered too, that Martial, as is evident from the frequent allusions to Domitian's expedition against the Catti, wrote this epigram (Lib. VII. 91) in the commencement of his reign, when it is acknowledged that Juvenal had produced but one or two of his Satires.

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