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Juvenal is accused of being too sparing of praise. But are his critics well assured that praise from Juvenal could be accepted with safety? I do not know that a private station was "the post of honour," in those days; it was certainly that of security. Martial, Statius, V. Flaccus, and other parasites of Domitian, might indeed venture to celebrate their friends who were also those of the emperor. Juvenal's, it is probable, were of another kind; and he might be influenced no less by humanity than prudence, in the sacred silence he observed respecting them. Let it not be forgotten, however, that this intrepid champion of virtue, who, under the twelfth despot, persisted, as Dusaulx observes, in recognizing no sovereign but the senate, while he passes by those whose safety his applause might endanger, has generously celebrated the ancient assertors of liberty, in strains that Tyrtæus might have wished his own: Cras bibet, &c.

He is also charged with being too rhetorical in his language. The critics have found out that he practised at the bar, and they will therefore have it that his Satires smack of his profession, redolent declamatorem.* That

I have often wished that we had some of the pleadings of Juvenal. It cannot be affirmed, I think, that there is any natural connection between prose and verse in the same mind, though it may be observed, that most of our celebrated poets have written admirably solutâ oratione: yet if Juvenal's oratory bore any resemblance to his poetry, he yielded to few of the best ornaments of the bar. The torrens dicendi copia was his, in an eminent degree; nay, so full, so rich, so strong, and so magnificent is his eloquence, that I have heard one well qualified to judge, frequently declare that Cicero himself could hardly be said to surpass him.

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he is luxuriant, or, if it must be so, redundant may be safely granted; but I doubt whether the passages which are cited for proofs of this fault, were not reckoned amongst his beauties, by his contemporaries. The enumeration of deities in the thirteenth Satire, is well defended by Rigaltius, who allows at the same time, that if the author had inserted it any where but in a Satire, he should have accounted him a babbler; faterer Fuv. hic pinanon fuisse et verborum prodigum. He appears to me equally successful, (see his dissertation) in justifying the long list of oaths in the same Satire, which Creech, it appears, had not courage to translate.

The other passages adduced in support of this charge, are either metaphorical exaggerations, or long traits of indirect Satire, of which Juvenal was as great a master as Horace. I do not say that these are interesting to us; but they were eminently so to those for whom they were written; and by their pertinency at the time should they, by every rule of fair criticism, be estimated. The version of such passages is one of the miseries of translation.

I have also heard it objected to Juvenal, that there is in many of his Satires a want of arrangement; this is particularly observed of the sixth and tenth. I scarcely know what to reply to this. Those who are inclined to object, would not be better satisfied, perhaps, if the form of both were changed; for I suspect that there is no natural gradation in the innumerable passions which

agitate the human mind. Some must precede and others follow; but the order of march is not, nor ever was, invariable. While I acquit him of this, however, I readily acknowledge a want of care in many places, unless, it be rather attributable to a want of judgment. On some occasions, too, when he changed or enlarged his first sketch, he forgot to strike out the unnecessary lines to this are owing the awkward repetitions to be found in his longer works, as well as the transpositions, which have so often perplexed the critics, and translators.

Now I am upon this subject, I must not pass over a slovenliness in some of his lines, for which he has been justly reproached, as it would have cost him so little pains to improve them. Why he should voluntarily debase his poetry, it is difficult to say: if he thought he was imitating Horace in his laxity, his taste must suffer considerably. Horace's verses are indeed a kin to prose; but as he seldom rises, he has the art of making his low flights, in which all his motions are easy and graceful, appear the effect of choice. Juvenal was qualified" to sit where he dared not soar." His element was that of the eagle, "descent and fall to him were adverse," and, indeed he never appears more awkward than when he flutters, or rather waddles, along the ground.

I have observed in the course of the translation, that he embraced no sect with warmth. In a man of such

lively passions, the retension with which he speaks of them all, is to be admired. From his attachment to the writings of Seneca, I should incline to think that he leaned towards Stoicism; his predilection for the school, however, was not very strong; perhaps, it is to be wished that he had entered a little more deeply into it, as he seems not to have those distinct ideas of the nature of virtue and vice, which were entertained by many of the ancient philosophers, and indeed, by his immediate predecessor, Persius. As a general champion for virtue, he is commonly successful, but he sometimes misses his aim; and, in more than one instance, has confounded the nature of the several vices in his mode of attacking them he confounds too the very essence of virtue, which, in his hands, has often "no local habitation and name," but varies with the ever-varying passions, and caprices of mankind. I know not whether it be worth while to add that he is accused of holding a different language at different times, respecting the gods; since in this he differs little from the Greek and Roman poets in general; who, as often as they introduce their divinities, state, as Juvenal does, the mythological circumstances coupled with their names, without regard to the existing system of physic or morals. When they speak from themselves indeed, they give us exalted sentiments of virtue, and sound philosophy; when they indulge in poetic recollections, they present us with the fables of antiquity. Hence the gods are alternately, and as the

subject requires, venerable or contemptible; and this could not but happen, through the want of some religious standard, to which all might with confidence refer.

I come now to a more serious charge against Juvenal, that of indecency. To hear the clamour raised against him, it might be supposed, by one unacquainted with the times, that he was the only indelicate writer of his age and country. Yet Horace and Persius wrote with equal grossness: yet the rigid Stoicism of Seneca did not deter him from the use of expressions, which Juvenal perhaps would have rejected: yet the courtly Pliny poured out gratuitous indecencies in his frigid hendecasyllables, which he attempts to justify by the example of a writer to whose freedom the licentiousness of Juvenal is purity. It seems as if there was something of pique in the singular severity with which he is censured. His pure and sublime morality operates as a tacit reproach on the generality of mankind, who seek to indemnify themselves by questioning the sanctity they cannot but respect; and find a secret pleasure in persuading one another that "this dreaded satirist" was at heart, no inveterate enemy of the licentiousness he so vehemently reprehends.

When we consider the unnatural vices at which Juvenal directs his indignation, and reflect, at the same time, on the peculiar qualities of the mind, we shall not find much cause perhaps for wonder in the strength of his expressions. I should resign him in silence to the hatred

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