cuses Horace, but exalts Juvenal.-I have ended, before I was aware, the comparison of Horace and Juvenal, upon the topics of instruction and delight; and, indeed, I may safely here conclude that common-place; for, if we make Horace our minister of state in satire, and Juvenal of our private pleasures, I think the latter has no ill bargain of it. Let profit have the pre-eminence of honour, in the end of poetry. Pleasure, though but the second in degree, is the first in favour. And who would not chuse to be loved better, rather than to be more esteemed? But I am entered already upon another topic, which concerns the particular merits of these two satirists. However, I will pursue my business where I left it, and carry it farther than that common observation of the several ages in which these authors flourished. When Horace writ his Satires, the monarchy of his Cæsar was in its newness, and the government but just made easy to the conquered people. They could not possibly have forgotten the usurpation of that prince upon their freedom, nor the violent methods which he had used, in the compassing that vast design: they yet remembered his proscriptions, and the slaughter of so many noble Romans, their defenders: amongst the rest, that horrible action of his, when he forced Livia from the arms of her husband, who was constrained to see her married, as Dion relates the story, and, big with child as she was, conveyed to the bed of his insulting rival. The saine Dion Cassius gives us another instance of the crime before mentioned; that Cornelius Sisenna being reproached, rant, in consequence of reflecting upon the actor Paris. He is generally said to have died of grief; but Lepsius contends, that he survived even the accession of Hadrian. in full senate, with the licentious conduct of his wife, returned this answer, "that he had married her by the counsel of Augustus;" intimating, says my author, that Augustus had obliged him to that marriage, that he might, under that covert, have the more free access to her. His adulteries were still before their eyes: but they must be patient where they had not power. In other things that emperor was moderate enough: propriety was generally secured; and the people entertained with public shows and donatives, to make them more easily digest their lost liberty. But Augustus, who was conscious to himself of so many crimes which he had committed, thought, in the first place, to provide for his own reputation, by making an edict against Lampoons and Satires, and the authors of those defamatory writings, which my author Tacitus, from the law-term, calls famosos libellos. In the first book of his Annals, he gives the following account of it, in these words: Primus Augustus cognitionem de famosis libellis, specie legis ejus, tractavit; commotus Cassii Severi libidine, quá ciros fæminasque illustres, procacibus scriptis diffimaverat. Thus in English: "Augustus was the first, who under the colour of that law took cognisance of lampoons; being provoked to it, by the petulancy of Cassius Severus, who had defamed many illustrious persons of both sexes, in his writings." The law to which Tacitus refers, was Lex læse Majestatis; commonly called, for the sake of brevity, Majestas; or, as we say, high treason. He means not, that this law had not been enacted formerly : for it had been made by the Decemviri, and was inscribed amongst the rest in the Twelve Tables; to prevent the aspersion of the Roman majesty, either of the people themselves, or their religion, or their 66 magistrates and the infringement of it was capital; that is, the offender was whipt to death, with the fasces, which were borne before their chief officers of Rome But Augustus was the first, who restored that intermitted law. By the words, under colour of that law, he insinuates that Augustus caused it to be executed, on pretence of those libels, which were written by Cassius Severus, against the nobility; but, in truth, to save himself from such defamatory verses. Suetonius likewise makes mention of it thus: Sparsos de se in curia famosos libellos, nec expavit, et magnâ curá redarguit. Ac ne requisitis quidem auctoribus, id modo censuit, cognoscendum posthac de iis qui libellos aut carmina ad infamiam cujuspiam sub alieno nomine edant. "Augustus was not afraid of libels," says that author; yet he took all care imaginable to have them answered; and then decreed, that for the time to come, the authors of them should be punished." But Aurelius makes it yet more clear, according to my sense, that this emperor for his own sake durst not permit them: Fecit id Augustus in speciem, et quasi gratificaretur populo Romano, et primoribus urbis; sed revera ut sibi consuleret: nam habuit in animo, comprimere nimiam quorundam procacitatem in loquendo, à quâ nec ipse exemptus fuit. Nam suo nomine compescere erat invidiosum, sub alieno facile et utile. Ergo specie legis tractavit, quasi populi Romani majestas infamaretur. This, I think, is a sufficient comment on that passage of Tacitus. I will add only by the way, that the whole family of the Cæsars, and all their relations, were included in the law; because the majesty of the Romans, in the time of the empire, was wholly in that house; omnia Cæsar erat: they were all accounted sacred who belonged to him. As for Cassius Severus, he was contemporary with Horace; and was the same poet against whom he writes in his Epodes, under this title, In Cassium Severum maledicum poetam ; perhaps intending to kill two crows, according to our proverb, with one stone, and revenge both himself and his emperor together. From hence I may reasonably conclude, that Augustus, who was not altogether so good as he was wise, had some by-respect in the enacting of this law; for to do any thing for nothing, was not his maxim. Horace, as he was a courtier, complied with the interest of his master; and, avoiding the lashing of greater crimes, confined himself to the ridiculing of petty vices and common follies; excepting only some reserved cases, in his Odes and Epodes, of his own particular quarrels, which either with permission of the magistrate, or without it, every man will revenge, though I say not that he should; for prior lasit is a good excuse in the civil law, if christianity had not taught us to forgive. However, he was not the proper man to arraign great vices, at least if the stories which we hear of him are true, that he practised some, which I will not here mention, out of honour to him. It was not for a Clodius to accuse adulterers, especially when Augustus was of that number; so that though his age was not exempted from the worst of villanies, there was no freedom left to reprehend them by reason of the edict; and our poet was not fit to represent them in an odious character, because himself was dipt in the same actions. Upon this account, without farther insisting on the different tempers of Juvenal and Horace, I conclude, that the subjects which Horace chose for satire, are of a lower nature than those of which Juvenal has written. Thus I have treated, in a new method, the comparison betwixt Horace, Juvenal, and Persius; somewhat of their particular manner belonging to all of them is yet remaining to be considered. Persius was grave, and particularly opposed his gravity to lewdness, which was the predominant vice in Nero's court, at the time when he published his Satires, which was before that emperor fell into the excess of cruelty. Horace was a mild admonisher, a court-satirist, fit for the gentle times of Augustus, and more fit, for the reasons which I have already given. Juvenal was as proper for his times, as they for theirs; his was an age that deserved a more severe chastisement; vices were more gross and open, more flagitious, more encouraged by the example of a tyrant, and more protected by his authority. Therefore, wheresoever Juvenal mentions Nero, he means Domitian, whom he dares not attack in his own person, but scourges him by proxy. Heinsius urges in praise of Horace, that, according to the ancient art and law of satire, it should be nearer to comedy than tragedy; not declaiming against vice, but only laughing at it. Neither Persius nor Juvenal were ignorant of this, for they had both studied Horace. And the thing itself is plainly true. But as they had read Horace, they had likewise read Lucilius, of whom Persius says,-secuit urbem ;... et genuinum fregit in illis; meaning Mutius and Lupus; and Juvenal also mentions him in these words: Ense velut stricto, quoties Laucilius ardens Infremuit, rubet auditor, cui frigida mens est So that they thought the imitation of Lucilius was more proper to their purpose than that of Horace. "They changed satire, (says Holyday) but they changed it for the better; for the business being to reform great vices, chastisement goes farther than admonition; whereas a perpetual grin, like that of Horace, does rather anger than amend a man.” |