*

Thus far that learned critic, Barten Holyday, whose interpretation and illustrations of Juvenal are as excellent, as the verse of his translation and his English are lame and pitiful. For it is not enough to give us the meaning of a poet, which I acknowledge him to have performed most faithfully, but he must also imitate his genius, and his numbers, as far as the English will come up to the elegance of the original. In few words, it is only for a poet to translate a poem. Holyday and Stapylton † had not enough considered this, when they attempted Juvenal: but I forbear renections; only I beg leave to take notice of this sentence, where Holyday says, "a perpetual grin, like that of Horace, rather angers than amends a man." I cannot give him up the manner of Horace in low satire so easily. Let

The learned Barten Holyday was born at Oxford, in the end of the 16th century. Wood says, he was second to none for his poetry and sublime fancy, and brings in witness his " smooth translation of rough Persius," made before he was twenty years of age. He wrote a play called "Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts," which was acted at Christ Church College, before James I., and, though extremely dull and pedantic, was ill received by his Majesty. Holyday's version of Juvenal was not published till after his death, when, in 1673, it was inscribed to the dean and canons of Christ Church. As he had adopted the desperate resolution of comprizing every Latin line within an English one, the modern reader has often reason to complain, with the embarrassed gentleman in the "Critic," that the interpreter is the harder to be understood of the two.

+ Sir Robert Stapylton, a gentleman of an ancient family in Yorkshire, who followed the fortune of Charles I. in the civil war, besides several plays and poems, published a version of Juvenal, under the title of " The manners of Men described in sixteen Satires by Juvenal." There are two editions, the first published in 1647, and the last and most perfect in 1660. Sir Robert Stapylton died in 1669. His verse is as harsh and uncouth as that of Holyday, who indeed charged him with plagiary; though one would have thought the nature of the commodity would have set theft at defiance.

the chastisement of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of satire; let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he pleases; yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery. This, my lord, is your particular talent, to which even Juvenal could not arrive. It is not reading, it is not imitation of an author, which can produce this fineness; it must be inborn; it must proceed from a genius, and particular way of thinking, which is not to be taught; and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from nature. How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true, that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not. The occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted, that in effect this way does more mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him; yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said

+ I presume, this celebrated finisher of the law, who bequeath

of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think it belongs to me. The character of Zimri in my " Absalom," is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem: it is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough; and he, for whom it was intended, was too witty to resent it as an injury. † If I had railed, I might have suffered for it justly; but I managed my own work more happily, perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blindsides, and little extravagancies; to which, the wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began the frolic.

And thus, my lord, you see I have preferred the manner of Horace, and of your lordship, in this kind of satire, to that of Juvenal, and I think, reasonably. Holyday ought not to have arraigned so great an author, for that which was his excellency and his merit: or if he did, on such a palpable mistake, he might expect that some one might possibly arise, either in his own time, or after him, to rectify his error, and restore to Horace that com

ed his name to his successors in office, was a contemporary of our poet. In the time of the rebellion, that operator was called Gregory, and is supposed, with some probability, to have beheaded Charles I. See the evidence for the prisoner in Hulet's trial after the Restoration. State Trials, Vol. II. p. 388.

+ This is a strange averment, considering the "Reflections upon Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person of Honour," in composing and publishing which, the Duke of Buckingham, our author's Zimri, shewed much resentment and very little wit. See Vol. IX. p. 272.

mendation, of which he has so unjustly robbed him. And let the manes of Juvenal forgive me, if I say, that this way of Horace was the best for amending manuers, as it is the most difficult. His was an ense rescindendum; but that of Horace was a pleasant cure, with all the limbs preserved entire ; and, as our mountebanks tell us in their bills, without keeping the patient within doors for a day. What they promise only, Horace has effectually performed yet I contradict not the proposition which I formerly advanced. Juvenal's times required a more painful kind of operation; but if he had lived in the age of Horace, I must needs affirm, that he had it not about him. He took the method which was prescribed him by his own genius, which was sharp and eager; he could not rally, but he could declaim; and as his provocations were great, he has revenged them tragically. This notwithstanding, I am to say another word, which, as true as it is, will yet displease the partial admirers of our Horace. I have hinted it before, but it is time for me now to speak more plainly.

This manner of Horace is indeed the best; but Horace has not executed it altogether so happily, at least not often. The manner of Juvenal is confessed to be inferior to the former, but Juvenal has excelled him in his performance. Juvenal has railed more wittily than Horace has rallied. Horace means to make his readers laugh, but he is not sure of his experiment. Juvenal always intends to move your indignation, and he always brings about his purpose. Horace, for aught I know, might have tickled the people of his age; but amongst the moderns he is not so successful. They, who say he entertains so pleasantly, may perhaps value themselves on the quickness of their own understandings, that they can see a jest farther off than other

men; they may find occasion of laughter in the wit-battle of the two buffoons, Sarmentus and Cicerrus; and hold their sides for fear of bursting, when Rupilius and Persius are scolding. For my own part, I can only like the characters of all four, which are judiciously given; but for my heart I cannot so much as smile at their insipid raillery. I see not why Persius should call upon Brutus to revenge him on his adversary; and that because he had killed Julius Cæsar, for endeavouring to be a king, therefore he should be desired to murder Rupilius, only because his name was Mr King.* A miserable clench, in my opinion, for Horace to record I have heard honest Mr Swan† make many a better, and yet have had the grace to hold my ountenance. But it may be puns were then in fashion, as they were wit in the sermons of the last age, and in the court of King Charles II. I am sorry to say it, for the sake of Horace; but certain it is, he has no fine palate who can feed so heartily on garbage.

But I have already wearied myself, and doubt not

Persius exclamat, Per magnos, Brute, deos te

Oro, qui regis consueris tollere, cur non

Hunc Regem jugulas? Operum hoc mihi crede tuorum est.

HOR. Satire 8. Lib. I.

+ This gentleman, who was as great a gambler as a punster, regaled with his quibbles the minor class of the frequenters of Will's coffee-house, who, having neither wit enough to entitle them to mix with the critics who associated with Dryden, and were called The Witty Club, or gravity enough to discuss politics with those who formed the Grave Club, were content to laugh heartily at the puns and conundrums of Captain Swan.