" even of the most wise and grave, as well as of the common people; discovering, even in the great Trebatius, to whom he addresses the first satire, his hunting after business, and following the court, as well as in the persecutor Crispinus, his impertinence and importunity. It is true he exposes Crispinus openly, as a common nuisance; but he rallies the other as a friend, more finely. The exhortations of Persius are confined to noblemen; and the stoic philosophy is that alone which he recommends to them; Juvenal exhorts to particular virtues, as they are opposed to those vices against which he declaims; but Horace laughs to shame all follies, and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples, than by the severity of precepts. This last consideration seems to incline the balance on the side of Horace, and to give him the preference to Juvenal, not only in profit, but in pleasure. But, after all, I must confess that the delight which Horace gives me, is but languishing. Be pleased still to understand, that I speak of my own taste only: he may ravish other men; but I am too stupid and insensible to be tickled. Where he barely grins himself, and as Scaliger says, only shows his white teeth, he cannot provoke me to any laughter. His urbanity, that is, his good manners, are to be commended; but his wit is faint; and his salt, if I may dare to say so, almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear: he fully satisfies my expectation; he treats his subject home: his spleen So that granting, that the counsels which they give are equally good for moral use; Horace, who gives the most various advice, and most applicable to all occasions which can occur to us in the course of our lives; as including in his discourses not only all the rules of morality, but also of cal conversation; is undoubtedly to be preferred to him, who is more circumscribed in his instructions, makes them to fewer people, and on fewer occasions, than the other. I may be pardoned for using an old saying, since it is true, and to the purpose, Bonum quo communis, co melius. Juvenal, excepting only his first satire, is, in all the rest, confined, to the exposing of some particular vice; that he lashes, and there he sticks. His sentences are truly shining and instructive; but they are sprinkled here and there. Horace is teaching us in every line, and is perpetually moral; he had found out the skill of Virgil, to hide his sentences: to give you the virtue of them, without showing them in their full extent which is the ostentation of a poet, and not his art: and this Petronius charges on the authors of his time, as a vice of writing, which was then growing on the age. Ne sententiæ extra corpus orationis emineant: he would have them weaved into the body of the work, and not appear embossed upon it, and striking directly on the reader's view. Folly was the proper quarry of Horace, and not vice: and, as there are but few notoriously wicked men, in comparison with a shoal of fools and fops; so it is a harder thing to make a man wise, than to make him honest: for the will is only to be reclaimed in the one; but the un-is raised, and he raises mine: I have the pleaderstanding is to be informed in the other. There are blind sides and follies, even in the professors of moral philosophy; and there is not any one sect of them that Horace has not exposed. Which, as it was not the design of Juvenal, who was wholly employed in lashing vices, some of them the most enormous that can be imagined; so per-ject is exhausted, and the wit of man can carry haps, it was not so much his talent. it no farther. If a fault can justly be found in vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico, tangit, & ad- him, it is that he is sometimes too luxuriant, too missus circum præcordia ludit. This was the redundant; says more than he needs, like my commendation which Persius gave him; where by friend the Plain-dealer, but never more than vitium, he means those little vices, which we call pleases. Add to this, that his thoughts are as follies, the defects of human understanding, or at just as those of Horace, and much more elevated. most the peccadillos of life, rather than the tragi- His expressions are sonorous and more noble; his cal vices, to which men are hurried by their unverse more numerous, and his words are suitable ruly passions and exorbitant desires. But in the to his thoughts, sublime and lofty. All these word omne, which is universal, he concludes with contribute to the pleasure of the reader: and the me, that the divine wit of Horace left nothing greater the soul of him who reads, his transports untouched; that he entered into the inmost are the greater. Horace is always on the amble, Freesses of nature; found out the imperfections Juvenal on the gallop; but his way is perpetually Omne sure of concernment in all he says: he drives his reader along with him; and when he is at the end of his way, I willingly stop with him. If he went another stage, it would be too far, it would make a journey of a progress, and turn delight into fatigue. When he gives over, it is a sign the sub was en carpet-ground. He goes with more impetuosity | we are more delighted with him. And besides than Horace, but as securely; and the swiftness this, the sauce of Juvenal is more poignant, to adds a more lively agitation to the spirits. The create in us an appetite of reading him. The low style of Horace is according to his subject, meat of Horace is more nourishing; but the that is generally grave: I question not but he cookery of Juvenal more exquisite; so that grantcould have raised it: for the first epistle of the ing Horace to be the more general philosopher, second book, which he writes to Augustus, (a we cannot deny that Juvenal was the greater poet, most instructive satire concerning poetry,) is of so I mean in satire. His thoughts are sharper, his much dignity in the words, and of so much elegancy indignation against vice is more vehement; his in the numbers, that the author plainly shows, spirit has more of the commonwealth genius; he the sermo pedestris, in his other satires, treats tyranny, and all the vices attending it, as rather his choice than his necessity. He was they deserve, with the utmost rigour and cona rival to Lucilius, his predecessor, and was re- sequently a noble soul is better pleased with a solved to surpass him in his own manner. Lu- zealous vindicator of Roman liberty than with a cilius, as we see by his remaining fragments, temporizing poet, a well-mannered court slave, minded neither his style nor his numbers, nor his and a man who is often afraid of laughing in the purity of words, nor his run of verse: Horace right place; who is ever decent, because he is therefore copes with him in that humble way of naturally servile. After all, Horace had the dissatire, writes under his own force, and carries a advantage of the times in which he lived; they dead weight, that he may match his competitor were better for the man, but worse for the sain the race. This I imagine was the chief reason, tirist. It is generally said, that those enormous why he minded only the clearness of his satire, vices which were practised under the reign of Doand the cleanness of expression, without ascending mitian, were not known in the time of Augustus to those heights, to which his own vigour might Cæsar: that therefore Juvenal had a larger field have carried him. But limiting his desires only than Horace. Little follies were out of doors, to the conquest of Lucilius, he had the ends of his when oppression was to be scourged instead of rival, who lived before him; but made way for a avarice; it was no longer time to turn into ridinew conquest over himself, by Juvenal his suc- cule the false opinions of philosophers, when the cessor. He could not give an equal pleasure to Roman liberty was to be asserted. There was his reader, because he used not equal instruments. more need of a Brutus in Domitian's days, to reThe fault was in the tools, and not in the work- deem or mend, than of a Horace, if he had been man. But versifications and numbers are the then living, to laugh at a fly-catcher. This reflecgreatest pleasures of poetry: Virgil knew it, and tion at the same time excuses Horace, but exalts practised both so happily, that, for aught I know, Juvenal. I have ended, before I was aware, the his greatest excellency is in his diction. In all comparison of Horace and Juvenal, upon the toother parts of poetry, he is faultless; but in this pics of pleasure and delight; and, indeed, I may he placed his chief perfection. And, give me safely here conclude that common-place; for if we leave, my lord, since I have here an apt occasion, make Horace our minister of state in satire, and to say, that Virgil could have written sharper saJuvenal of our private pleasures; I think the lattires, than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would ter has no ill bargain of it. Let profit have the have employed his talent that way. I will pro- pre-eminence of honour, in the end of poetry. duce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Pleasure, though but the second in degree, is the eologues, to justify my opinion; and with comfirst in favour. And who would not chuse to be mas after every word, to show, that he has given loved better, rather than to be more esteemed? almost as many lashes, as he has written sylla- But I am entered already upon another topic; bles; it is against a bad poet, whose ill verses he which concerns the particular merits of these two describes: Non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas, satirists. However, I will pursue my business stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen ? where I left it; and carry it farther than that But to return to my purpose: when there is any common observation of the several ages in which thing deficient in numbers and sound, the reader these authors flourished. When Horace writ his is uneasy and unsatisfied; he wants something of his compliment, desires somewhat which he finds not: and this being the manifest defect of Horace, it is no wonder that, finding it supplied in Juvenal, satires, the monarchy of his Cæsar was in its newness, and the government but just made easy have forgotten the usurpation of that prince upon to the conquered people. They could not possibly their freedom, nor the violent methods which he had used, in the compassing that vast design: | be executed, on pretence of those libels, which they yet remembered his proscriptions, and the were written by Cassius Severus, against the noslaughter of so many noble Romans, their de- bility; but, in truth, to save himself from such fenders. Amongst the rest, that horrible action defamatory verses. Suetonius likewise makes menof his, when he forced Livia from the arms of her 'ion of it thus: Sparsos de sc in Curiâ famosos husband, who was constrained to see her married, libellos, nec expavit, & magnâ curâ redarguit. as Dion relates the story, and, big with child as Ac ne requisitis quidem auctoribus, id modo censhe was, conveyed to the bed of his insulting | suit, cognoscenduin post hac, de iis qui libellos rival. The same Dion Cassius gives us another aut carmina ad infamiam cujuspiam sub alieno instance of the crime before mentioned: that Cor- nomine edant. Augustus was not afraid of nelius Sisenna, being reproached in full senate, libels, says that author: yet he took all care with the licentious conduct of his wife, returned imaginable to have them answered; and then dethis answer; that he had married her by the creed, that for the time to come, the authors of counsel of Augustus: intimating, says my author, them should be punished. But Aurelius makes that Augustus had obliged him to that marriage it yet more clear, according to my sense, that this that he might, under that covert, have the more emperor, for his own sake, durst not permit them: free access unto her. His adulteries were still before Fecit id Augustus in speciem, & quasi gratitheir eyes, but they must be patient, where they ficaretur populo Romano, & primoribus urbis ; had not power. In other things that emperor was sed revera ut sibi consideret : nam habuit in animo, moderate enough: propriety was generally secur- comprimere nimiam quorundam procacitatem in ed, and the people entertained with public shows, loquendo, à quâ nec ipse exemptus fuit. Nam and donatives, to make them more easily digest suo nomine compescere erat invidiosum, sub alieno their lost liberty. But Augustus, who was consci-facile & utile. Ergò specie legis tractavit quasi ous 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 libidini, quâ viros fœminasque illustres, procacibus scriptis diffamaverat. Thus, in English: Augustas was the first, who under the colour of that law took cognizance 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 læsæ 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 magistrates: and the infringement of it was capital; that is, the offender was whipt to death with the fasces, which were borne before the chief officers of Rome. But Augustus was the first, who restored that interinitted law: by the words, "under colour of that law," he insinuates that Augustus caused it to 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, com plied 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 læsit, 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 villainies, 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 far that learned critic, Barten Holiday, 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 poet. Holiday and Stepylton had not enough considered this, when the attempted Juvenal; but I forbear reflections; only I beg leave to take notice of this sentence, where Holiday 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 chastisement of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of satire; let him declaim as wittily and 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 pre-sharply as he pleases, yet still the nicest and most dominant 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: bis 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 Persins 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; & genuinum fregit in illis; meaning Mutius and Lupus: and Juvenal also mentions him in these words: Ense velut stricto, quoties Lucilius ardens infremuit, &c. So that they thought the imitation of Lucilius was more proper to their purpose than that of Horace. "They changed satire," says Holiday; "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, docs rather anger than amend a man." delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery. A witty man is tickled 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 poera: 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 mine own works more happily, perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides, 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 the kind satire, to that of Juvenal; and I think, reasonably. Holiday 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 errour, and restore to Horace that commendation, 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 manners, as it is the most difficult. His was, an ense rescindendum; but that of Horace was a pleasant cure, with all the limbs preserved entirely; 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 notwithstand ing, 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 eonfessed to be inferior to the former; but Juvenal has excelled him in his performance. Juvenal bas railed more wittily than florace has rallied. Horace meant to make his reader 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 countenance. 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, that he has no fine palate who can feed so heartily on garbage. But I have already wearied myself, and doubt not but I have tired your lordship's patience, with this long, rambling, and I fear trivial discourse. Upon the one half of the merits, that is, pleasure, I cannot but conclude that Juvenal was the better satirist: they who will descend into his particular praises, may find them at large in the dissertation of the learned Rigaltius to Thuanus. As for Persius, I have given the reasons why I think him inferior to both of them: yet I have one thing to add on that subject. Barten Holiday, who translated both Juvenal and Persius, has made this distinction betwixt them, which is no less true than witty; That, in Persius, the difficulty is to find a meaning; in Juvenal to choose a meaning: so crabbed is Per sius, and so copious is Juvenal: so much the understanding is employed in one, and so much the judgment in the other. So difficult it is to find any sense in the former, and the best sense of the latter. If, on the other side, any one suppose I have commended Horace below his merit, when I have allowed him but the second place, I desire him |