Nor do I believe that Juvenal would have
been much inclined to amuse himself with the fancied advantages of
a profession to which he was so unworthily driven.
been much inclined to amuse himself with the fancied advantages of
a profession to which he was so unworthily driven.
Satires
) erat in exilio.
Sed vero Roma illum
ejicere non potuit Trajanus, qui ab anno usque CXII. Romæ ipse non
adfuit; nec etiam ante CXVIII. quo Romam venit imperator Hadrianus. Sic
ante anni CXVIII. finem, aut CXIX. initium, mitti vix potuit in exilium
Juvenalis: erat autem cum relegaretur, octogenarius. Proinde natus
fuerit vel anni XXXVIII. 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 Pithæus, Henninius,
Lipsius, Salmasius, etc. , 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 instead of his 80th year.
[3] "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 scripturæ industriose
excoluit. " Suet.
[4] "Et tamen diu, ne modico quidem auditorio quicquam committere ausus
est. " Suet. On this Dodwell observes: "Tam longe aberant illa a 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,[13] 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 the satirist, 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 schoolboy. Lib. vii. 24.
But if he had been acquainted 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 on the Argonauts and the Lapithæ. Were the
Satires of Juvenal to be mentioned with approbation? and, if they were,
was Martial the person to do it? Martial, the most devoted sycophant of
the age, who was always begging, and sometimes receiving, favors from
the man whose castigation was, in general, the express object of them.
Is it not more consonant to his character to suppose that he would
conceal his knowledge of them with the most scrupulous care?
But when Domitian was dead, and Martial removed from Rome, when, in
short, there was no danger of speaking out, he still appears, continue
they, to be ignorant of his friend's poetic talents. I am almost
ashamed to repeat what the critics so constantly forget--that Juvenal
was not only satirist, but a republican, who looked upon Trajan as a
usurper, no less than Domitian. And how was it "safe to speak out,"
when they all assert that he was driven into banishment by a milder
prince than Trajan, for a passage "suspected of being a figurative
allusion to the times? " What inconsistencies are these!
[5] "Mox magna frequentia, magnoque successu bis ac ter auditus est; ut
ea quoque quæ prima fecerat, inferciret novis scriptis,
'Quod non dant proceres dabit histrio,' etc.
Sat. vii. , 90-92.
Erat tum in delitiis aulæ histrio, multique fautorum ejus quotidie
provehebantur. Venit ergo in suspicionem quasi tempora figurate
notasset; ac statim per honorem militiolæ, quanquam octogenarius, urbe
summotus, missusque ad præfecturam cohortis in extrema parte tendentis
Ægypti. Id supplicii genus placuit, ut levi atque joculari delicto
par esset. Verum intra brevissimum tempus angore et tædio periit. "
Suet. Passing by the interpolations of the old grammarians, I shall,
as before, have recourse to Dodwell. "Recitavit, ni fallor, omnia,
emisitque in publicum CXVIII. (Juvenal was now fourscore! ) postquam
Romam venissit Hadrianus quem ille principem à benevolo ejus in hæc
studia animo, in hac ipsa satira in qua occurrunt verba illa de Paride
commendat. " 161. Salmasius supposed that the last of his Satires only
were published under Hadrian; Dodwell goes farther, and maintains that
the whole, with the exception of the 15th and 16th[14] ("si tamen
vere et illa Juvenalis fuerit"), were then first produced! "Illa in
Paridem dicteria histrionem, in suum (cujus nomen non prodidit auctor)
histrionem dicta interpretabatur Hadrianus. Inde exilii causa. Scripsit
ergo in exilio Sat. XV. Sed cum 'nuper Consulem Junium' fuisse dicat,
ante annum ad minimum CXX. scribere illam non potuit Juv. Nec vero
postea scripsisse, exinde colligimus, quod 'intra brevissimum tempus'
perierit. " 164. Such is the manner in which Dodwell accommodates
Suetonius to his own ideas: which seem, also, to have been those of
a much higher name, Salmasius; and, while I am now writing, to be
sanctioned by the adoption of the learned Ruperti. I never affected
singularity; yet I find myself constrained to differ from them all:
but I will state my reasons. In his 7th Satire, after speaking of
Quintilian, Juvenal adds,
"Si fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul:
Si volet hæc eadem fies de consule rhetor. "
Which, taking it for a proverbial expression, I have loosely rendered,
Fortune can make kings of pedants and pedants of kings. Dodwell,
however, understands it literally. "Hæc sane cum Quintiliani causa
dicat, vix est quin Q. talem ostendant è rhetore nimirum 'nobilem,
senatorium, consularem,' et quidem illis divitiis instructum, quæ
essent etiam ad censum senatorium necessariæ. " 152. Now, as Pliny, who
probably died before Trajan, observes that Quintilian was a man of
moderate fortune, it follows that he must have acquired the wealth and
honors of which Juvenal speaks at a later period. Dodwell fixes this to
the time when Hadrian entered Rome, CXVIII. , which he states to be also
that of the author's banishment. It must be confessed that Juvenal lost
no time in exerting himself: he had remained silent fourscore years;
he now bursts forth at once, as Dodwell expresses it, recites all his
Satires without intermission ("unis continuisque recitationibus"),
celebrates Quintilian, attacks the emperor, and is immediately
dispatched to Egypt! 162. Here is a great deal of business crowded into
the compass of a few weeks, or perhaps days; but let us examine it a
little more closely. Rigaltius, with several of the commentators, sees
in the lines above quoted a sneer at Quintilian, and he accounts for
the rhetor's silence respecting our author, by the resentment which he
supposes him to have felt at it. As this militates strongly against
Dodwell's ideas, he will not allow that any thing severe was intended
by the passage in question; and adds that Quintilian could not mention
Juvenal as a satirist, because he had not then written any satires.
160. I believe that both are wrong. In speaking of the satirists,
Quintilian says that Persius had justly acquired no inconsiderable
degree of reputation by the little he had written. Lib. x. , c. 1. He
then adds, "sunt clari hodieque, et qui olim nominabuntur. " There are
yet some excellent ones, some who will be better known hereafter. It
always appeared to me, that this last phrase alluded to our author,
with whose extraordinary merits Quintilian was probably acquainted, but
whom he did not choose, or, perhaps, did not dare to mention in a work
composed under a prince whose crimes this unnamed satirist persecuted
with a severity as unmitigated as it was just. Quintilian had no
political courage. Either from a sense of kindness or fear, he flatters
Domitian almost as grossly as Martial does: but his life was a life of
innocence and integrity; I will therefore say no more on this subject;
but leave it to the reader to consider whether such a man was likely to
startle the "god of his idolatry" by celebrating the Satires of Juvenal.
Nor do I agree with the commentators whom Dodwell has followed, in
the literal interpretation of those famous lines. "Unde igitur tot,"
etc. Sat. vii. , v. 188-194. Quintilian was rich, when the rest of
his profession were in the utmost want. Here then was an instance of
good fortune. He was lucky; and with luck a man may be any thing;
handsome, and witty, and wise, and noble, and high-born, and a member
of the senate. Who does not see in this a satirical exaggeration?
Wisdom, beauty, and high birth luck can not give: why then should the
remainder of this passage be so strictly interpreted, and referred to
the actual history of Quintilian? The lines, "Si fortuna volet," etc. ,
are still more lax: a reflection thrown out at random, and expressing
the greatest possible extremes of fortune. Yet on these authorities
principally (for the passage of Ausonius,[15] written more than two
centuries later, is of no great weight) has Quintilian been advanced to
consular honors; while Dodwell, who, as we have seen, has taken immense
pains to prove that they could only be conferred on him by Hadrian, has
hence deduced his strongest arguments for the late date of our author's
Satires; which he thus brings down to the period of mental imbecility!
Hence, too, he accounts for the different ideas of Quintilian's wealth
in Juvenal and Pliny. When the latter wrote, he thinks Quintilian had
not acquired much property, he was "modicus facultatibus:" when the
former, "he had been enriched by the imperial bounty, and was capable
of senatorial honors. " Yet Pliny might not think his old master rich
enough to give a fortune with his daughter adequate to the expectations
of a man of considerable rank (lib. vi. , 32), though Juvenal, writing
at the same instant, might term him wealthy, in comparison of the
rhetoricians who were starving around him; and count him a peculiar
favorite of fortune. Let us bear in mind, too, that Juvenal is a
satirist, and a poet: in the latter capacity, the minute accuracy of an
annalist can not be expected at his hands; and in the former--as his
object was to show the general discouragement of literature, he could
not, consistently with his plan, attribute the solitary good fortune of
Quintilian to any thing but luck.
But why was Quintilian made consul? Because, replies Dodwell (164),
when Hadrian first entered Rome he was desirous of gaining the
affections of the people; which could be done no way so effectually as
by conciliating the esteem of the literati; and he therefore conferred
this extraordinary mark of favor on the rhetorician. How did it escape
this learned man, that he was likely to do himself more injury in their
opinion by the banishment of Juvenal at that same instant? an old
man of fourscore, who, by his own testimony, had spoken of him with
kindness, in a poem which did more honor to his reign than any thing
produced in it! and whose only crime was an allusion to the influence
of a favorite player! Indeed, the informers of Hadrian's reign must
have had more sagacious noses than those of Domitian's, to smell out
his fault. What Statius, in his time, was celebrated for the recitation
of a Thebaid, or what Paris, for the purchase of an untouched Agave?
And where, might we ask Dodwell, was the "jest" of sending a man on
the verge of the grave, in a military capacity, into Egypt? Could the
most supple of Hadrian's courtiers look on it as any thing but a wanton
exercise of cruelty? At eighty, the business of satirizing, either in
prose or verse, is nearly over: what had the emperor then to fear? And
to sum up all in a word, can any rational being seriously persuade
himself that the Satires of Juvenal were produced, for the first time,
by a man turned of fourscore?
[6] But why should he complain at all? Was he ashamed of being known to
possess an influence at the imperial court? Those were not very modest
times, nor is modesty, in general, the crying vice of the "quality. "
He was more likely to have gloried in it. If Bareas, or Camerinus, or
any of the old nobility, had complained of the author, I should have
thought it more reasonable: but Domitian cared nearly as little for
them as Paris himself did.
[7] I hold, in opposition to the commentators, that Juvenal was known
in Domitian's time, not only as a poet, but as a keen and vigorous
satirist. He himself, though he did not choose to commit his safety
to a promiscuous audience, appears to make no great secret of his
peculiar talents. In this Satire, certainly prior to many of the
others, he tells us that he accompanied Umbritius, then on his way
to Cumæ, out of the gates of Rome. Umbritius predicted, as Tacitus
says, the death of Galba, at which time he was looked upon as the most
skillful aruspex of the age. He could not then be a young man; yet, at
quitting the capital, he still talks of himself as in the first stage
of old age, "nova canities, et prima et recta senectus. " His voluntary
exile, therefore, could not possibly have taken place long after the
commencement of Domitian's reign; when he speaks of Juvenal as already
celebrated for his Satires, and modestly doubts whether the assistance
of so able a coadjutor as himself would be accepted.
This, at least, serves to prove in what light the author wished to
be considered: for the rest, there can, I think, exclusively of what
I have urged, be little doubt that this Satire was produced under
Domitian. It is known, from other authorities, that he revived the
law of Otho in all its severity, that he introduced a number of
low and vicious characters, "pinnirapi cultos juvenes, juvenesque
lanistæ," into the Equestrian Order, that he was immoderately attached
to building, etc. , circumstances much dwelt on in this Satire, and
applicable to him alone.
[8] The following line, "Dacicus et scripto radiat Germanicus auro,"
seems to militate against the early date of this Satire. Catanæus and
Arntzenius say that Juvenal could not mean Domitian here, because "he
did not think well enough of him to do him such honor; whereas he was
fond of commending Trajan. " I see no marks of this fondness; nor were
the titles, if meant of Domitian, intended to do him honor, but to
reprove his vanity.
Whether medals were ever struck with the inscription of Dacicus and
Germanicus in honor of Domitian, I am not qualified to determine.
Certain it is, however, that he assumed both these titles; the latter,
indeed, in common with his predecessors from the time of Germ. Cæsar;
and the former, in consequence of his pretended success in the Dacian
war, for which he is bitterly sneered at by Pliny, as well as Dio.
It is given to him, among others, by Martial, who dedicates his
eighth book, "Imper. Domit. Cæs. Augusto Germanico _Dacico_. " Dodwell
appropriates (as I do) the line to Domitian--a little inconsistently,
it must be confessed; but that is his concern. If, however, it be
adjudged to Trajan, I should not for that bring down the date of
the Satire to a later period. Juvenal revised and enlarged all his
works, when he gave them to the public: this under consideration,
in particular, has all the marks of having received considerable
additions; and one of them might be the line in question.
[9] This satire has contributed as much perhaps as the seventh to
persuade Lipsius, Salmasius, and others, that Juvenal wrote his best
pieces when he was turned of fourscore.
"----Stupet hæc, qui jam post terga reliquit
Sexaginta annos, Fonteio Consule natus! "
There were four consuls of this name. The first is out of the question;
the second was consul A. D. 13, the third in 59, and the fourth in 68.
If we take the second, and add any intermediate number of years between
sixty and seventy, for Calvinus had passed his sixtieth year, it will
just bring us down to the early part of Domitian's reign, which I
suppose to be the true date of this Satire; for I can not believe, as
I have already observed, that this, or indeed any part of Juvenal's
works, was produced when he was trembling on the verge of ninety, as
must be the case if either of the latter periods be adopted. But he
observes, "Hæc quota pars scelerum quæ custos Gallicus urbis," etc.
Now Rutilius Gallicus was præfect of Rome from the end of 85 to 88
(Domitian succeeded his brother in 81), in which year he died. There
seems to be no necessity for mentioning a magistrate as sitting, who
was not then in existence; nor can any reason be assigned, if the
Satire was written under Hadrian, for the author's recurring to the
times of Domitian for a name, when that of the "custos urbis" of
the day would have better answered his purpose. It is probable that
Gallicus succeeded Pegasus, who was præfect when the ridiculous farce
of the turbot took place (Sat. iv. ); this would fix it to 85, the year
before Fuscus, who was present at it, was sent into Dacia.
[10] This Satire is referred by the critics to the reign of Trajan,
because Marius, whose trial took place under that prince, is mentioned
in it. I have attributed it to an earlier period; principally moved by
the consideration that it presents a faithful copy of the state of Rome
and the conquered provinces under Nero, and which could scarcely have
been given in such vivid colors after the original had ceased to affect
the mind. What Rome was under Domitian, may be seen in the second
Satire, and the difference, which has not been sufficiently attended
to, is striking in the extreme. I would observe too, that Juvenal
speaks here of the _crimes_ of Marius--they might be, and probably
were, committed long before his condemnation; but under Domitian it was
scarcely safe to attempt bringing such gigantic peculators to justice.
Add to this, that the other culprits mentioned in it are all of them
prior to that prince; nay, one of them, Capito, was tried so early as
the beginning of Nero's reign. The insertion of Marius, however (which
might be an after-thought), forms a main argument with Dodwell for the
very late date of this Satire; he observes that it had escaped Lipsius
and Salmasius; and boasts of it as "longe certissimum," etc. 156.
[11] I have often wondered at the stress which Dodwell and others lay
on the concluding lines of this Satire: "Experiar quid concedatur,"
etc. They fancy that the engagement was seriously made, and religiously
observed. Nothing was ever farther from the mind of Juvenal. It is
merely a poetical, or, if you will, a satirical, flourish; since there
is not a single Satire, I am well persuaded, in which the names of many
who were alive at the time are not introduced. Had Dodwell forgotten
Quintilian? or, that he had allowed one of his Satires, at least, to be
prior to this?
[12] 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.
[13] But how to this ascertained? Very easily; he calls him "fecundus
Juvenalis. " Here the question is finally left; for none of the
commentators suppose it possible that the epithet can be applied to any
but a rhetorician. Yet it is applied by the same writer to a poet of no
ordinary kind;
"Accipe, _facundi_ Culicem, studiose. Maronis
Ne, nugis positis, arma virumque canas. "
Lib. xiv. , 185.
And, by the author himself, to one who had grown old in the art:
"--------tunc seque suamque
Terpsichoren odit _facunda_ et nuda senectus. "
Let it be 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 that prince's
reign, when it is acknowledged that Juvenal had produced but one or two
of his Satires.
[14] The former of these, Dodwell says, was written in exile, after
the author was turned of eighty. Salmasius, more rationally, conceives
it to have been produced at Rome. Giving full credit, however, to
the story of his late banishment, he is driven into a very awkward
supposition. "An non alio tempore, atque alia de causa Ægyptum lustrare
juvenis potuit Juvenalis? animi nempe gratia, και της ἱστοριας χαριν,
ut urbes regionis illius, populorumque mores cognosceret? " Would it not
be more simple to attribute his exile at once to Domitian?
With respect to the 16th Satire, Dodwell, we see, hesitates to
attribute it to Juvenal; and, indeed, the old Scholiast says, that, in
his time, many thought it to be the work of a different hand. So it
always appeared to me. It is unworthy of the author's best days, and
seems but little suited to his worst. He was at least eighty-one, they
say, when he wrote it, yet it begins--
"----Nam si----
Me pavidum excipiet tyronem porta secundo
Sidere," etc.
Surely, at this age, the writer resembled Priam, the _tremulus miles_,
more than the timid tyro!
Nor do I believe that Juvenal would have
been much inclined to amuse himself with the fancied advantages of
a profession to which he was so unworthily driven. But the Satire
must have been as ill-timed for the army as for himself, since it
was probably, at this period, in a better state of subjection than
it had been for many reigns. I suppose it to be written in professed
imitation of our author's manner, about the age of Commodus. It has
considerable merit, though the first and last paragraphs are feeble and
tautological; and the execution of the whole is much inferior to the
design.
[15] "Q. consularia per Clementem ornamenta sortitus, honestamenta
potius videtur quam insignia potestatis habuisse. In gratiar. act. "
Quintilian, then, was not actually consul: but this is no great
matter--it is of more consequence to ascertain the Clemens by whom he
was so honored. In the preface to his fourth book, he says, "Cum vero
mihi Dom. Augustus sororis suæ nepotum delegavit curam," etc. Vespasian
had a daughter, Domitilla, who married, and died long before her
father: she left a daughter, who was given to Flavius Clemens, by whom
she had two sons. These were the grandchildren of Domitian's sister,
of whom Quintilian speaks; and to their father, Clemens, according
to Ausonius, he was indebted for the show, though not the reality,
of power. There is nothing incongruous in all this; yet so possessed
are Dodwell and his numerous followers (among whom I am sorry to rank
Dusaulx) of the late period at which it happened, that they will needs
have Hadrian to be meant by Domitianus Augustus, though the detestable
flattery which follows the words I have quoted most indisputably proves
it to be Domitian; and though Dodwell himself is forced to confess
that he can find no Clemens under Hadrian to whom the passage applies:
"Quis autem fuerit Clemens ille qui Q. ornamenta illa sub Hadriano
impetraverit, me sane fateor ignorare! " 165. Another circumstance
which has escaped all the commentators, and which is of considerable
importance in determining the question, remains to be noticed. At the
very period of which Dodwell treats, the boundaries of the empire were
politically contracted, while Juvenal, whenever he has occasion to
speak on the subject, invariably dwells on extending or securing them.
AN
ESSAY ON THE ROMAN SATIRISTS,
BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.
It will now be expected from me, perhaps, to say something on the
nature and design of Satire; but in truth this has so frequently been
done, that it seems, at present, to have as little of novelty as of
utility to recommend it.
Dryden, who had diligently studied the French critics, drew up from
their remarks, assisted by a cursory perusal of what Casaubon,
Heinsius, Rigaltius, and Scaliger had written on the subject, an
account of the rise and progress of dramatic and satiric poetry among
the Romans; which he prefixed to his translation of Juvenal. What
Dryden knew, he told in a manner that renders every attempt to recount
it after him equally hopeless and vain; but his acquaintance with works
of literature was not very extensive, while his reliance on his own
powers sometimes betrayed him into inaccuracies, to which the influence
of his name gives a dangerous importance.
"The comparison of Horace with Juvenal and Persius," which makes a
principal part of his Essay, is not formed with much niceness of
discrimination, or accuracy of judgment. To speak my mind, I do not
think that he clearly perceived or fully understood the characters of
the first two: of Persius indeed he had an intimate knowledge; for,
though he certainly deemed too humbly of his poetry, he yet speaks of
his beauties and defects in a manner which evinces a more than common
acquaintance with both.
What Dryden left imperfect has been filled up in a great measure by
Dusaulx, in the preliminary discourse to his translation of Juvenal,
and by Ruperti, in his critical Essay "De diversa Satirarum Lucil.
Horat. Pers. et Juvenalis indole. " With the assistance of the
former of these I shall endeavor to give a more extended view of the
characteristic excellencies and defects of the rival Satirists than
has yet appeared in our language; little solicitous for the praise of
originality, if I may be allowed to aspire to that of candor and truth.
Previously to this, however, it will be necessary to say something on
the supposed origin of Satire: and, as this is a very beaten subject, I
shall discuss it as briefly as possible.
It is probable that the first metrical compositions of the Romans, like
those of every other people, were pious effusions for favors received
or expected from the gods: of these, the earliest, according to Varro,
were the hymns to Mars, which, though used by the Salii in the Augustan
age, were no longer intelligible. To these succeeded the Fescennine
verses, which were sung, or rather recited, after the vintage and
harvest, and appear to have been little more than rude praises of the
tutelar divinities of the country, intermixed with clownish jeers
and sarcasms, extemporally poured out by the rustics in some kind of
measure, and indifferently directed at the audience, or at one another.
These, by degrees, assumed the form of a dialogue; of which, as nature
is every where the same, and the progress of refinement but little
varied, some resemblance may perhaps be found in the grosser eclogues
of Theocritus.
Thus improved (if the word may be allowed of such barbarous
amusements), they formed, for near three centuries, the delight of
that nation: popular favor, however, had a dangerous effect on the
performers, whose licentiousness degenerated at length into such wild
invective, that it was found necessary to restrain it by a positive
law: "Si qui populo occentassit, carmenve condisit, quod infamiam faxit
flagitiumve alteri, fuste ferito. " From this time we hear no farther
complaints of the Fescennine verses, which continued to charm the
Romans; until, about a century afterward, and during the ravages of a
dreadful pestilence, the senate, as the historians say, in order to
propitiate the gods, called a troop of players from Tuscany, to assist
at the celebration of their ancient festivals. This was a wise and a
salutary measure: the plague had spread dejection through the city,
which was thus rendered more obnoxious to its fury; and it therefore
became necessary, by novel and extraordinary amusements, to divert the
attention of the people from the melancholy objects around them.
As the Romans were unacquainted with the language of Tuscany, the
players, Livy tells us, omitted the modulation and the words, and
confined themselves solely to gestures, which were accompanied by the
flute. This imperfect exhibition, however, was so superior to their
own, that the Romans eagerly strove to attain the art; and, as soon as
they could imitate what they admired, graced their rustic measures with
music and dancing. By degrees they dropped the Fescennine verses for
something of a more regular kind, which now took the name of SATIRE. [16]
These Satires (for as yet they had but little claim to the title of
dramas) continued, without much alteration, to the year 514, when
Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and a freedman of L. Salinator,
who was undoubtedly acquainted with the old comedy of his country,
produced a regular play. That it pleased can not be doubted, for it
surpassed the Satires, even in their improved state; and, indeed,
banished them for some time from the scene. They had, however, taken
too strong a hold of the affections of the people to be easily
forgotten, and it was therefore found necessary to reproduce and join
them to the plays of Andronicus (the superiority of which could not be
contested), under the name of Exodia or After-pieces. These partook, in
a certain degree, of the general amelioration of the stage; something
like a story was now introduced into them, which, though frequently
indecent and always extravagant, created a greater degree of interest
than the reciprocation of gross humor and scurrility in unconnected
dialogues.
Whether any of the old people still regretted this sophistication of
their early amusements, it is not easy to say; but Ennius, who came to
Rome about twenty years after this period, and who was more than half
a Grecian, conceived that he should perform an acceptable service by
reviving the ancient Satires. [17] He did not pretend to restore them
to the stage, for which indeed the new pieces were infinitely better
calculated, but endeavored to adapt them to the closet, by refining
their grossness and softening their asperity. Success justified the
attempt. Satire, thus freed from action, and formed into a poem, became
a favorite pursuit, and was cultivated by several writers of eminence.
In imitation of his model, Ennius confined himself to no particular
species of verse, nor indeed of language, for he mingled Greek
expressions with his Latin at pleasure. It is solely with a reference
to this new attempt that Horace and Quintilian are to be understood,
when they claim for the Romans the invention[18] of this kind of
poetry; and certainly they had opportunities of judging which we have
not, for little of Ennius, and nothing of the old Satire, remains.
It is not necessary to pursue the history of Satire farther in this
place, or to speak of another species of it, the Varronian, or, as
Varro himself called it, the Menippean, which branched out from
the former, and was a medley of prose and verse; it will be a more
pleasing, as well as a more useful employ, to enter a little into
what Dryden, I know not for what reason, calls the most difficult
part of his undertaking--"a comparative view of the Satirists;" not
certainly with the design of depressing one at the expense of another
(for, though I have translated Juvenal, I have no quarrel with Horace
and Persius), but for the purpose of pointing out the characteristic
excellencies and defects of them all. To do this the more effectually,
it will be previously necessary to take a cursory view of the times in
which their respective works were produced.
LUCILIUS, to whom Horace, forgetting what he had said in another place,
attributes the invention of Satire, flourished in the interval between
the siege of Carthage and the defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons, by
Marius. He lived therefore in an age in which the struggle between
the old and new manners, though daily becoming more equal, or rather
inclining to the worse side, was still far from being decided. The
freedom of speaking and writing was yet unchecked by fear, or by any
law more precise than that which, as has been already mentioned, was
introduced to restrain the coarse ebullitions of rustic malignity.
Add to this, that Lucilius was of a most respectable family (he was
great-uncle to Pompey), and lived in habits of intimacy with the chiefs
of the republic, with Lælius, Scipio, and others, who were well able
to protect him from the Lupi and Mutii of the day, had they attempted,
which they probably did not, to silence or molest him. Hence that
boldness of satirizing the vicious by name, which startled Horace, and
on which Juvenal and Persius delight to felicitate him.
Too little remains of Lucilius, to enable us to judge of his manner:
his style seems, however, to bear fewer marks of delicacy than of
strength, and his strictures appear harsh and violent. With all this,
he must have been an extraordinary man; since Horace, who is evidently
hurt by his reputation, can say nothing worse of his compositions than
that they are careless and hasty, and that if he had lived at a more
refined period, he would have partaken of the general amelioration. I
do not remember to have heard it observed, but I suspect that there was
something of political spleen in the excessive popularity of Lucilius
under Augustus, and something of courtly complacency in the attempt of
Horace to counteract it. Augustus enlarged the law of the twelve tables
respecting libels; and the people, who found themselves thus abridged
of the liberty of satirizing the great by name, might not improbably
seek to avenge themselves by an overstrained attachment to the works of
a man who, living, as they would insinuate, in better times, practiced
without fear, what he enjoyed without restraint.
The space between Horace and his predecessor, was a dreadful interval
"filled up with horror all, and big with death. " Luxury and a long
train of vices, which followed the immense wealth incessantly poured in
from the conquered provinces, sapped the foundations of the republic,
which were finally shaken to pieces by the civil wars, the perpetual
dictatorship of Cæsar, and the second triumvirate, which threw the
Roman world, without a hope of escape, into the power of an individual.
Augustus, whose sword was yet reeking with the best blood of the
state, now that submission left him no excuse for farther cruelty,
was desirous of enjoying in tranquillity the fruits of his guilt. He
displayed, therefore, a magnificence hitherto unknown; and his example,
which was followed by his ministers, quickly spread among the people,
who were not very unwilling to exchange the agitation and terror of
successive proscriptions, for the security and quiet of undisputed
despotism.
Tiberius had other views, and other methods of accomplishing them.
He did not indeed put an actual stop to the elegant institutions of
his predecessor, but he surveyed them with silent contempt, and they
rapidly degenerated. The race of informers multiplied with dreadful
celerity; and danger, which could only be averted by complying with a
caprice not always easy to discover, created an abject disposition,
fitted for the reception of the grossest vices, and eminently favorable
to the designs of the emperor; which were to procure, by universal
depravation, that submission which Augustus sought to obtain by the
blandishments of luxury and the arts.
From this gloomy and suspicious tyrant, the empire was transferred to
a profligate madman. It can scarcely be told without indignation, that
when the sword of Chærea had freed the earth from his disgraceful sway,
the senate had not sufficient virtue to resume the rights of which they
had been deprived; but, after a timid debate, delivered up the state to
a pedantic dotard, incapable of governing himself.
To the vices of his predecessors, Nero added a frivolity which rendered
his reign at once odious and contemptible. Depravity could reach no
farther, but misery might yet be extended. This was fully experienced
through the turbulent and murderous usurpations of Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius; when the accession of Vespasian and Titus gave the groaning
world a temporary respite.
To these succeeded Domitian, whose crimes form the subject of many a
melancholy page in the ensuing work, and need not therefore be dwelt
on here. Under him, every trace of ancient manners was obliterated;
liberty was unknown, law openly trampled upon, and, while the national
rites were either neglected or contemned, a base and blind superstition
took possession of the enfeebled and distempered mind.
Better times followed. Nerva, and Trajan, and Hadrian, and the
Antonines, restored the Romans to safety and tranquillity; but they
could do no more; liberty and virtue were gone forever; and after a
short period of comparative happiness, which they scarcely appear to
have deserved, and which brought with it no amelioration of mind, no
return of the ancient modesty and frugality, they were finally resigned
to destruction.
I now proceed to the "comparative view" of which I have already spoken:
as the subject has been so often treated, little of novelty can be
expected from it; to read, compare, and judge, is almost all that
remains.
HORACE, who was gay, and lively, and gentle, and affectionate, seems
fitted for the period in which he wrote. He had seen the worst times
of the republic, and might therefore, with no great suspicion of his
integrity, be allowed to acquiesce in the infant monarchy, which
brought with it stability, peace, and pleasure. How he reconciled
himself to his political tergiversation it is useless to inquire. [19]
What was so general, we may suppose, brought with it but little
obloquy; and it should be remembered, to his praise, that he took no
active part in the government which he had once opposed. [20]
If he celebrates the master of the world, it is not until he is asked
by him whether he is ashamed that posterity should know them to be
friends; and he declines a post, which few of his detractors have merit
to deserve, or virtue to refuse.
His choice of privacy, however, was in some measure constitutional;
for he had an easiness of temper which bordered on indolence; hence he
never rises to the dignity of a decided character. Zeno and Epicurus
share his homage and undergo his ridicule by turns: he passes without
difficulty from one school to another, and he thinks it a sufficient
excuse for his versatility, that he continues, amid every change, the
zealous defender of virtue. Virtue, however, abstractedly considered,
has few obligations to his zeal.
But though, as an ethical writer, Horace has not many claims to the
esteem of posterity; as a critic, he is entitled to all our veneration.
Such is the soundness of his judgment, the correctness of his taste,
and the extent and variety of his knowledge, that a body of criticism
might be selected from his works, more perfect in its kind than any
thing which antiquity has bequeathed us.
As he had little warmth of temper, he reproves his contemporaries
without harshness. He is content to "dwell in decencies," and, like
Pope's courtly dean, "never mentions hell to ears polite. " Persius, who
was infinitely better acquainted with him than we can pretend to be,
describes him, I think, with great happiness:
"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit,
Callidus excusso populum suspendere naso. "
"He, with a sly insinuating grace,
Laugh'd at his friend, and look'd him in the face:
Would raise a blush, where secret vice he found,
And tickle, while he gently probed the wound:
With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled;
But made the desperate passes when he smiled. "
These beautiful lines have a defect under which Dryden's translations
frequently labor; they do not give the true sense of the original.
Horace "raised no blush" (at least Persius does not insinuate any such
thing), and certainly "made no desperate passes. "[21] His aim rather
seems to be, to keep the objects of his satire in good humor with
himself, and with one another.
To raise a laugh at vice, however (supposing it feasible), is not
the legitimate office of Satire, which is to hold up the vicious, as
objects of reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may
be deterred by their sufferings. But it is time to be explicit. To
laugh even at fools is superfluous; if they understand you, they will
join in the merriment; but more commonly, they will sit with vacant
unconcern, and gaze at their own pictures: to laugh at the vicious,
is to encourage them; for there is in such men a willfulness of
disposition, which prompts them to bear up against shame, and to show
how little they regard slight reproof, by becoming more audacious in
guilt. Goodness, of which the characteristic is modesty, may, I fear,
be shamed; but vice, like folly, to be restrained, must be overawed.
Labeo, says Hall, with great energy and beauty--
"Labeo is whipt, and laughs me in the face;
Why? for I smite, and hide the galled place.
Gird but the Cynic's helmet on his head,
Cares he for Talus, or his flayle of lead? "
PERSIUS, who borrowed so much of Horace's language, has little of his
manner. The immediate object of his imitation seems to be Lucilius;
and if he lashes vice with less severity than his great prototype, the
cause must not be sought in any desire to spare what he so evidently
condemned. But he was thrown "on evil times;" he was, besides, of a
rank distinguished enough to make his freedom dangerous, and of an age
when life had yet lost little of its novelty; to write, therefore,
even as he has written, proves him to be a person of very singular
courage and virtue.
In the interval between Horace and Persius, despotism had changed its
nature: the chains which the policy of Augustus concealed in flowers,
were now displayed in all their hideousness. The arts were neglected,
literature of every kind discouraged or disgraced, and terror and
suspicion substituted in the place of the former ease and security.
Stoicism, which Cicero accuses of having infected poetry, even in his
days, and of which the professors, as Quintilian observes, always
disregarded the graces and elegancies of composition, spread with
amazing rapidity. [22] In this school Persius was educated, under the
care of one of its most learned and respectable masters.
Satire was not his first pursuit; indeed, he seems to have somewhat
mistaken his talents when he applied to it. The true end of this
species of writing, as Dusaulx justly says, is the improvement of
society; but for this, much knowledge of mankind ("quicquid agunt
homines") is previously necessary. Whoever is deficient in that, may be
an excellent moral and philosophical poet; but can not, with propriety,
lay claim to the honors of a satirist.
And Persius was moral and philosophical in a high degree: he was also
a poet of no mean order. But while he grew pale over the page of Zeno,
and Cleanthes, and Chrysippus; while he imbibed, with all the ardor
of a youthful mind, the paradoxes of those great masters, together
with their principles, the foundations of civil society were crumbling
around him, and soliciting his attention in vain. To judge from what
he has left us, it might almost be affirmed that he was a stranger
in his own country. The degradation of Rome was now complete; yet he
felt, at least he expresses, no indignation at the means by which it
was effected: a sanguinary buffoon was lording it over the prostrate
world; yet he continued to waste his most elaborate efforts on the
miserable pretensions of pedants in prose and verse! If this savor
of the impassibility of Stoicism, it is entitled to no great praise
on the score of outraged humanity, which has stronger claims on a
well-regulated mind, than criticism, or even philosophy.
Dryden gives that praise to the dogmas of Persius, which he denies to
his poetry. "His verse," he says, "is scabrous and hobbling, and his
measures beneath those of Horace. " This is too severe; for Persius has
many exquisite passages, which nothing in Horace will be found to equal
or approach. The charge of obscurity has been urged against him with
more justice; though this, perhaps, is not so great as it is usually
represented. Casaubon could, without question, have defended him more
successfully than he has done; but he was overawed by the brutal
violence of the elder Scaliger; for I can scarcely persuade myself that
he really believed this obscurity to be owing to "the fear of Nero, or
the advice of Cornutus. " The cause of it should be rather sought in his
natural disposition, and in his habits of thinking. Generally speaking,
however, it springs from a too frequent use of tropes, approaching in
almost every instance to a catachresis, an anxiety of compression,
and a quick and unexpected transition from one overstrained figure to
another. After all, with the exception of the sixth Satire, which, from
its abruptness, does not appear to have received the author's last
touches, I do not think there is much to confound an attentive reader:
some acquaintance, indeed, with the porch "braccatis illita Medis,"
is previously necessary. His life may be contemplated with unabated
pleasure: the virtue he recommends, he practiced in the fullest extent;
and at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left
behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth.
JUVENAL wrote at a period still more detestable than that of Persius.
Domitian, who now governed the empire, seems to have inherited the bad
qualities of all his predecessors. Tiberius was not more hypocritical,
nor Caligula more bloody, nor Claudius more sottish, nor Nero more
mischievous, than this ferocious despot; who, as Theodorus Gadareus
indignantly declared of Tiberius, was truly πηλον αἱματι πεφυραμενον· a
lump of clay kneaded up with blood!
Juvenal, like Persius, professes to follow Lucilius; but what was
in one a simple attempt, is in the other a real imitation, of his
manner. [23] Fluent and witty as Horace, grave and sublime as Persius;
of a more decided character than the former, better acquainted with
mankind than the latter; he did not confine himself to the mode of
regulating an intercourse with the great, or to abstract disquisitions
on the nature of scholastic liberty; but, disregarding the claims of
a vain urbanity, and fixing all his soul on the eternal distinctions
of moral good and evil, he labored, with a magnificence of language
peculiar to himself, to set forth the loveliness of virtue, and the
deformity and horror of vice, in full and perfect display.
Dusaulx, who is somewhat prejudiced against Horace, does ample justice
to Juvenal. There is great force in what he says; and, as I do not know
that it ever appeared in English, I shall take the liberty of laying a
part of it before the reader, at the hazard of a few repetitions.
"The bloody revolution which smothered the last sighs of liberty,[24]
had not yet found time to debase the minds of a people, among whom the
traditionary remains of the old manners still subsisted. The cruel
but politic Octavius scattered flowers over the paths he was secretly
tracing toward despotism: the arts of Greece, transplanted to the
Capitol, flourished beneath his auspices; and the remembrance of so
many civil dissensions, succeeding each other with increasing rapidity,
excited a degree of reverence for the author of this unprecedented
tranquillity. The Romans felicitated themselves at not lying down, as
before, with an apprehension of finding themselves included, when they
awoke, in the list of proscription: and neglected, amid the amusements
of the circus and the theatre, those civil rights of which their
fathers had been so jealous.
"Profiting of these circumstances, Horace forgot that he had combated
on the side of liberty. A better courtier than a soldier, he clearly
saw how far the refinement, the graces, and the cultivated state of his
genius (qualities not much considered or regarded till his time[25]),
were capable of advancing him without any extraordinary effort.
"Indifferent to the future, and not daring to recall the past, he
thought of nothing but securing himself from all that could sadden the
mind, and disturb the system which he had skillfully arranged on the
credit of those then in power. It is on this account, that, of all his
contemporaries, he has celebrated none but the friends of his master,
or, at least, those whom he could praise without fear of compromising
his favor.
"In what I have said of Horace, my chief design has been to show that
this Proteus, who counted among his friends and admirers even those
whose conduct he censured, chose rather to capitulate than contend;
that he attached no great importance to his own rules, and adhered to
his principles no longer than they favored his views.
"JUVENAL began his satiric career where the other finished, that is
to say, he did that for morals and liberty, which Horace had done for
decorum and taste. Disdaining artifice of every kind, he boldly raised
his voice against the usurpation of power; and incessantly recalled the
memory of the glorious æra of independence to those degenerate Romans,
who had substituted suicide in the place of their ancient courage; and
from the days of Augustus to those of Domitian, only avenged their
slavery by an epigram or a bonmot.
"The characteristics of Juvenal were energy, passion, and indignation:
it is, nevertheless, easy to discover that he is sometimes more
afflicted than exasperated. His great aim was to alarm the vicious,
and, if possible, to exterminate vice, which had, as it were,
acquired a legal establishment. A noble enterprise! but he wrote in a
detestable age, when the laws of nature were publicly violated, and
the love of their country so completely eradicated from the breasts
of his fellow-citizens, that, brutified as they were by slavery and
voluptuousness, by luxury and avarice, they merited rather the severity
of the executioner than the censor.
"Meanwhile the empire, shaken to its foundations, was rapidly crumbling
to dust. Despotism was consecrated by the senate; liberty, of which
a few slaves were still sensible, was nothing but an unmeaning word
for the rest, which, unmeaning as it was, they did not dare to
pronounce in public. Men of rank were declared enemies to the state for
having praised their equals; historians were condemned to the cross,
philosophy was proscribed, and its professors banished. Individuals
felt only for their own danger, which they too often averted by
accusing others; and there were instances of children who denounced
their own parents, and appeared as witnesses against them! It was not
possible to weep for the proscribed, for tears themselves became the
object of proscription; and when the tyrant of the day had condemned
the accused to banishment or death, the senate decreed that he should
be thanked for it, as for an act of singular favor.
"Juvenal, who looked upon the alliance of the agreeable with the odious
as utterly incompatible, contemned the feeble weapon of ridicule,
so familiar to his predecessor: he therefore seized the sword of
Satire, or, to speak more properly, fabricated one for himself, and
rushing from the palace to the tavern, and from the gates of Rome to
the boundaries of the empire, struck, without distinction, whoever
deviated from the course of nature, or from the paths of honor. It is
no longer a poet like Horace, fickle, pliant, and fortified with that
indifference so falsely called philosophical, who amused himself with
bantering vice, or, at most, with upbraiding a few errors of little
consequence, in a style, which, scarcely raised above the language of
conversation, flowed as indolence and pleasure directed; but a stern
and incorruptible censor, an inflamed and impetuous poet, who sometimes
rises with his subject to the noblest heights of tragedy. "
From this declamatory applause, which even La Harpe allows to be worthy
of the translator of Juvenal, the most rigid censor of our author can
not detract much; nor can much perhaps be added to it by his warmest
admirer. I could, indeed, have wished that he had not exalted him at
the expense of Horace; but something must be allowed for the partiality
of long acquaintance; and Casaubon, when he preferred Persius, with
whom he had taken great, and indeed successful pains, to Horace and
Juvenal, sufficiently exposed, while he tacitly accounted for, the
prejudices of commentators and translators. With respect to Horace, if
he falls beneath Juvenal (and who does not? ) in eloquence, in energy,
and in a vivid and glowing imagination, he evidently surpasses him
in taste and critical judgment. I could pursue the parallel through
a thousand ramifications, but the reader who does me the honor to
peruse the following sheets, will see that I have incidentally touched
upon some of them in the notes: and, indeed, I preferred scattering
my observations through the work, as they arose from the subject, to
bringing them together in this place; where they must evidently have
lost something of their pertinency, without much certainty of gaining
in their effect.
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 honor" in those
days; it was, however, 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 have been influenced no
less by humanity than prudence, in the sacred silence which he has
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.
He is also charged with being too rhetorical in his language. The
critics have discovered that he practiced at the bar, and they
will therefore have it that his Satires smack of his profession,
"redolent declamatorem. "[26] That 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
among his beauties by his contemporaries. The enumeration of deities
in the thirteenth Satire is well defended by Rigaltius, who admits,
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 Juv.
hic περιλαλον fuisse et verborum prodigum. " He appears to me equally
successful, in justifying the list of oaths in the same Satire, which
Creech, it appears, had not the 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
breast. 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 taste. On some occasions, too, when
he changed or enlarged his first sketch, he forgot to strike out the
unnecessary verses: to this are owing the 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 by Jortin and
others, as it would have cost him no great pains to improve them. Why
he should voluntarily debase his poetry, it is difficult to say: if he
thought that he was imitating Horace in his laxity, his judgment must
suffer considerably. The verses of Horace are indeed akin 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 retention 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
toward 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,
confounds 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 acknowledged 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 clamor 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 which they can not but respect; and find a
secret pleasure in persuading one another that "this dreaded satirist"
was at heart no inveterate enemy to the licentiousness which 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 his mind, we shall not find much cause, perhaps, for wonder at the
strength of his expressions. I should resign him in silence to the
hatred of mankind, if his aim, like that of too many others, whose
works are read with delight, had been to render vice amiable, to
fling his seducing colors over impurity, and inflame the passions by
meretricious hints at what is only innoxious when exposed in native
deformity: but when I find that his views are to render depravity
loathsome; that every thing which can alarm and disgust is directed at
her in his terrible page, I forget the grossness of the execution in
the excellence of the design; and pay my involuntary homage to that
integrity, which fearlessly calling in strong description to the aid
of virtue, attempts to purify the passions, at the hazard of wounding
delicacy and offending taste. This is due to Juvenal: in justice to
myself, let me add, that I could have been better pleased to have had
no occasion to speak at all on the subject.
ejicere non potuit Trajanus, qui ab anno usque CXII. Romæ ipse non
adfuit; nec etiam ante CXVIII. quo Romam venit imperator Hadrianus. Sic
ante anni CXVIII. finem, aut CXIX. initium, mitti vix potuit in exilium
Juvenalis: erat autem cum relegaretur, octogenarius. Proinde natus
fuerit vel anni XXXVIII. 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 Pithæus, Henninius,
Lipsius, Salmasius, etc. , 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 instead of his 80th year.
[3] "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 scripturæ industriose
excoluit. " Suet.
[4] "Et tamen diu, ne modico quidem auditorio quicquam committere ausus
est. " Suet. On this Dodwell observes: "Tam longe aberant illa a 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,[13] 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 the satirist, 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 schoolboy. Lib. vii. 24.
But if he had been acquainted 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 on the Argonauts and the Lapithæ. Were the
Satires of Juvenal to be mentioned with approbation? and, if they were,
was Martial the person to do it? Martial, the most devoted sycophant of
the age, who was always begging, and sometimes receiving, favors from
the man whose castigation was, in general, the express object of them.
Is it not more consonant to his character to suppose that he would
conceal his knowledge of them with the most scrupulous care?
But when Domitian was dead, and Martial removed from Rome, when, in
short, there was no danger of speaking out, he still appears, continue
they, to be ignorant of his friend's poetic talents. I am almost
ashamed to repeat what the critics so constantly forget--that Juvenal
was not only satirist, but a republican, who looked upon Trajan as a
usurper, no less than Domitian. And how was it "safe to speak out,"
when they all assert that he was driven into banishment by a milder
prince than Trajan, for a passage "suspected of being a figurative
allusion to the times? " What inconsistencies are these!
[5] "Mox magna frequentia, magnoque successu bis ac ter auditus est; ut
ea quoque quæ prima fecerat, inferciret novis scriptis,
'Quod non dant proceres dabit histrio,' etc.
Sat. vii. , 90-92.
Erat tum in delitiis aulæ histrio, multique fautorum ejus quotidie
provehebantur. Venit ergo in suspicionem quasi tempora figurate
notasset; ac statim per honorem militiolæ, quanquam octogenarius, urbe
summotus, missusque ad præfecturam cohortis in extrema parte tendentis
Ægypti. Id supplicii genus placuit, ut levi atque joculari delicto
par esset. Verum intra brevissimum tempus angore et tædio periit. "
Suet. Passing by the interpolations of the old grammarians, I shall,
as before, have recourse to Dodwell. "Recitavit, ni fallor, omnia,
emisitque in publicum CXVIII. (Juvenal was now fourscore! ) postquam
Romam venissit Hadrianus quem ille principem à benevolo ejus in hæc
studia animo, in hac ipsa satira in qua occurrunt verba illa de Paride
commendat. " 161. Salmasius supposed that the last of his Satires only
were published under Hadrian; Dodwell goes farther, and maintains that
the whole, with the exception of the 15th and 16th[14] ("si tamen
vere et illa Juvenalis fuerit"), were then first produced! "Illa in
Paridem dicteria histrionem, in suum (cujus nomen non prodidit auctor)
histrionem dicta interpretabatur Hadrianus. Inde exilii causa. Scripsit
ergo in exilio Sat. XV. Sed cum 'nuper Consulem Junium' fuisse dicat,
ante annum ad minimum CXX. scribere illam non potuit Juv. Nec vero
postea scripsisse, exinde colligimus, quod 'intra brevissimum tempus'
perierit. " 164. Such is the manner in which Dodwell accommodates
Suetonius to his own ideas: which seem, also, to have been those of
a much higher name, Salmasius; and, while I am now writing, to be
sanctioned by the adoption of the learned Ruperti. I never affected
singularity; yet I find myself constrained to differ from them all:
but I will state my reasons. In his 7th Satire, after speaking of
Quintilian, Juvenal adds,
"Si fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul:
Si volet hæc eadem fies de consule rhetor. "
Which, taking it for a proverbial expression, I have loosely rendered,
Fortune can make kings of pedants and pedants of kings. Dodwell,
however, understands it literally. "Hæc sane cum Quintiliani causa
dicat, vix est quin Q. talem ostendant è rhetore nimirum 'nobilem,
senatorium, consularem,' et quidem illis divitiis instructum, quæ
essent etiam ad censum senatorium necessariæ. " 152. Now, as Pliny, who
probably died before Trajan, observes that Quintilian was a man of
moderate fortune, it follows that he must have acquired the wealth and
honors of which Juvenal speaks at a later period. Dodwell fixes this to
the time when Hadrian entered Rome, CXVIII. , which he states to be also
that of the author's banishment. It must be confessed that Juvenal lost
no time in exerting himself: he had remained silent fourscore years;
he now bursts forth at once, as Dodwell expresses it, recites all his
Satires without intermission ("unis continuisque recitationibus"),
celebrates Quintilian, attacks the emperor, and is immediately
dispatched to Egypt! 162. Here is a great deal of business crowded into
the compass of a few weeks, or perhaps days; but let us examine it a
little more closely. Rigaltius, with several of the commentators, sees
in the lines above quoted a sneer at Quintilian, and he accounts for
the rhetor's silence respecting our author, by the resentment which he
supposes him to have felt at it. As this militates strongly against
Dodwell's ideas, he will not allow that any thing severe was intended
by the passage in question; and adds that Quintilian could not mention
Juvenal as a satirist, because he had not then written any satires.
160. I believe that both are wrong. In speaking of the satirists,
Quintilian says that Persius had justly acquired no inconsiderable
degree of reputation by the little he had written. Lib. x. , c. 1. He
then adds, "sunt clari hodieque, et qui olim nominabuntur. " There are
yet some excellent ones, some who will be better known hereafter. It
always appeared to me, that this last phrase alluded to our author,
with whose extraordinary merits Quintilian was probably acquainted, but
whom he did not choose, or, perhaps, did not dare to mention in a work
composed under a prince whose crimes this unnamed satirist persecuted
with a severity as unmitigated as it was just. Quintilian had no
political courage. Either from a sense of kindness or fear, he flatters
Domitian almost as grossly as Martial does: but his life was a life of
innocence and integrity; I will therefore say no more on this subject;
but leave it to the reader to consider whether such a man was likely to
startle the "god of his idolatry" by celebrating the Satires of Juvenal.
Nor do I agree with the commentators whom Dodwell has followed, in
the literal interpretation of those famous lines. "Unde igitur tot,"
etc. Sat. vii. , v. 188-194. Quintilian was rich, when the rest of
his profession were in the utmost want. Here then was an instance of
good fortune. He was lucky; and with luck a man may be any thing;
handsome, and witty, and wise, and noble, and high-born, and a member
of the senate. Who does not see in this a satirical exaggeration?
Wisdom, beauty, and high birth luck can not give: why then should the
remainder of this passage be so strictly interpreted, and referred to
the actual history of Quintilian? The lines, "Si fortuna volet," etc. ,
are still more lax: a reflection thrown out at random, and expressing
the greatest possible extremes of fortune. Yet on these authorities
principally (for the passage of Ausonius,[15] written more than two
centuries later, is of no great weight) has Quintilian been advanced to
consular honors; while Dodwell, who, as we have seen, has taken immense
pains to prove that they could only be conferred on him by Hadrian, has
hence deduced his strongest arguments for the late date of our author's
Satires; which he thus brings down to the period of mental imbecility!
Hence, too, he accounts for the different ideas of Quintilian's wealth
in Juvenal and Pliny. When the latter wrote, he thinks Quintilian had
not acquired much property, he was "modicus facultatibus:" when the
former, "he had been enriched by the imperial bounty, and was capable
of senatorial honors. " Yet Pliny might not think his old master rich
enough to give a fortune with his daughter adequate to the expectations
of a man of considerable rank (lib. vi. , 32), though Juvenal, writing
at the same instant, might term him wealthy, in comparison of the
rhetoricians who were starving around him; and count him a peculiar
favorite of fortune. Let us bear in mind, too, that Juvenal is a
satirist, and a poet: in the latter capacity, the minute accuracy of an
annalist can not be expected at his hands; and in the former--as his
object was to show the general discouragement of literature, he could
not, consistently with his plan, attribute the solitary good fortune of
Quintilian to any thing but luck.
But why was Quintilian made consul? Because, replies Dodwell (164),
when Hadrian first entered Rome he was desirous of gaining the
affections of the people; which could be done no way so effectually as
by conciliating the esteem of the literati; and he therefore conferred
this extraordinary mark of favor on the rhetorician. How did it escape
this learned man, that he was likely to do himself more injury in their
opinion by the banishment of Juvenal at that same instant? an old
man of fourscore, who, by his own testimony, had spoken of him with
kindness, in a poem which did more honor to his reign than any thing
produced in it! and whose only crime was an allusion to the influence
of a favorite player! Indeed, the informers of Hadrian's reign must
have had more sagacious noses than those of Domitian's, to smell out
his fault. What Statius, in his time, was celebrated for the recitation
of a Thebaid, or what Paris, for the purchase of an untouched Agave?
And where, might we ask Dodwell, was the "jest" of sending a man on
the verge of the grave, in a military capacity, into Egypt? Could the
most supple of Hadrian's courtiers look on it as any thing but a wanton
exercise of cruelty? At eighty, the business of satirizing, either in
prose or verse, is nearly over: what had the emperor then to fear? And
to sum up all in a word, can any rational being seriously persuade
himself that the Satires of Juvenal were produced, for the first time,
by a man turned of fourscore?
[6] But why should he complain at all? Was he ashamed of being known to
possess an influence at the imperial court? Those were not very modest
times, nor is modesty, in general, the crying vice of the "quality. "
He was more likely to have gloried in it. If Bareas, or Camerinus, or
any of the old nobility, had complained of the author, I should have
thought it more reasonable: but Domitian cared nearly as little for
them as Paris himself did.
[7] I hold, in opposition to the commentators, that Juvenal was known
in Domitian's time, not only as a poet, but as a keen and vigorous
satirist. He himself, though he did not choose to commit his safety
to a promiscuous audience, appears to make no great secret of his
peculiar talents. In this Satire, certainly prior to many of the
others, he tells us that he accompanied Umbritius, then on his way
to Cumæ, out of the gates of Rome. Umbritius predicted, as Tacitus
says, the death of Galba, at which time he was looked upon as the most
skillful aruspex of the age. He could not then be a young man; yet, at
quitting the capital, he still talks of himself as in the first stage
of old age, "nova canities, et prima et recta senectus. " His voluntary
exile, therefore, could not possibly have taken place long after the
commencement of Domitian's reign; when he speaks of Juvenal as already
celebrated for his Satires, and modestly doubts whether the assistance
of so able a coadjutor as himself would be accepted.
This, at least, serves to prove in what light the author wished to
be considered: for the rest, there can, I think, exclusively of what
I have urged, be little doubt that this Satire was produced under
Domitian. It is known, from other authorities, that he revived the
law of Otho in all its severity, that he introduced a number of
low and vicious characters, "pinnirapi cultos juvenes, juvenesque
lanistæ," into the Equestrian Order, that he was immoderately attached
to building, etc. , circumstances much dwelt on in this Satire, and
applicable to him alone.
[8] The following line, "Dacicus et scripto radiat Germanicus auro,"
seems to militate against the early date of this Satire. Catanæus and
Arntzenius say that Juvenal could not mean Domitian here, because "he
did not think well enough of him to do him such honor; whereas he was
fond of commending Trajan. " I see no marks of this fondness; nor were
the titles, if meant of Domitian, intended to do him honor, but to
reprove his vanity.
Whether medals were ever struck with the inscription of Dacicus and
Germanicus in honor of Domitian, I am not qualified to determine.
Certain it is, however, that he assumed both these titles; the latter,
indeed, in common with his predecessors from the time of Germ. Cæsar;
and the former, in consequence of his pretended success in the Dacian
war, for which he is bitterly sneered at by Pliny, as well as Dio.
It is given to him, among others, by Martial, who dedicates his
eighth book, "Imper. Domit. Cæs. Augusto Germanico _Dacico_. " Dodwell
appropriates (as I do) the line to Domitian--a little inconsistently,
it must be confessed; but that is his concern. If, however, it be
adjudged to Trajan, I should not for that bring down the date of
the Satire to a later period. Juvenal revised and enlarged all his
works, when he gave them to the public: this under consideration,
in particular, has all the marks of having received considerable
additions; and one of them might be the line in question.
[9] This satire has contributed as much perhaps as the seventh to
persuade Lipsius, Salmasius, and others, that Juvenal wrote his best
pieces when he was turned of fourscore.
"----Stupet hæc, qui jam post terga reliquit
Sexaginta annos, Fonteio Consule natus! "
There were four consuls of this name. The first is out of the question;
the second was consul A. D. 13, the third in 59, and the fourth in 68.
If we take the second, and add any intermediate number of years between
sixty and seventy, for Calvinus had passed his sixtieth year, it will
just bring us down to the early part of Domitian's reign, which I
suppose to be the true date of this Satire; for I can not believe, as
I have already observed, that this, or indeed any part of Juvenal's
works, was produced when he was trembling on the verge of ninety, as
must be the case if either of the latter periods be adopted. But he
observes, "Hæc quota pars scelerum quæ custos Gallicus urbis," etc.
Now Rutilius Gallicus was præfect of Rome from the end of 85 to 88
(Domitian succeeded his brother in 81), in which year he died. There
seems to be no necessity for mentioning a magistrate as sitting, who
was not then in existence; nor can any reason be assigned, if the
Satire was written under Hadrian, for the author's recurring to the
times of Domitian for a name, when that of the "custos urbis" of
the day would have better answered his purpose. It is probable that
Gallicus succeeded Pegasus, who was præfect when the ridiculous farce
of the turbot took place (Sat. iv. ); this would fix it to 85, the year
before Fuscus, who was present at it, was sent into Dacia.
[10] This Satire is referred by the critics to the reign of Trajan,
because Marius, whose trial took place under that prince, is mentioned
in it. I have attributed it to an earlier period; principally moved by
the consideration that it presents a faithful copy of the state of Rome
and the conquered provinces under Nero, and which could scarcely have
been given in such vivid colors after the original had ceased to affect
the mind. What Rome was under Domitian, may be seen in the second
Satire, and the difference, which has not been sufficiently attended
to, is striking in the extreme. I would observe too, that Juvenal
speaks here of the _crimes_ of Marius--they might be, and probably
were, committed long before his condemnation; but under Domitian it was
scarcely safe to attempt bringing such gigantic peculators to justice.
Add to this, that the other culprits mentioned in it are all of them
prior to that prince; nay, one of them, Capito, was tried so early as
the beginning of Nero's reign. The insertion of Marius, however (which
might be an after-thought), forms a main argument with Dodwell for the
very late date of this Satire; he observes that it had escaped Lipsius
and Salmasius; and boasts of it as "longe certissimum," etc. 156.
[11] I have often wondered at the stress which Dodwell and others lay
on the concluding lines of this Satire: "Experiar quid concedatur,"
etc. They fancy that the engagement was seriously made, and religiously
observed. Nothing was ever farther from the mind of Juvenal. It is
merely a poetical, or, if you will, a satirical, flourish; since there
is not a single Satire, I am well persuaded, in which the names of many
who were alive at the time are not introduced. Had Dodwell forgotten
Quintilian? or, that he had allowed one of his Satires, at least, to be
prior to this?
[12] 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.
[13] But how to this ascertained? Very easily; he calls him "fecundus
Juvenalis. " Here the question is finally left; for none of the
commentators suppose it possible that the epithet can be applied to any
but a rhetorician. Yet it is applied by the same writer to a poet of no
ordinary kind;
"Accipe, _facundi_ Culicem, studiose. Maronis
Ne, nugis positis, arma virumque canas. "
Lib. xiv. , 185.
And, by the author himself, to one who had grown old in the art:
"--------tunc seque suamque
Terpsichoren odit _facunda_ et nuda senectus. "
Let it be 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 that prince's
reign, when it is acknowledged that Juvenal had produced but one or two
of his Satires.
[14] The former of these, Dodwell says, was written in exile, after
the author was turned of eighty. Salmasius, more rationally, conceives
it to have been produced at Rome. Giving full credit, however, to
the story of his late banishment, he is driven into a very awkward
supposition. "An non alio tempore, atque alia de causa Ægyptum lustrare
juvenis potuit Juvenalis? animi nempe gratia, και της ἱστοριας χαριν,
ut urbes regionis illius, populorumque mores cognosceret? " Would it not
be more simple to attribute his exile at once to Domitian?
With respect to the 16th Satire, Dodwell, we see, hesitates to
attribute it to Juvenal; and, indeed, the old Scholiast says, that, in
his time, many thought it to be the work of a different hand. So it
always appeared to me. It is unworthy of the author's best days, and
seems but little suited to his worst. He was at least eighty-one, they
say, when he wrote it, yet it begins--
"----Nam si----
Me pavidum excipiet tyronem porta secundo
Sidere," etc.
Surely, at this age, the writer resembled Priam, the _tremulus miles_,
more than the timid tyro!
Nor do I believe that Juvenal would have
been much inclined to amuse himself with the fancied advantages of
a profession to which he was so unworthily driven. But the Satire
must have been as ill-timed for the army as for himself, since it
was probably, at this period, in a better state of subjection than
it had been for many reigns. I suppose it to be written in professed
imitation of our author's manner, about the age of Commodus. It has
considerable merit, though the first and last paragraphs are feeble and
tautological; and the execution of the whole is much inferior to the
design.
[15] "Q. consularia per Clementem ornamenta sortitus, honestamenta
potius videtur quam insignia potestatis habuisse. In gratiar. act. "
Quintilian, then, was not actually consul: but this is no great
matter--it is of more consequence to ascertain the Clemens by whom he
was so honored. In the preface to his fourth book, he says, "Cum vero
mihi Dom. Augustus sororis suæ nepotum delegavit curam," etc. Vespasian
had a daughter, Domitilla, who married, and died long before her
father: she left a daughter, who was given to Flavius Clemens, by whom
she had two sons. These were the grandchildren of Domitian's sister,
of whom Quintilian speaks; and to their father, Clemens, according
to Ausonius, he was indebted for the show, though not the reality,
of power. There is nothing incongruous in all this; yet so possessed
are Dodwell and his numerous followers (among whom I am sorry to rank
Dusaulx) of the late period at which it happened, that they will needs
have Hadrian to be meant by Domitianus Augustus, though the detestable
flattery which follows the words I have quoted most indisputably proves
it to be Domitian; and though Dodwell himself is forced to confess
that he can find no Clemens under Hadrian to whom the passage applies:
"Quis autem fuerit Clemens ille qui Q. ornamenta illa sub Hadriano
impetraverit, me sane fateor ignorare! " 165. Another circumstance
which has escaped all the commentators, and which is of considerable
importance in determining the question, remains to be noticed. At the
very period of which Dodwell treats, the boundaries of the empire were
politically contracted, while Juvenal, whenever he has occasion to
speak on the subject, invariably dwells on extending or securing them.
AN
ESSAY ON THE ROMAN SATIRISTS,
BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.
It will now be expected from me, perhaps, to say something on the
nature and design of Satire; but in truth this has so frequently been
done, that it seems, at present, to have as little of novelty as of
utility to recommend it.
Dryden, who had diligently studied the French critics, drew up from
their remarks, assisted by a cursory perusal of what Casaubon,
Heinsius, Rigaltius, and Scaliger had written on the subject, an
account of the rise and progress of dramatic and satiric poetry among
the Romans; which he prefixed to his translation of Juvenal. What
Dryden knew, he told in a manner that renders every attempt to recount
it after him equally hopeless and vain; but his acquaintance with works
of literature was not very extensive, while his reliance on his own
powers sometimes betrayed him into inaccuracies, to which the influence
of his name gives a dangerous importance.
"The comparison of Horace with Juvenal and Persius," which makes a
principal part of his Essay, is not formed with much niceness of
discrimination, or accuracy of judgment. To speak my mind, I do not
think that he clearly perceived or fully understood the characters of
the first two: of Persius indeed he had an intimate knowledge; for,
though he certainly deemed too humbly of his poetry, he yet speaks of
his beauties and defects in a manner which evinces a more than common
acquaintance with both.
What Dryden left imperfect has been filled up in a great measure by
Dusaulx, in the preliminary discourse to his translation of Juvenal,
and by Ruperti, in his critical Essay "De diversa Satirarum Lucil.
Horat. Pers. et Juvenalis indole. " With the assistance of the
former of these I shall endeavor to give a more extended view of the
characteristic excellencies and defects of the rival Satirists than
has yet appeared in our language; little solicitous for the praise of
originality, if I may be allowed to aspire to that of candor and truth.
Previously to this, however, it will be necessary to say something on
the supposed origin of Satire: and, as this is a very beaten subject, I
shall discuss it as briefly as possible.
It is probable that the first metrical compositions of the Romans, like
those of every other people, were pious effusions for favors received
or expected from the gods: of these, the earliest, according to Varro,
were the hymns to Mars, which, though used by the Salii in the Augustan
age, were no longer intelligible. To these succeeded the Fescennine
verses, which were sung, or rather recited, after the vintage and
harvest, and appear to have been little more than rude praises of the
tutelar divinities of the country, intermixed with clownish jeers
and sarcasms, extemporally poured out by the rustics in some kind of
measure, and indifferently directed at the audience, or at one another.
These, by degrees, assumed the form of a dialogue; of which, as nature
is every where the same, and the progress of refinement but little
varied, some resemblance may perhaps be found in the grosser eclogues
of Theocritus.
Thus improved (if the word may be allowed of such barbarous
amusements), they formed, for near three centuries, the delight of
that nation: popular favor, however, had a dangerous effect on the
performers, whose licentiousness degenerated at length into such wild
invective, that it was found necessary to restrain it by a positive
law: "Si qui populo occentassit, carmenve condisit, quod infamiam faxit
flagitiumve alteri, fuste ferito. " From this time we hear no farther
complaints of the Fescennine verses, which continued to charm the
Romans; until, about a century afterward, and during the ravages of a
dreadful pestilence, the senate, as the historians say, in order to
propitiate the gods, called a troop of players from Tuscany, to assist
at the celebration of their ancient festivals. This was a wise and a
salutary measure: the plague had spread dejection through the city,
which was thus rendered more obnoxious to its fury; and it therefore
became necessary, by novel and extraordinary amusements, to divert the
attention of the people from the melancholy objects around them.
As the Romans were unacquainted with the language of Tuscany, the
players, Livy tells us, omitted the modulation and the words, and
confined themselves solely to gestures, which were accompanied by the
flute. This imperfect exhibition, however, was so superior to their
own, that the Romans eagerly strove to attain the art; and, as soon as
they could imitate what they admired, graced their rustic measures with
music and dancing. By degrees they dropped the Fescennine verses for
something of a more regular kind, which now took the name of SATIRE. [16]
These Satires (for as yet they had but little claim to the title of
dramas) continued, without much alteration, to the year 514, when
Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and a freedman of L. Salinator,
who was undoubtedly acquainted with the old comedy of his country,
produced a regular play. That it pleased can not be doubted, for it
surpassed the Satires, even in their improved state; and, indeed,
banished them for some time from the scene. They had, however, taken
too strong a hold of the affections of the people to be easily
forgotten, and it was therefore found necessary to reproduce and join
them to the plays of Andronicus (the superiority of which could not be
contested), under the name of Exodia or After-pieces. These partook, in
a certain degree, of the general amelioration of the stage; something
like a story was now introduced into them, which, though frequently
indecent and always extravagant, created a greater degree of interest
than the reciprocation of gross humor and scurrility in unconnected
dialogues.
Whether any of the old people still regretted this sophistication of
their early amusements, it is not easy to say; but Ennius, who came to
Rome about twenty years after this period, and who was more than half
a Grecian, conceived that he should perform an acceptable service by
reviving the ancient Satires. [17] He did not pretend to restore them
to the stage, for which indeed the new pieces were infinitely better
calculated, but endeavored to adapt them to the closet, by refining
their grossness and softening their asperity. Success justified the
attempt. Satire, thus freed from action, and formed into a poem, became
a favorite pursuit, and was cultivated by several writers of eminence.
In imitation of his model, Ennius confined himself to no particular
species of verse, nor indeed of language, for he mingled Greek
expressions with his Latin at pleasure. It is solely with a reference
to this new attempt that Horace and Quintilian are to be understood,
when they claim for the Romans the invention[18] of this kind of
poetry; and certainly they had opportunities of judging which we have
not, for little of Ennius, and nothing of the old Satire, remains.
It is not necessary to pursue the history of Satire farther in this
place, or to speak of another species of it, the Varronian, or, as
Varro himself called it, the Menippean, which branched out from
the former, and was a medley of prose and verse; it will be a more
pleasing, as well as a more useful employ, to enter a little into
what Dryden, I know not for what reason, calls the most difficult
part of his undertaking--"a comparative view of the Satirists;" not
certainly with the design of depressing one at the expense of another
(for, though I have translated Juvenal, I have no quarrel with Horace
and Persius), but for the purpose of pointing out the characteristic
excellencies and defects of them all. To do this the more effectually,
it will be previously necessary to take a cursory view of the times in
which their respective works were produced.
LUCILIUS, to whom Horace, forgetting what he had said in another place,
attributes the invention of Satire, flourished in the interval between
the siege of Carthage and the defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons, by
Marius. He lived therefore in an age in which the struggle between
the old and new manners, though daily becoming more equal, or rather
inclining to the worse side, was still far from being decided. The
freedom of speaking and writing was yet unchecked by fear, or by any
law more precise than that which, as has been already mentioned, was
introduced to restrain the coarse ebullitions of rustic malignity.
Add to this, that Lucilius was of a most respectable family (he was
great-uncle to Pompey), and lived in habits of intimacy with the chiefs
of the republic, with Lælius, Scipio, and others, who were well able
to protect him from the Lupi and Mutii of the day, had they attempted,
which they probably did not, to silence or molest him. Hence that
boldness of satirizing the vicious by name, which startled Horace, and
on which Juvenal and Persius delight to felicitate him.
Too little remains of Lucilius, to enable us to judge of his manner:
his style seems, however, to bear fewer marks of delicacy than of
strength, and his strictures appear harsh and violent. With all this,
he must have been an extraordinary man; since Horace, who is evidently
hurt by his reputation, can say nothing worse of his compositions than
that they are careless and hasty, and that if he had lived at a more
refined period, he would have partaken of the general amelioration. I
do not remember to have heard it observed, but I suspect that there was
something of political spleen in the excessive popularity of Lucilius
under Augustus, and something of courtly complacency in the attempt of
Horace to counteract it. Augustus enlarged the law of the twelve tables
respecting libels; and the people, who found themselves thus abridged
of the liberty of satirizing the great by name, might not improbably
seek to avenge themselves by an overstrained attachment to the works of
a man who, living, as they would insinuate, in better times, practiced
without fear, what he enjoyed without restraint.
The space between Horace and his predecessor, was a dreadful interval
"filled up with horror all, and big with death. " Luxury and a long
train of vices, which followed the immense wealth incessantly poured in
from the conquered provinces, sapped the foundations of the republic,
which were finally shaken to pieces by the civil wars, the perpetual
dictatorship of Cæsar, and the second triumvirate, which threw the
Roman world, without a hope of escape, into the power of an individual.
Augustus, whose sword was yet reeking with the best blood of the
state, now that submission left him no excuse for farther cruelty,
was desirous of enjoying in tranquillity the fruits of his guilt. He
displayed, therefore, a magnificence hitherto unknown; and his example,
which was followed by his ministers, quickly spread among the people,
who were not very unwilling to exchange the agitation and terror of
successive proscriptions, for the security and quiet of undisputed
despotism.
Tiberius had other views, and other methods of accomplishing them.
He did not indeed put an actual stop to the elegant institutions of
his predecessor, but he surveyed them with silent contempt, and they
rapidly degenerated. The race of informers multiplied with dreadful
celerity; and danger, which could only be averted by complying with a
caprice not always easy to discover, created an abject disposition,
fitted for the reception of the grossest vices, and eminently favorable
to the designs of the emperor; which were to procure, by universal
depravation, that submission which Augustus sought to obtain by the
blandishments of luxury and the arts.
From this gloomy and suspicious tyrant, the empire was transferred to
a profligate madman. It can scarcely be told without indignation, that
when the sword of Chærea had freed the earth from his disgraceful sway,
the senate had not sufficient virtue to resume the rights of which they
had been deprived; but, after a timid debate, delivered up the state to
a pedantic dotard, incapable of governing himself.
To the vices of his predecessors, Nero added a frivolity which rendered
his reign at once odious and contemptible. Depravity could reach no
farther, but misery might yet be extended. This was fully experienced
through the turbulent and murderous usurpations of Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius; when the accession of Vespasian and Titus gave the groaning
world a temporary respite.
To these succeeded Domitian, whose crimes form the subject of many a
melancholy page in the ensuing work, and need not therefore be dwelt
on here. Under him, every trace of ancient manners was obliterated;
liberty was unknown, law openly trampled upon, and, while the national
rites were either neglected or contemned, a base and blind superstition
took possession of the enfeebled and distempered mind.
Better times followed. Nerva, and Trajan, and Hadrian, and the
Antonines, restored the Romans to safety and tranquillity; but they
could do no more; liberty and virtue were gone forever; and after a
short period of comparative happiness, which they scarcely appear to
have deserved, and which brought with it no amelioration of mind, no
return of the ancient modesty and frugality, they were finally resigned
to destruction.
I now proceed to the "comparative view" of which I have already spoken:
as the subject has been so often treated, little of novelty can be
expected from it; to read, compare, and judge, is almost all that
remains.
HORACE, who was gay, and lively, and gentle, and affectionate, seems
fitted for the period in which he wrote. He had seen the worst times
of the republic, and might therefore, with no great suspicion of his
integrity, be allowed to acquiesce in the infant monarchy, which
brought with it stability, peace, and pleasure. How he reconciled
himself to his political tergiversation it is useless to inquire. [19]
What was so general, we may suppose, brought with it but little
obloquy; and it should be remembered, to his praise, that he took no
active part in the government which he had once opposed. [20]
If he celebrates the master of the world, it is not until he is asked
by him whether he is ashamed that posterity should know them to be
friends; and he declines a post, which few of his detractors have merit
to deserve, or virtue to refuse.
His choice of privacy, however, was in some measure constitutional;
for he had an easiness of temper which bordered on indolence; hence he
never rises to the dignity of a decided character. Zeno and Epicurus
share his homage and undergo his ridicule by turns: he passes without
difficulty from one school to another, and he thinks it a sufficient
excuse for his versatility, that he continues, amid every change, the
zealous defender of virtue. Virtue, however, abstractedly considered,
has few obligations to his zeal.
But though, as an ethical writer, Horace has not many claims to the
esteem of posterity; as a critic, he is entitled to all our veneration.
Such is the soundness of his judgment, the correctness of his taste,
and the extent and variety of his knowledge, that a body of criticism
might be selected from his works, more perfect in its kind than any
thing which antiquity has bequeathed us.
As he had little warmth of temper, he reproves his contemporaries
without harshness. He is content to "dwell in decencies," and, like
Pope's courtly dean, "never mentions hell to ears polite. " Persius, who
was infinitely better acquainted with him than we can pretend to be,
describes him, I think, with great happiness:
"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit,
Callidus excusso populum suspendere naso. "
"He, with a sly insinuating grace,
Laugh'd at his friend, and look'd him in the face:
Would raise a blush, where secret vice he found,
And tickle, while he gently probed the wound:
With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled;
But made the desperate passes when he smiled. "
These beautiful lines have a defect under which Dryden's translations
frequently labor; they do not give the true sense of the original.
Horace "raised no blush" (at least Persius does not insinuate any such
thing), and certainly "made no desperate passes. "[21] His aim rather
seems to be, to keep the objects of his satire in good humor with
himself, and with one another.
To raise a laugh at vice, however (supposing it feasible), is not
the legitimate office of Satire, which is to hold up the vicious, as
objects of reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may
be deterred by their sufferings. But it is time to be explicit. To
laugh even at fools is superfluous; if they understand you, they will
join in the merriment; but more commonly, they will sit with vacant
unconcern, and gaze at their own pictures: to laugh at the vicious,
is to encourage them; for there is in such men a willfulness of
disposition, which prompts them to bear up against shame, and to show
how little they regard slight reproof, by becoming more audacious in
guilt. Goodness, of which the characteristic is modesty, may, I fear,
be shamed; but vice, like folly, to be restrained, must be overawed.
Labeo, says Hall, with great energy and beauty--
"Labeo is whipt, and laughs me in the face;
Why? for I smite, and hide the galled place.
Gird but the Cynic's helmet on his head,
Cares he for Talus, or his flayle of lead? "
PERSIUS, who borrowed so much of Horace's language, has little of his
manner. The immediate object of his imitation seems to be Lucilius;
and if he lashes vice with less severity than his great prototype, the
cause must not be sought in any desire to spare what he so evidently
condemned. But he was thrown "on evil times;" he was, besides, of a
rank distinguished enough to make his freedom dangerous, and of an age
when life had yet lost little of its novelty; to write, therefore,
even as he has written, proves him to be a person of very singular
courage and virtue.
In the interval between Horace and Persius, despotism had changed its
nature: the chains which the policy of Augustus concealed in flowers,
were now displayed in all their hideousness. The arts were neglected,
literature of every kind discouraged or disgraced, and terror and
suspicion substituted in the place of the former ease and security.
Stoicism, which Cicero accuses of having infected poetry, even in his
days, and of which the professors, as Quintilian observes, always
disregarded the graces and elegancies of composition, spread with
amazing rapidity. [22] In this school Persius was educated, under the
care of one of its most learned and respectable masters.
Satire was not his first pursuit; indeed, he seems to have somewhat
mistaken his talents when he applied to it. The true end of this
species of writing, as Dusaulx justly says, is the improvement of
society; but for this, much knowledge of mankind ("quicquid agunt
homines") is previously necessary. Whoever is deficient in that, may be
an excellent moral and philosophical poet; but can not, with propriety,
lay claim to the honors of a satirist.
And Persius was moral and philosophical in a high degree: he was also
a poet of no mean order. But while he grew pale over the page of Zeno,
and Cleanthes, and Chrysippus; while he imbibed, with all the ardor
of a youthful mind, the paradoxes of those great masters, together
with their principles, the foundations of civil society were crumbling
around him, and soliciting his attention in vain. To judge from what
he has left us, it might almost be affirmed that he was a stranger
in his own country. The degradation of Rome was now complete; yet he
felt, at least he expresses, no indignation at the means by which it
was effected: a sanguinary buffoon was lording it over the prostrate
world; yet he continued to waste his most elaborate efforts on the
miserable pretensions of pedants in prose and verse! If this savor
of the impassibility of Stoicism, it is entitled to no great praise
on the score of outraged humanity, which has stronger claims on a
well-regulated mind, than criticism, or even philosophy.
Dryden gives that praise to the dogmas of Persius, which he denies to
his poetry. "His verse," he says, "is scabrous and hobbling, and his
measures beneath those of Horace. " This is too severe; for Persius has
many exquisite passages, which nothing in Horace will be found to equal
or approach. The charge of obscurity has been urged against him with
more justice; though this, perhaps, is not so great as it is usually
represented. Casaubon could, without question, have defended him more
successfully than he has done; but he was overawed by the brutal
violence of the elder Scaliger; for I can scarcely persuade myself that
he really believed this obscurity to be owing to "the fear of Nero, or
the advice of Cornutus. " The cause of it should be rather sought in his
natural disposition, and in his habits of thinking. Generally speaking,
however, it springs from a too frequent use of tropes, approaching in
almost every instance to a catachresis, an anxiety of compression,
and a quick and unexpected transition from one overstrained figure to
another. After all, with the exception of the sixth Satire, which, from
its abruptness, does not appear to have received the author's last
touches, I do not think there is much to confound an attentive reader:
some acquaintance, indeed, with the porch "braccatis illita Medis,"
is previously necessary. His life may be contemplated with unabated
pleasure: the virtue he recommends, he practiced in the fullest extent;
and at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left
behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth.
JUVENAL wrote at a period still more detestable than that of Persius.
Domitian, who now governed the empire, seems to have inherited the bad
qualities of all his predecessors. Tiberius was not more hypocritical,
nor Caligula more bloody, nor Claudius more sottish, nor Nero more
mischievous, than this ferocious despot; who, as Theodorus Gadareus
indignantly declared of Tiberius, was truly πηλον αἱματι πεφυραμενον· a
lump of clay kneaded up with blood!
Juvenal, like Persius, professes to follow Lucilius; but what was
in one a simple attempt, is in the other a real imitation, of his
manner. [23] Fluent and witty as Horace, grave and sublime as Persius;
of a more decided character than the former, better acquainted with
mankind than the latter; he did not confine himself to the mode of
regulating an intercourse with the great, or to abstract disquisitions
on the nature of scholastic liberty; but, disregarding the claims of
a vain urbanity, and fixing all his soul on the eternal distinctions
of moral good and evil, he labored, with a magnificence of language
peculiar to himself, to set forth the loveliness of virtue, and the
deformity and horror of vice, in full and perfect display.
Dusaulx, who is somewhat prejudiced against Horace, does ample justice
to Juvenal. There is great force in what he says; and, as I do not know
that it ever appeared in English, I shall take the liberty of laying a
part of it before the reader, at the hazard of a few repetitions.
"The bloody revolution which smothered the last sighs of liberty,[24]
had not yet found time to debase the minds of a people, among whom the
traditionary remains of the old manners still subsisted. The cruel
but politic Octavius scattered flowers over the paths he was secretly
tracing toward despotism: the arts of Greece, transplanted to the
Capitol, flourished beneath his auspices; and the remembrance of so
many civil dissensions, succeeding each other with increasing rapidity,
excited a degree of reverence for the author of this unprecedented
tranquillity. The Romans felicitated themselves at not lying down, as
before, with an apprehension of finding themselves included, when they
awoke, in the list of proscription: and neglected, amid the amusements
of the circus and the theatre, those civil rights of which their
fathers had been so jealous.
"Profiting of these circumstances, Horace forgot that he had combated
on the side of liberty. A better courtier than a soldier, he clearly
saw how far the refinement, the graces, and the cultivated state of his
genius (qualities not much considered or regarded till his time[25]),
were capable of advancing him without any extraordinary effort.
"Indifferent to the future, and not daring to recall the past, he
thought of nothing but securing himself from all that could sadden the
mind, and disturb the system which he had skillfully arranged on the
credit of those then in power. It is on this account, that, of all his
contemporaries, he has celebrated none but the friends of his master,
or, at least, those whom he could praise without fear of compromising
his favor.
"In what I have said of Horace, my chief design has been to show that
this Proteus, who counted among his friends and admirers even those
whose conduct he censured, chose rather to capitulate than contend;
that he attached no great importance to his own rules, and adhered to
his principles no longer than they favored his views.
"JUVENAL began his satiric career where the other finished, that is
to say, he did that for morals and liberty, which Horace had done for
decorum and taste. Disdaining artifice of every kind, he boldly raised
his voice against the usurpation of power; and incessantly recalled the
memory of the glorious æra of independence to those degenerate Romans,
who had substituted suicide in the place of their ancient courage; and
from the days of Augustus to those of Domitian, only avenged their
slavery by an epigram or a bonmot.
"The characteristics of Juvenal were energy, passion, and indignation:
it is, nevertheless, easy to discover that he is sometimes more
afflicted than exasperated. His great aim was to alarm the vicious,
and, if possible, to exterminate vice, which had, as it were,
acquired a legal establishment. A noble enterprise! but he wrote in a
detestable age, when the laws of nature were publicly violated, and
the love of their country so completely eradicated from the breasts
of his fellow-citizens, that, brutified as they were by slavery and
voluptuousness, by luxury and avarice, they merited rather the severity
of the executioner than the censor.
"Meanwhile the empire, shaken to its foundations, was rapidly crumbling
to dust. Despotism was consecrated by the senate; liberty, of which
a few slaves were still sensible, was nothing but an unmeaning word
for the rest, which, unmeaning as it was, they did not dare to
pronounce in public. Men of rank were declared enemies to the state for
having praised their equals; historians were condemned to the cross,
philosophy was proscribed, and its professors banished. Individuals
felt only for their own danger, which they too often averted by
accusing others; and there were instances of children who denounced
their own parents, and appeared as witnesses against them! It was not
possible to weep for the proscribed, for tears themselves became the
object of proscription; and when the tyrant of the day had condemned
the accused to banishment or death, the senate decreed that he should
be thanked for it, as for an act of singular favor.
"Juvenal, who looked upon the alliance of the agreeable with the odious
as utterly incompatible, contemned the feeble weapon of ridicule,
so familiar to his predecessor: he therefore seized the sword of
Satire, or, to speak more properly, fabricated one for himself, and
rushing from the palace to the tavern, and from the gates of Rome to
the boundaries of the empire, struck, without distinction, whoever
deviated from the course of nature, or from the paths of honor. It is
no longer a poet like Horace, fickle, pliant, and fortified with that
indifference so falsely called philosophical, who amused himself with
bantering vice, or, at most, with upbraiding a few errors of little
consequence, in a style, which, scarcely raised above the language of
conversation, flowed as indolence and pleasure directed; but a stern
and incorruptible censor, an inflamed and impetuous poet, who sometimes
rises with his subject to the noblest heights of tragedy. "
From this declamatory applause, which even La Harpe allows to be worthy
of the translator of Juvenal, the most rigid censor of our author can
not detract much; nor can much perhaps be added to it by his warmest
admirer. I could, indeed, have wished that he had not exalted him at
the expense of Horace; but something must be allowed for the partiality
of long acquaintance; and Casaubon, when he preferred Persius, with
whom he had taken great, and indeed successful pains, to Horace and
Juvenal, sufficiently exposed, while he tacitly accounted for, the
prejudices of commentators and translators. With respect to Horace, if
he falls beneath Juvenal (and who does not? ) in eloquence, in energy,
and in a vivid and glowing imagination, he evidently surpasses him
in taste and critical judgment. I could pursue the parallel through
a thousand ramifications, but the reader who does me the honor to
peruse the following sheets, will see that I have incidentally touched
upon some of them in the notes: and, indeed, I preferred scattering
my observations through the work, as they arose from the subject, to
bringing them together in this place; where they must evidently have
lost something of their pertinency, without much certainty of gaining
in their effect.
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 honor" in those
days; it was, however, 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 have been influenced no
less by humanity than prudence, in the sacred silence which he has
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.
He is also charged with being too rhetorical in his language. The
critics have discovered that he practiced at the bar, and they
will therefore have it that his Satires smack of his profession,
"redolent declamatorem. "[26] That 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
among his beauties by his contemporaries. The enumeration of deities
in the thirteenth Satire is well defended by Rigaltius, who admits,
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 Juv.
hic περιλαλον fuisse et verborum prodigum. " He appears to me equally
successful, in justifying the list of oaths in the same Satire, which
Creech, it appears, had not the 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
breast. 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 taste. On some occasions, too, when
he changed or enlarged his first sketch, he forgot to strike out the
unnecessary verses: to this are owing the 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 by Jortin and
others, as it would have cost him no great pains to improve them. Why
he should voluntarily debase his poetry, it is difficult to say: if he
thought that he was imitating Horace in his laxity, his judgment must
suffer considerably. The verses of Horace are indeed akin 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 retention 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
toward 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,
confounds 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 acknowledged 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 clamor 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 which they can not but respect; and find a
secret pleasure in persuading one another that "this dreaded satirist"
was at heart no inveterate enemy to the licentiousness which 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 his mind, we shall not find much cause, perhaps, for wonder at the
strength of his expressions. I should resign him in silence to the
hatred of mankind, if his aim, like that of too many others, whose
works are read with delight, had been to render vice amiable, to
fling his seducing colors over impurity, and inflame the passions by
meretricious hints at what is only innoxious when exposed in native
deformity: but when I find that his views are to render depravity
loathsome; that every thing which can alarm and disgust is directed at
her in his terrible page, I forget the grossness of the execution in
the excellence of the design; and pay my involuntary homage to that
integrity, which fearlessly calling in strong description to the aid
of virtue, attempts to purify the passions, at the hazard of wounding
delicacy and offending taste. This is due to Juvenal: in justice to
myself, let me add, that I could have been better pleased to have had
no occasion to speak at all on the subject.
