Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

and soon after from Italy, with many circumstances of cruelty; an action, for which, I am sorry to observe, he is covertly praised by Quintilian. Though Juvenal, strictly speaking, did not come under the description of a philosopher, yet, like the hare in the fable, he might not unreasonably entertain some apprehensions for his safety, and, with many other persons eminent for learning and virtue, judge it prudent to withdraw from the city. To this period I have always inclined to fix his journey to Egypt. Two years afterwards the world was happily relieved from the tyranny of Domitian; and Nerva, who succeeded him, recalled the exiles. From this time, there remains little doubt of Juvenal's being at Rome, where he continued his studies in tranquillity.

His first Satire, after the death of Domitian, seems to have been what is now called the fourth. About this time, too, he probably thought of revising and publishing those which he had already written; and composed that introductory piece, * which now stands at the head of his works. As the order is every where broken in upon, it is utterly impossible to arrange them chronologically; but I am inclined to think that the eleventh Satire closed his poetical career,

* I have often wondered at the stress which Dodwell and others lay on the concluding lines of this Satire: Experiar quid concedatur, &c. They fancy the engagement was seriously made, and religiously observed. Nothing was ever further 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?"

All else is conjecture; but in this, he speaks of himself as an old man,

1

"Nostra bibat vernum contracta cuticula solem;" and indeed he had now passed his grand climacterick.

!

This is all that can be collected of the life of Juvenal; and how much of this is built upon uncertainties! I hope, however, that it bears the stamp of probability; which is all I contend for; and which, indeed, if I do not deceive myself, is somewhat more than can be affirmed of what has been hitherto delivered on the subject.

Little is known of Juvenal's circumstances; but, happily, that little is authentick, as it comes from himself. He had a competence. The dignity of poetry is never disgraced in him, as it is in some of his contemporaries, by fretful complaints of poverty, or clamorous whinings for meat and clothes: the little patrimony which his fosterfather left him, he never diminished, and probably never increased. It seems to have equalled all his wants, and, as far as appears, all his wishes. Once only he regrets the narrowness of his fortune: but the occasion does him honour; it is solely because he cannot afford a more costly sacrifice to express his pious gratitude for the preservation of his friend: yet "two lambs and a youthful steer" bespeak the affluence of a philosopher; which is not belied by the entertainment provided for his friend Persicus, in that beautiful Satire which I have called here the last of his works. Further it is useless to seek: from pride or modesty, he has left no other notices of himself; or they have perished. Horace and Persius, his immediate predecessors, are never weary of speaking of themselves. The life of the former might be written, from his own materials, with all the minuteness of a contemporary history: and the latter, who attained to little more than a third of Juvenal's age, has left nothing to be desired on the only topicks which could interest posterity,-his parent, his preceptor, and his course of studies.

:

AN ESSAY

ON THE

ROMAN SATIRISTS.

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 criticks, 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 dramatick and satirick poetry amongst 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

« PoprzedniaDalej »