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: Gras bibet, &c.

He is also charged with being too rhetorical in his language. The criticks have discovered that he practised at the bar, and they will therefore have it that his Satires smack of his profession, redolent declamatorem.* 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 amongst his beauties, by his contemporaries. The enumeration of deities in the thirteenth Satire, is well defended by Rigaltius, who allows, 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

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these are interesting to us; but they were emi. nently 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 criticks 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, 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 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

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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 towards 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 physick or morals. When they speak from themselves indeed, they give us exalted sentiments of virtue, and sound philosophy; when they indulge in poetick 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 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 clamour 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 they cannot 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 colours 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 our delicacy, and offending our 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.

Whether any considerations of this or a similar nature, deterred our literati from turning these Satires into English, I cannot say; but, though partial versions might be made, it was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that a complete translation was thought of; when two men, of celebrity in their days, undertook it about the same time; these were Barten Holyday, and Sir Robert Stapylton. Who entered first upon the task, cannot well be told. There appears somewhat of a querulousness on both sides; a jealousy that their versions had been communicated in manuscript to each other: Stapylton's however, was first published, though that of Holyday seems to have been first finished.

Of this ingenious man it is not easy to speak with too much respect. His learning, industry, judgment, and taste are every where conspicuous: nor is he without a very considerable portion of shrewdness to season his observations. His poetry indeed, or rather his ill measured prose, is into