Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookd 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 f |