nary woes-but resulting from the contemplation of real horrors, of existing crimes, and of practiced atrocities. Juvenal conducts his reader through no illusory scenes. It is to human life that he directs the attention.It is there he points out a thousand causes for mournful reflectionit is there he exhibits enough, more than enough, to rouse the indignation of the moralist, and to excite the spleen of the satirist. Every vice that can blacken, and every weakness that can degrade our nature, are held forth to execration in his terrible page. But the philanthropist looks in vain for some extenuating word, some relenting expression, some exculpatory clause, which might indicate that mankind in general are not the slaves of vile passions, the perpetrators of detestable vices, the dupes or the agents of villainy. The pictures drawn by the vigorous and masterly hand of Juvenal may justly claim our admiration; but surely little delight can be felt in learning, even from him, the monstrous depravity of which humanity has been but too often found susceptible.

Horace seems to have studied the effects of light and shade in his pictures, with more attention than his rival; and he has happily combined the broad humour of the old Greek comedy with the elegance of the new. I think, in comparing him even with Juvenal, we may say, multo est tersior, ac purus magis Horatius, et ad notanda hominum mores precipuus.

The defect of Juvenal seems to be, that his tone is too generally, I had almost said invariably, grave. The Romans understood by satire a more mixed kind of composition than this poet (excellent as he certainly is,) seems to have attempted. We are surprised at the high strain of invective, at the magnificent verses, at the sounding eloquence, which we find in almost every page of a book, denominated by its author, a farrago libelli.

It will scarcely be urged in favour of Juvenal, that when he does not soar upon his eagle pinions, his flight is often directed where the eye of taste

cannot wish to follow it. In his sixth, the wittiest of all his satires, his scurrility, and his obscenity, have little-perhaps no pretensions to humour.

In comparing the three great satirists of antiquity, I am inclined to give the first place to Horace, the second to Juvenal, and the third to Persius. Horace is the most agreeable and the most instructive writer; Juvenal the most splendid declaimer; and Persius the most inflexible moralist. The first is like a skilful gladiator, who vanquishes without destroying his antagonist;the second exerts gigantic strength in the contest; and the third enters the lists with all the ardour of a youthful combatant. If the style of Horace be chaster, if his Latinity be purer, if his manner be gayer and more agreeable than either of the two satirists who follow him, he does not write finer verses than Juvenal, nor has he nobler thoughts than Persius. The poetry of the first resembles a beautiful river, which glides along through pleasant scenes, sunny fields, and smiling valleys that of the second is like the majestic

stream, whose waters, in flowing by the largest city in Europe, are polluted with no small portion of its filth and ordure: that of the third may be compared to a deep and angry torrent, which loves to roll its sullen waves under the dark shadow of the mountain, or amidst the silent gloom of the forest.

Having now considered the character, of Persius as a poet, I shall proceed to make some observations upon him as a critic and a moralist.

1. The decline of Roman eloquence, and the bad taste in criticism, which prevailed at Rome under the reign of Nero, furnished Persius with the subject of his first satire. In his strictures upon the poetasters of his time, he is, indeed, as Ascensius terms him, acerbissimus irrisor. He ridicules the verses of Nero with mony, and mocks without reserve, the literary pretensions of his courtiers. Does the taste of nations then decline so rapidly? fifty years had

very

little cere

probably not elapsed between the publication of the Æneis, and the composition of this bitter invective against the corrupt taste of the Romans in poetry and eloquence.

If it be indeed true, as has been asserted by several writers, and especially by D'Alembert in a discourse which he pronounced before the French Academy, that taste, though not generally possessed, is no wise an arbitrary thing; it seems difficult to account for the short duration of those periods, which in different ages have been most distinguished for refinement and for learning. When true notions of grandeur and of beauty have once been understood; and when mankind have once agreed in admiring the most perfect productions of art; it appears extraordinary, that the admitted standards of excellence should not longer continue the models of imitation. History and experience, however, teach us, that revolutions in taste are at least as frequent as in politics and in manners.