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 scholastick liberty; but, disregarding the claims of a vain urbanity, and fixing all his soul on the eternal distinctions of moral good and evil, he laboured with a magnificence of language peculiar to himself, to set forth the loveliness of virtue, and the deformity and horrour of vice, in full and perfect display, WILLIAM GIFFORD Juvenal (2nd ed. Lond. 1806 p. lix). 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 censured1. 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. ibid. pp. lxvii lxviii. Thus much may suffice for Juvenal: but shame and sorrow on the head of him, who presumes to transfer his grossness into the vernacular tongues! Though I have given him entire, I have endeavoured to make him speak as he would have spoken if he had lived among us; when, refined with the age, he would have fulminated against impurity in terms, to which, though delicacy might disavow them, manly decency might listen without offence. ibid. p. lxxiii. 1 Bernays accounts in like manner for charges brought against the cynics by a society which feared their unsparing censures. So amongst us, reviewers of high pretension, reserving all their indignation for the ladies who disclose wrongs done to their sex, have not a word to say against the fashionable wrong-doers who interpret reticence as condonation or secret approval. Semper ego auditor tantum? numquamne reponam vexatus totiens rauci Theseide Cordi? impune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas, hic elegos? impune diem consumpserit ingens 5 Telephus, aut summi plena iam margine libri scribtus et in tergo necdum finitus Orestes? nota magis nulli domus est sua, quam mihi lucus Martis et Aeoliis vicinum rupibus antrum Vulcani. quid agant venti, quas torqueat umbras 10 Aeacus, unde alius furtivae devehat aurum pelliculae, quantas iaculetur Monychus ornos, Frontonis platani convulsaque marmora clamant semper et adsiduo ruptae lectore columnae : exspectes eadem a summo minimoque poeta. 15 et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus, et nos consilium dedimus Sullae, privatus ut altum dormiret; stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae. cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo, 20 per quem magnus equos Auruncae flexit alumnus, si vacat ac placidi rationem admittitis, edam. Cum tener uxorem ducat spado, Mevia Tuscum figat aprum et nuda teneat venabula mamma, patricios omnes opibus cum provocet unus 25 30 quod superest, quem Massa timet, quem munere palpat 35 40 palleat, ut nudis pressit qui calcibus anguem, aut Lugdunensem rhetor dicturus ad aram. quid referam quanta siccum iecur ardeat ira, 45 cum populum gregibus comitum premit hic spoliator pupilli prostantis, et hic damnatus-inani iudicio (quid enim salvis infamia, nummis?) exul ab octava Marius bibit et fruitur dis iratis, at tu victrix provincia ploras? 50 haec ego non credam Venusina digna lucerna ? haec ego non agitem? sed quid magis? Heracleas aut Diomedeas aut mugitum labyrinthi et mare percussum puero fabrumque volantem, 55 |