1

BY WHICH THESE DIFFICULT SATIRISTS ARE RENDERED
EASY AND FAMILIAR TO THE READER.

AT MR. LEWIS's, N° 157, SWALLOW STREET,

NEAR PICCADILLY.

M.DCC.LXXXIX.

ENOX LIBRARY

NEW YORK

PREFACE

D

TO

UVEN A L.

ECIMUS Junius Juvenal was born at Aquinum, a town of the Volfci, a people of Latium: bence, from the place of his birth, he was called Aquinas. It is not certain whether he was the fon, or fofter-child, of a rich freedman. He had a learned education, and, in the time of Claudius Nero, pleaded caufes with great reputation. About his middle age be applied himself to the study of Poetry; and, as he faw a daily increafe of vice and folly, he addicted himSelf to writing Satire: but, having faid fomething (Sat. vii. 1. 88-92.) which was deemed a reflection on Paris the actor, a minion of Domitian's, he was banifhed into Egypt, at * eighty years of age, under pretence of fending him as captain of a company of foldiers. This was looked upon as a fort of humorous punishment for what he had faid, in making Paris the beftower of posts in the army.

However, Domitian dying very foon after, Juvenal returned to Rome, and is faid to have lived there to

Quanquam Octogenarius.-MARSHALL, in Vit. Juv.

VOL. I.

a

the

*

the times of Nerva and Trajan. At last, worne out with old age, he expired in a fit of coughing.

He was a man of excellent morals, of an elegant taste and judgment, a fast friend to Virtue, and an irreconcileable enemy to Vice in every shape.

As a writer, his style is unrivalled, in point of elegance and beauty, by any Satirist that we are acquainted with, Horace not excepted. The plainness of his expreffions are derived from the bonefty and integrity of his own mind: his great aim was—“ to

bold, as it were, the mirror up to nature; to fhew "Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and "the very age and body of the time his form and

preffure."-He meant not, therefore, to corrupt the mind, by openly defcribing the lewd practices of his countrymen, but to remove every veil, even of language itself, which could foften the features, or bide the full deformity of vice from the obfervation of his readers, and thus to strike the mind with due abkorrence of what be cenfures. All this is done in fo mafterly a way, as to render him well worthy Scaliger's encomium, when he ftyles him—Omnium Satyricorum facilè Princeps. He was much loved and respected by Martial. Quintilian Speaks of him, Inst. Orat. Lib. x. as the chief of Satirifts. || Ammianus

Ibique ad Nervæ & Trojani tempora fupervixiffe dicitur. MARSHALL. Ib.

+ Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 2.

Epig. 24.

See Mart. Lib. vii.

Hift. Lib. xxviii.

Marcellinus