VERY ERY little of a satisfactory nature has been transmitted to us concerning the history and private character of Juvenal. He appears to have been a native of Aquinum, a little town in the south of Italy; of low birth, and but poorly circumstanced. So much at least is insinuated by his friend Martial, who, in an epigram which he addresses to our poet, describes him in rather a sorry equipage, sometimes running from one part of the city to another to meet his petty engagements, sometimes frequenting the vestibules of the great, whose patronage he courted, and sweating much under his client's robe, whose corners he uses as a fan: Dum tu forsitan inquietus erras LIB. XII. Er. 18. vi He passed his best years amid the clamors of the school and the bar; but at length becoming disgusted with occupations which he found but sterile and unprofitable, he renounced them, and devoted himself to composition. He had, however, too long breathed the air of these places, to be able to divest himself of their peculiarities; his verses are filled with figures of rhetoric, among which hyperbole is predominant. His discontent and chagrin at not having made a fortune in his previous employments, drove him naturally to satire. His first piece was that in which he complains of the hardness of the times, and the little consideration shown for men of genius, by the Romans distinguished by their birth, dignities, and riches. This satire is not the worst that Juvenal has composed. Paris, a famous comedian, and a favourite of the emperor, was displeased by a passage in which he felt himself the object of the poet's raillery, and took a facetious revenge by soliciting Domitian to give Juvenal the command of a regiment. His request was granted without difficulty; and Juvenal found himself under the necessity of setting himself at its head, to conduct it, by order of the emperor, into Pentapolis, in the depths of Libya, on the borders of Egypt. He passed ten years in this exile, and during its continuance composed but two satires, whose style and turn of expression sufficiently mark a sour and discontented spirit: in one he jokes rather coldly on the privileges of a man of the sword, in order to console himself on his lot; and relates in the other a horrible affair which took place in Egypt, in order to mortify Crispinus, who was of that country. Some commentators affirm, that Juvenal died in his exile at the age of eighty years, the victim of disappointment and chagrin. This opinion, however, wants probability. His fourth Satire, which possesses great beauty, was composed at Rome; and it is evident from the picture which he there makes of the court of Domitian, that this prince was no more: he certainly would not have dared, during the life of the emperor, to draw him in the character which he there describes. Besides, the epigram of Martial is dated from Spain, whither that poet is known not to have retired before the second year of the reign of Trajan: and it is worthy of remark, that in joking on the occupations of his friend, he pays him no compliment upon his Satires, of which he does not ṣay a single word, doubtless from ignorance that the mind of Juvenal had taken this turn. poet was therefore still in the vigour of life after the death of Domitian, and the VII. XV. and XVI. Satires were mere coups-d'essay; he commenced his master-pieces about the age of forty-three, and wrote the thirteen remaining Our viii Satires in the course of twenty years, that is, to the third year of the reign of the emperor Adrian: he then betook himself to repose, or died. As a writer Juvenal is of a grave and serious character, always eloquent, and often sublime; he is austere, vehement, passionate, full of gall; and in almost all his pieces, no less an orator and proficient in sarcastic raillery, than a poet. His style runs smooth and clear, and appears to have cost him but little trouble. I am much mistaken, however, if, easy as was his genius for satire, he spared either time or pains in composition: the less his verses seem laboured, the more they are so in fact; and it is perhaps for this reason that he passes for a model in his kind. Julius Scaliger, in his Poetics, gives it as his opinion that nothing can be more terse than the versification of Juvenal: this great critic adds, however, that no man of honour and probity can with safety read works of so licentious a character: Quid enim tersius versibus Juvenalis, propter quorum insolentiam, vel jusserim, vel optarim toto opere abstinere virum probum. (Poet. B. III. c. 98.) This character unfortunately is but too truly attributed to great part of what he has written there are, however, a thousand fine traits in his Satires, which interest, which strike, which seize the mind, and which it were a pity to lose. I have, in the following Para |