Juvenal, and Persius. Somewhat of their particular manner, belonging to
all of them, is yet remaining to be considered. Persius was grave, and
particularly opposed his gravity to lewdness, which was the predominant
vice in Nero’s court at the time when he published his satires, which was
before that emperor fell into the excess of cruelty. Horace was a mild
admonisher, a court satirist, fit for the gentle times of Augustus, and
more fit for the reasons which I have already given. Juvenal was as
proper for his times as they for theirs; his was an age that deserved a
more severe chastisement; vices were more gross and open, more
flagitious, more encouraged by the example of a tyrant, and more
protected by his authority. Therefore, wheresoever Juvenal mentions
Nero, he means Domitian, whom he dares not attack in his own person, but
scourges him by proxy. Heinsius urges in praise of Horace that,
according to the ancient art and law of satire, it should be nearer to
comedy than to tragedy; not declaiming against vice, but only laughing at
it. Neither Persius nor Juvenal was ignorant of this, for they had both
studied Horace. And the thing itself is plainly true. But as they had
read Horace, they had likewise read Lucilius, of whom Persius says,
_Secuit urbem_; . . . _et genuinum fregit in illis_; meaning Mutius and
Lupus; and Juvenal also mentions him in these words:—
“_Ense velut stricto_, _quoties Lucilius ardens_
_Infremuit_, _rubet auditor_, _cui frigida mens est_
_Criminibus_, _tacitá sulant præcordia culpâ_.”
So that they thought the imitation of Lucilius was more proper to their
purpose than that of Horace. “They changed satire,” says Holyday, “but
they changed it for the better; for the business being to reform great
vices, chastisement goes farther than admonition; whereas a perpetual
grin, like that of Horace, does rather anger than amend a man.”
Thus far that learned critic Barten Holyday, whose interpretation and
illustrations of Juvenal are as excellent as the verse of his translation
and his English are lame and pitiful; for it is not enough to give us the
meaning of a poet (which I acknowledge him to have performed most
faithfully) but he must also imitate his genius and his numbers as far as
the English will come up to the elegance of the original. In few words,
it is only for a poet to translate a poet. Holyday and Stapleton had not
enough considered this when they attempted Juvenal; but I forbear
reflections: only I beg leave to take notice of this sentence, where
Holyday says, “a perpetual grin, like that of Horace, rather angers than
amends a man.” I cannot give him up the manner of Horace in low satire
so easily. Let the chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for
his new kind of satire, let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he
pleases, yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist
in fine raillery. This, my lord, is your particular talent, to which
even Juvenal could not arrive. It is not reading, it is not imitation
of, an author which can produce this fineness; it must be inborn; it must
proceed from a genius, and particular way of thinking, which is not to be
taught, and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from
nature. How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but
how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without
using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the
names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and
to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of
shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master
can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is
never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true that this fineness
of raillery is offensive; a witty man is tickled, while he is hurt in
this manner; and a fool feels it not. The occasion of an offence may
possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted that in
effect this way does more mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and
though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it
for him; yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly
butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head
from the body and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable,
as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a
bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to
her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be
kind enough to think it belongs to me. The character of Zimri, in my
“Absalom” is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem; it is not bloody, but
it is ridiculous enough; and he for whom it was intended was too witty to
resent it as an injury. If I had railed, I might have suffered for it
justly; but I managed my own work more happily, perhaps more dexterously.
I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the
representing of blind-sides and little extravagances; to which the
wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I
wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began
the frolic.
And thus, my lord, you see I have preferred the manner of Horace and of
your lordship in this kind of satire to that of Juvenal, and, I think,
reasonably. Holyday ought not to have arraigned so great an author for
that which was his excellency and his merit; or, if he did, on such a
palpable mistake he might expect that some one might possibly arise
(either in his own time, or after him) to rectify his error, and restore
to Horace that commendation of which he has so unjustly robbed him. And
let the manes of Juvenal forgive me if I say that this way of Horace was
the best for amending manners, as it is the most difficult. His was an
_ense rescindendum_; but that of Horace was a pleasant cure, with all the
limbs preserved entire, and, as our mountebanks tell us in their bills,
without keeping the patient within doors for a day. What they promise
only, Horace has effectually performed. Yet I contradict not the
proposition which I formerly advanced. Juvenal’s times required a more
painful kind of operation; but if he had lived in the age of Horace, I
must needs affirm that he had it not about him. He took the method which
was prescribed him by his own genius, which was sharp and eager; he could
not railly, but he could declaim: and as his provocations were great, he
has revenged them tragically. This, notwithstanding I am to say another
word which, as true as it is, will yet displease the partial admirers of
our Horace; I have hinted it before, but it is time for me now to speak
more plainly.
This manner of Horace is indeed the best; but Horace has not executed it
altogether so happily—at least, not often. The manner of Juvenal is
confessed to be inferior to the former; but Juvenal has excelled him in
his performance. Juvenal has railed more wittily than Horace has
rallied. Horace means to make his reader laugh, but he is not sure of
his experiment. Juvenal always intends to move your indignation, and he
always brings about his purpose. Horace, for aught I know, might have
tickled the people of his age, but amongst the moderns he is not so
successful. They who say he entertains so pleasantly, may perhaps value
themselves on the quickness of their own understandings, that they can
see a jest farther off than other men; they may find occasion of laughter
in the wit-battle of the two buffoons Sarmentus and Cicerrus, and hold
their sides for fear of bursting when Rupilius and Persius are scolding.
For my own part, I can only like the characters of all four, which are
judiciously given; but for my heart I cannot so much as smile at their
insipid raillery. I see not why Persius should call upon Brutus to
revenge him on his adversary; and that because he had killed Julius Cæsar
for endeavouring to be a king, therefore he should be desired to murder
Rupilius, only because his name was Mr. King. A miserable clench, in my
opinion, for Horace to record; I have heard honest Mr. Swan make many a
better, and yet have had the grace to hold my countenance. But it may be
puns were then in fashion, as they were wit in the sermons of the last
age, and in the court of King Charles the Second. I am sorry to say it,
for the sake of Horace; but certain it is, he has no fine palate who can
feed so heartily on garbage.
But I have already wearied myself, and doubt not but I have tired your
lordship’s patience, with this long, rambling, and, I fear, trivial
discourse. Upon the one-half of the merits, that is, pleasure, I cannot
but conclude that Juvenal was the better satirist. They who will descend
into his particular praises may find them at large in the dissertation of
the learned Rigaltius to Thuanus. As for Persius, I have given the
reasons why I think him inferior to both of them; yet I have one thing to
add on that subject.
Barten Holyday, who translated both Juvenal and Persius, has made this
distinction betwixt them, which is no less true than witty—that in
Persius, the difficulty is to find a meaning; in Juvenal, to choose a
meaning; so crabbed is Persius, and so copious is Juvenal; so much the
understanding is employed in one, and so much the judgment in the other;
so difficult is it to find any sense in the former, and the best sense of
the latter.
If, on the other side, any one suppose I have commended Horace below his
merit, when I have allowed him but the second place, I desire him to
consider if Juvenal (a man of excellent natural endowments, besides the
advantages of diligence and study, and coming after him and building upon
his foundations) might not probably, with all these helps, surpass him;
and whether it be any dishonour to Horace to be thus surpassed, since no
art or science is at once begun and perfected but that it must pass first
through many hands and even through several ages. If Lucilius could add
to Ennius and Horace to Lucilius, why, without any diminution to the fame
of Horace, might not Juvenal give the last perfection to that work? Or
rather, what disreputation is it to Horace that Juvenal excels in the
tragical satire, as Horace does in the comical? I have read over
attentively both Heinsius and Dacier in their commendations of Horace,
but I can find no more in either of them for the preference of him to
Juvenal than the instructive part (the part of wisdom, and not that of
pleasure), which therefore is here allowed him, notwithstanding what
Scaliger and Rigaltius have pleaded to the contrary for Juvenal. And to
show I am impartial I will here translate what Dacier has said on that
subject:—
“I cannot give a more just idea of the two books of satires made by
Horace than by comparing them to the statues of the Sileni, to which
Alcibiades compares Socrates in the Symposium. They were figures
which had nothing of agreeable, nothing of beauty on their outside;
but when any one took the pains to open them and search into them, he
there found the figures of all the deities. So in the shape that
Horace presents himself to us in his satires we see nothing at the
first view which deserves our attention; it seems that he is rather
an amusement for children than for the serious consideration of men.
But when we take away his crust, and that which hides him from our
sight, when we discover him to the bottom, then we find all the
divinities in a full assembly—that is to say, all the virtues which
ought to be the continual exercise of those who seriously endeavour
to correct their vices.”
It is easy to observe that Dacier, in this noble similitude, has confined
the praise of his author wholly to the instructive part the commendation
turns on this, and so does that which follows:—
“In these two books of satire it is the business of Horace to
instruct us how to combat our vices, to regulate our passions, to
follow nature, to give bounds to our desires, to distinguish betwixt
truth and falsehood, and betwixt our conceptions of things and things
themselves; to come back from our prejudicate opinions, to understand
exactly the principles and motives of all our actions; and to avoid
the ridicule into which all men necessarily fall who are intoxicated
with those notions which they have received from their masters, and
which they obstinately retain without examining whether or no they be
founded on right reason.
“In a word, he labours to render us happy in relation to ourselves;
agreeable and faithful to our friends; and discreet, serviceable, and
well-bred in relation to those with whom we are obliged to live and
to converse. To make his figures intelligible, to conduct his
readers through the labyrinth of some perplexed sentence or obscure
parenthesis, is no great matter; and, as Epictetus says, there is
nothing of beauty in all this, or what is worthy of a prudent man.
The principal business, and which is of most importance to us, is to
show the use, the reason, and the proof of his precepts.
“They who endeavour not to correct themselves according to so exact a
model are just like the patients who have open before them a book of
admirable receipts for their diseases, and please themselves with
reading it without comprehending the nature of the remedies or how to
apply them to their cure.”
Let Horace go off with these encomiums, which he has so well deserved.
To conclude the contention betwixt our three poets I will use the words
of Virgil in his fifth Æneid, where Æneas proposes the rewards of the
foot-race to the three first who should reach the goal:—
“_Tres præmia primi_ . . .
_Accipient_, _flauâque caput nectentur olivâ_.”
Let these three ancients be preferred to all the moderns as first
arriving at the goal; let them all be crowned as victors with the wreath
that properly belongs to satire. But after that, with this distinction
amongst themselves:—
“_Primus equum phaleris insignem victor habeto_.”
Let Juvenal ride first in triumph.
“_Alter Amazoniam pharetram_, _plenamque sagittis_
_Threiciis_, _lato quam circumplectitur auro_
_Balteus_, _et tereti subnectit fibula gemmâ_.”
Let Horace, who is the second (and but just the second), carry off the
quiver and the arrows as the badges of his satire, and the golden belt
and the diamond button.
“_Tertius Argolico hoc clypeo contentus abito_.”
And let Persius, the last of the first three worthies, be contented with
this Grecian shield, and with victory—not only over all the Grecians, who
were ignorant of the Roman satire—but over all the moderns in succeeding
ages, excepting Boileau and your lordship.
And thus I have given the history of satire, and derived it as far as
from Ennius to your lordship—that is, from its first rudiments of
barbarity to its last polishing and perfection; which is, with Virgil, in
his address to Augustus—
“_Nomen famâ tot ferre per annos_, . . .
_Tithoni primâ quot abest ab origine Cæsar_.”
I said only from Ennius, but I may safely carry it higher, as far as
Livius Andronicus, who, as I have said formerly, taught the first play at
Rome in the year _ab urbe conditâ_ CCCCCXIV. I have since desired my
learned friend Mr. Maidwell to compute the difference of times betwixt
Aristophanes and Livius Andronicus; and he assures me from the best
chronologers that _Plutus_, the last of Aristophanes’ plays, was
represented at Athens in the year of the 97th Olympiad, which agrees with
the year _urbis conditæ_ CCCLXIV. So that the difference of years
betwixt Aristophanes and Andronicus is 150; from whence I have probably
deduced that Livius Andronicus, who was a Grecian, had read the plays of
the old comedy, which were satirical, and also of the new; for Menander
was fifty years before him, which must needs be a great light to him in
his own plays that were of the satirical nature. That the Romans had
farces before this, it is true; but then they had no communication with
Greece; so that Andronicus was the first who wrote after the manner of
the old comedy, in his plays: he was imitated by Ennius about thirty
years afterwards. Though the former writ fables, the latter, speaking
properly, began the Roman satire, according to that description which
Juvenal gives of it in his first:—
“_Quicquid agunt homines_, _votum_, _timor_, _ira voluptas_,
_Gaudia_, _discurses_, _nostri est farrago libelli_.”
This is that in which I have made hold to differ from Casaubon,
Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics—that not
Ennius, but Andronicus, was the first who, by the _archæa comedia_ of the
Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous Roman satire;
which sort of poem, though we had not derived from Rome, yet nature
teaches it mankind in all ages and in every country.
It is but necessary that, after so much has been said of satire, some
definition of it should be given. Heinsius, in his Dissertations on
Horace, makes it for me in these words:—“Satire is a kind of poetry,
without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in
which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides which
are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended—partly
dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both kinds of speaking, but
for the most part figuratively and occultly; consisting, in a low
familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech, but partly
also in a facetious and civil way of jesting, by which either hatred or
laughter or indignation is moved.” Where I cannot but observe that this
obscure and perplexed definition, or rather description of satire, is
wholly accommodated to the Horatian way, and excluding the works of
Juvenal and Persius as foreign from that kind of poem. The clause in the
beginning of it, “without a series of action,” distinguishes satire
properly from stage-plays, which are all of one action and one continued
series of action. The end or scope of satire is to purge the passions;
so far it is common to the satires of Juvenal and Persius. The rest
which follows is also generally belonging to all three, till he comes
upon us with the excluding clause, “consisting, in a low familiar way of
speech” which is the proper character of Horace, and from which the other
two (for their honour be it spoken) are far distant. But how come
lowness of style and the familiarity of words to be so much the propriety
of satire that without them a poet can be no more a satirist than without
risibility he can be a man? Is the fault of Horace to be made the virtue
and standing rule of this poem? Is the _grande sophos_ of Persius, and
the sublimity of Juvenal, to be circumscribed with the meanness of words
and vulgarity of expression? If Horace refused the pains of numbers and
the loftiness of figures are they bound to follow so ill a precedent?
Let him walk afoot with his pad in his hand for his own pleasure, but let
not them be accounted no poets who choose to mount and show their
horsemanship. Holyday is not afraid to say that there was never such a
fall as from his odes to his satires, and that he, injuriously to
himself, untuned his harp. The majestic way of Persius and Juvenal was
new when they began it, but it is old to us; and what poems have not,
with time, received an alteration in their fashion?—“which alteration,”
says Holyday, “is to after-times as good a warrant as the first.” Has
not Virgil changed the manners of Homer’s heroes in his Æneis? Certainly
he has, and for the better; for Virgil’s age was more civilised and
better bred, and he writ according to the politeness of Rome under the
reign of Augustus Cæsar, not to the rudeness of Agamemnon’s age or the
times of Homer. Why should we offer to confine free spirits to one form
when we cannot so much as confine our bodies to one fashion of apparel?
Would not Donne’s satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more
charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers? But he
followed Horace so very close that of necessity he must fall with him;
and I may safely say it of this present age, that if we are not so great
wits as Donne, yet certainly we are better poets.
But I have said enough, and it may be too much, on this subject. Will
your lordship be pleased to prolong my audience only so far till I tell
you my own trivial thoughts how a modern satire should be made? I will
not deviate in the least from the precepts and examples of the ancients,
who were always our best masters; I will only illustrate them, and
discover some of the hidden beauties in their designs, that we thereby
may form our own in imitation of them. Will you please but to observe
that Persius, the least in dignity of all the three, has,
notwithstanding, been the first who has discovered to us this important
secret in the designing of a perfect satire—that it ought only to treat
of one subject; to be confined to one particular theme, or, at least, to
one principally? If other vices occur in the management of the chief,
they should only be transiently lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to
make the design double. As in a play of the English fashion which we
call a tragicomedy, there is to be but one main design, and though there
be an under-plot or second walk of comical characters and adventures, yet
they are subservient to the chief fable, carried along under it and
helping to it, so that the drama may not seem a monster with two heads.
Thus the Copernican system of the planets makes the moon to be moved by
the motion of the earth, and carried about her orb as a dependent of
hers. Mascardi, in his discourse of the “Doppia Favola,” or double tale
in plays, gives an instance of it in the famous pastoral of Guarini,
called _Il Pastor Fido_, where Corisca and the Satyr are the under-parts;
yet we may observe that Corisca is brought into the body of the plot and
made subservient to it. It is certain that the divine wit of Horace was
not ignorant of this rule—that a play, though it consists of many parts,
must yet be one in the action, and must drive on the accomplishment of
one design—for he gives this very precept, _Sit quod vis simplex
duntaxat_, _et unum_; yet he seems not much to mind it in his satires,
many of them consisting of more arguments than one, and the second
without dependence on the first. Casaubon has observed this before me in
his preference of Persius to Horace, and will have his own beloved author
to be the first who found out and introduced this method of confining
himself to one subject.
I know it may be urged in defence of Horace that this unity is not
necessary, because the very word _satura_ signifies a dish plentifully
stored with all variety of fruits and grains. Yet Juvenal, who calls his
poems a _farrago_ (which is a word of the same signification with
_satura_), has chosen to follow the same method of Persius and not of
Horace; and Boileau, whose example alone is a sufficient authority, has
wholly confined himself in all his satires to this unity of design. That
variety which is not to be found in any one satire is at least in many,
written on several occasions; and if variety be of absolute necessity in
every one of them, according to the etymology of the word, yet it may
arise naturally from one subject, as it is diversely treated in the
several subordinate branches of it, all relating to the chief. It may be
illustrated accordingly with variety of examples in the subdivisions of
it, and with as many precepts as there are members of it, which all
together may complete that _olla_ or hotch-potch which is properly a
satire.
Under this unity of theme or subject is comprehended another rule for
perfecting the design of true satire. The poet is bound, and that _ex
officio_, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue, and to
caution him against some one particular vice or folly. Other virtues,
subordinate to the first, may be recommended under that chief head, and
other vices or follies may be scourged, besides that which he principally
intends; but he is chiefly to inculcate one virtue, and insist on that.
Thus Juvenal, in every satire excepting the first, ties himself to one
principal instructive point, or to the shunning of moral evil. Even in
the sixth, which seems only an arraignment of the whole sex of womankind,
there is a latent admonition to avoid ill women, by showing how very few
who are virtuous and good are to be found amongst them. But this, though
the wittiest of all his satires, has yet the least of truth or
instruction in it; he has run himself into his old declamatory way, and
almost forgotten that he was now setting up for a moral poet.
Persius is never wanting to us in some profitable doctrine, and in
exposing the opposite vices to it. His kind of philosophy is one, which
is the Stoic, and every satire is a comment on one particular dogma of
that sect, unless we will except the first, which is against bad writers;
and yet even there he forgets not the precepts of the “porch.” In
general, all virtues are everywhere to be praised and recommended to
practice, and all vices to be reprehended and made either odious or
ridiculous, or else there is a fundamental error in the whole design.