their forces were more equal. A dispute has always been, and ever will
continue, betwixt the favourers of the two poets. _Non nostrum est
tantas componere lites._ I shall only venture to give my own opinion,
and leave it for better judges to determine. If it be only argued in
general, which of them was the better poet, the victory is already
gained on the side of Horace. Virgil himself must yield to him in the
delicacy of his turns, his choice of words, and perhaps the purity
of his Latin. He who says that Pindar is inimitable, is himself
inimitable in his Odes. But the contention betwixt these two great
masters, is for the prize of Satire; in which controversy, all the Odes
and Epodes of Horace are to stand excluded. I say this, because Horace
has written many of them satyrically, against his private enemies; yet
these, if justly considered, are somewhat of the nature of the Greek
Silli, which were invectives against particular sects and persons. But
Horace has purged himself of this choler, before he entered on those
discourses, which are more properly called the Roman Satire. He has
not now to do with a Lyce, a Canidia, a Cassius Severus, or a Menas;
but is to correct the vices and the follies of his time, and to give
the rules of a happy and virtuous life. In a word, that former sort
of satire, which is known in England by the name of lampoon, is a
dangerous sort of weapon, and for the most part unlawful. We have no
moral right on the reputation of other men. It is taking from them
what we cannot restore to them. There are only two reasons, for which
we may be permitted to write lampoons; and I will not promise that
they can always justify us. The first is revenge, when we have been
affronted in the same nature, or have been any ways notoriously abused,
and can make ourselves no other reparation. And yet we know, that, in
christian charity, all offences are to be forgiven, as we expect the
like pardon for those which we daily commit against Almighty God. And
this consideration has often made me tremble when I was saying our
Saviour's prayer; for the plain condition of the forgiveness which we
beg, is the pardoning of others the offences which they have done to
us; for which reason I have many times avoided the commission of that
fault, even when I have been notoriously provoked. Let not this, my
lord, pass for vanity in me; for it is truth. More libels have been
written against me, than almost any man now living; and I had reason
on my side, to have defended my own innocence. I speak not of my
poetry, which I have wholly given up to the critics: let them use it
as they please: posterity, perhaps, may be more favourable to me; for
interest and passion will lie buried in another age, and partiality
and prejudice be forgotten. I speak of my morals, which have been
sufficiently aspersed: that only sort of reputation ought to be dear
to every honest man, and is to me. But let the world witness for me,
that I have been often wanting to myself in that particular; I have
seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, when it was in my power to have
exposed my enemies: and, being naturally vindicative, have suffered in
silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.
Any thing, though never so little, which a man speaks of himself, in
my opinion, is still too much; and therefore I will wave this subject,
and proceed to give the second reason which may justify a poet when he
writes against a particular person; and that is, when he is become a
public nuisance. All those, whom Horace in his Satires, and Persius and
Juvenal have mentioned in theirs, with a brand of infamy, are wholly
such. It is an action of virtue to make examples of vicious men. They
may and ought to be upbraided with their crimes and follies; both for
their amendment, if they are not yet incorrigible, and for the terror
of others, to hinder them from falling into those enormities, which
they see are so severely punished in the persons of others. The first
reason was only an excuse for revenge; but this second is absolutely
of a poet's office to perform: but how few lampooners are now living,
who are capable of this duty![36] When they come in my way, it is
impossible sometimes to avoid reading them. But, good God! how remote
they are, in common justice, from the choice of such persons as are the
proper subject of satire! And how little wit they bring for the support
of their injustice! The weaker sex is their most ordinary theme; and
the best and fairest are sure to be the most severely handled. Amongst
men, those who are prosperously unjust, are entitled to panegyric; but
afflicted virtue is insolently stabbed with all manner of reproaches;
no decency is considered, no fulsomeness omitted; no venom is wanting,
as far as dulness can supply it: for there is a perpetual dearth of
wit; a barrenness of good sense and entertainment. The neglect of the
readers will soon put an end to this sort of scribbling. There can be
no pleasantry where there is no wit; no impression can be made, where
there is no truth for the foundation. To conclude: they are like the
fruits of the earth in this unnatural season; the corn which held up
its head is spoiled with rankness; but the greater part of the harvest
is laid along, and little of good income and wholesome nourishment is
received into the barns. This is almost a digression, I confess to your
lordship; but a just indignation forced it from me. Now I have removed
this rubbish, I will return to the comparison of Juvenal and Horace.
I would willingly divide the palm betwixt them, upon the two heads
of profit and delight, which are the two ends of poetry in general.
It must be granted, by the favourers of Juvenal, that Horace is the
more copious and profitable in his instructions of human life; but,
in my particular opinion, which I set not up for a standard to better
judgements, Juvenal is the more delightful author. I am profited
by both, I am pleased with both; but I owe more to Horace for my
instruction, and more to Juvenal for my pleasure. This, as I said, is
my particular taste of these two authors: they who will have either
of them to excel the other in both qualities, can scarce give better
reasons for their opinion than I for mine. But all unbiassed readers
will conclude, that my moderation is not to be condemned: to such
impartial men I must appeal; for they who have already formed their
judgment, may justly stand suspected of prejudice; and though all who
are my readers will set up to be my judges, I enter my _caveat_ against
them, that they ought not so much as to be of my jury; or, if they be
admitted, it is but reason that they should first hear what I have to
urge in the defence of my opinion.
That Horace is somewhat the better instructor of the two, is proved
from hence,--that his instructions are more general, Juvenal's more
limited. So that, granting that the counsels which they give are
equally good for moral use, Horace, who gives the most various advice,
and most applicable to all occasions which can occur to us in the
course of our lives,--as including in his discourses, not only all the
rules of morality, but also of civil conversation,--is undoubtedly to
be preferred to him who is more circumscribed in his instructions,
makes them to fewer people, and on fewer occasions, than the other. I
may be pardoned for using an old saying, since it is true, and to the
purpose: _Bonum quò communis, eò melius_. Juvenal, excepting only
his first Satire, is in all the rest confined to the exposing of some
particular vice; that he lashes, and there he sticks. His sentences
are truly shining and instructive; but they are sprinkled here and
there. Horace is teaching us in every line, and is perpetually moral:
he had found out the skill of Virgil, to hide his sentences; to give
you the virtue of them, without shewing them in their full extent;
which is the ostentation of a poet, and not his art: and this Petronius
charges on the authors of his time, as a vice of writing which was then
growing on the age: _ne sententiæ extra corpus orationis emineant_:
he would have them weaved into the body of the work, and not appear
embossed upon it, and striking directly on the reader's view. Folly was
the proper quarry of Horace, and not vice; and as there are but few
notoriously wicked men, in comparison with a shoal of fools and fops,
so it is a harder thing to make a man wise than to make him honest; for
the will is only to be reclaimed in the one, but the understanding is
to be informed in the other. There are blind sides and follies, even
in the professors of moral philosophy; and there is not any one sect
of them that Horace has not exposed: which, as it was not the design
of Juvenal, who was wholly employed in lashing vices, some of them the
most enormous that can be imagined, so, perhaps, it was not so much his
talent.
_Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit._
This was the commendation which Persius gave him: where, by _vitium_,
he means those little vices which we call follies, the defects of human
understanding, or, at most, the peccadillos of life, rather than the
tragical vices, to which men are hurried by their unruly passions
and exorbitant desires. But, in the word _omne_, which is universal,
he concludes with me, that the divine wit of Horace left nothing
untouched; that he entered into the inmost recesses of nature; found
out the imperfections even of the most wise and grave, as well as of
the common people; discovering, even in the great Trebatius, to whom he
addresses the first Satire, his hunting after business, and following
the court, as well as in the persecutor Crispinus, his impertinence
and importunity. It is true, he exposes Crispinus openly, as a common
nuisance; but he rallies the other, as a friend, more finely. The
exhortations of Persius are confined to noblemen; and the stoick
philosophy is that alone which he recommends to them; Juvenal exhorts
to particular virtues, as they are opposed to those vices against which
he declaims; but Horace laughs to shame all follies, and insinuates
virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.
This last consideration seems to incline the balance on the side of
Horace, and to give him the preference to Juvenal, not only in profit,
but in pleasure. But, after all, I must confess, that the delight which
Horace gives me is but languishing. Be pleased still to understand,
that I speak of my own taste only: he may ravish other men; but I am
too stupid and insensible to be tickled. Where he barely grins himself,
and, as Scaliger says, only shows his white teeth, he cannot provoke
me to any laughter. His urbanity, that is, his good manners, are to
be commended, but his wit is faint; and his salt, if I may dare to
say so, almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine
wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear; he fully satisfies
my expectation; he treats his subject home: his spleen is raised, and
he raises mine: I have the pleasure of concernment in all he says;
he drives his reader along with him; and when he is at the end of his
way, I willingly stop with him. If he went another stage, it would be
too far; it would make a journey of a progress, and turn delight into
fatigue. When he gives over, it is a sign the subject is exhausted,
and the wit of man can carry it no farther. If a fault can be justly
found in him, it is, that he is sometimes too luxuriant, too redundant;
says more than he needs, like my friend the _Plain-Dealer_,[37] but
never more than pleases. Add to this, that his thoughts are as just as
those of Horace, and much more elevated. His expressions are sonorous
and more noble; his verse more numerous, and his words are suitable
to his thoughts, sublime and lofty. All these contribute to the
pleasure of the reader; and the greater the soul of him who reads, his
transports are the greater. Horace is always on the amble, Juvenal on
the gallop; but his way is perpetually on carpet-ground. He goes with
more impetuosity than Horace, but as securely; and the swiftness adds
a more lively agitation to the spirits. The low style of Horace is
according to his subject, that is, generally grovelling. I question not
but he could have raised it; for the first epistle of the second book,
which he writes to Augustus, (a most instructive satire concerning
poetry,) is of so much dignity in the words, and of so much elegancy
in the numbers, that the author plainly shows, the _sermo pedestris_,
in his other Satires, was rather his choice than his necessity. He was
a rival to Lucilius, his predecessor, and was resolved to surpass him
in his own manner. Lucilius, as we see by his remaining fragments,
minded neither his style, nor his numbers, nor his purity of words,
nor his run of verse. Horace therefore copes with him in that humble
way of satire, writes under his own force, and carries a dead-weight,
that he may match his competitor in the race. This, I imagine, was the
chief reason why he minded only the clearness of his satire, and the
cleanness of expression, without ascending to those heights to which
his own vigour might have carried him. But, limiting his desires only
to the conquest of Lucilius, he had his ends of his rival, who lived
before him; but made way for a new conquest over himself, by Juvenal,
his successor. He could not give an equal pleasure to his reader,
because he used not equal instruments. The fault was in the tools, and
not in the workman. But versification and numbers are the greatest
pleasures of poetry: Virgil knew it, and practised both so happily,
that, for aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction. In
all other parts of poetry, he is faultless; but in this he placed his
chief perfection. And give me leave, my lord, since I have here an apt
occasion, to say, that Virgil could have written sharper satires than
either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that
way. I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his Eclogues,
to justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show, that
he has given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is
against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:
----_non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas
Stridenti, miserum, stipulâ, disperdere carmen?_
But, to return to my purpose. When there is any thing deficient in
numbers and sound, the reader is uneasy and unsatisfied; he wants
something of his complement, desires somewhat which he finds not:
and this being the manifest defect of Horace, it is no wonder that,
finding it supplied in Juvenal, we are more delighted with him. And,
besides this, the sauce of Juvenal is more poignant, to create in us an
appetite of reading him. The meat of Horace is more nourishing; but the
cookery of Juvenal more exquisite: so that, granting Horace to be the
more general philosopher, we cannot deny that Juvenal was the greater
poet, I mean in satire. His thoughts are sharper; his indignation
against vice is more vehement; his spirit has more of the commonwealth
genius; he treats tyranny, and all the vices attending it, as they
deserve, with the utmost rigour: and consequently, a noble soul is
better pleased with a zealous vindicator of Roman liberty, than with a
temporising poet, a well-mannered court-slave, and a man who is often
afraid of laughing in the right place; who is ever decent, because he
is naturally servile. After all, Horace had the disadvantage of the
times in which he lived; they were better for the man, but worse for
the satirist. It is generally said, that those enormous vices which
were practised under the reign of Domitian, were unknown in the time of
Augustus Cæsar; that therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace.
Little follies were out of doors, when oppression was to be scourged
instead of avarice: it was no longer time to turn into ridicule the
false opinions of philosophers, when the Roman liberty was to be
asserted. There was more need of a Brutus in Domitian's days, to redeem
or mend, than of a Horace, if he had then been living, to laugh at a
fly-catcher.[38] This reflection at the same time excuses Horace, but
exalts Juvenal.--I have ended, before I was aware, the comparison of
Horace and Juvenal, upon the topics of instruction and delight; and,
indeed, I may safely here conclude that common-place; for, if we make
Horace our minister of state in satire, and Juvenal of our private
pleasures, I think the latter has no ill bargain of it. Let profit have
the pre-eminence of honour, in the end of poetry. Pleasure, though but
the second in degree, is the first in favour. And who would not chuse
to be loved better, rather than to be more esteemed? But I am entered
already upon another topic, which concerns the particular merits of
these two satirists. However, I will pursue my business where I left
it, and carry it farther than that common observation of the several
ages in which these authors flourished.
When Horace writ his Satires, the monarchy of his Cæsar was in its
newness, and the government but just made easy to the conquered people.
They could not possibly have forgotten the usurpation of that prince
upon their freedom, nor the violent methods which he had used, in the
compassing that vast design: they yet remembered his proscriptions,
and the slaughter of so many noble Romans, their defenders: amongst
the rest, that horrible action of his, when he forced Livia from the
arms of her husband, who was constrained to see her married, as Dion
relates the story, and, big with child as she was, conveyed to the
bed of his insulting rival. The same Dion Cassius gives us another
instance of the crime before mentioned; that Cornelius Sisenna being
reproached, in full senate, with the licentious conduct of his wife,
returned this answer, "that he had married her by the counsel of
Augustus;" intimating, says my author, that Augustus had obliged him
to that marriage, that he might, under that covert, have the more free
access to her. His adulteries were still before their eyes: but they
must be patient where they had not power. In other things that emperor
was moderate enough: propriety was generally secured; and the people
entertained with public shows and donatives, to make them more easily
digest their lost liberty. But Augustus, who was conscious to himself
of so many crimes which he had committed, thought, in the first place,
to provide for his own reputation, by making an edict against Lampoons
and Satires, and the authors of those defamatory writings, which my
author Tacitus, from the law-term, calls _famosos libellos_.
In the first book of his Annals, he gives the following account of it,
in these words: _Primus Augustus cognitionem de famosis libellis,
specie legis ejus, tractavit; commotus Cassii Severi libidine, quâ
viros fæminasque illustres, procacibus scriptis diffamaverat_.
Thus in English: "Augustus was the first, who under the colour of
that law took cognisance of lampoons; being provoked to it, by the
petulancy of Cassius Severus, who had defamed many illustrious persons
of both sexes, in his writings." The law to which Tacitus refers,
was _Lex læsæ Majestatis_; commonly called, for the sake of brevity,
_Majestas_; or, as we say, high treason. He means not, that this law
had not been enacted formerly: for it had been made by the Decemviri,
and was inscribed amongst the rest in the Twelve Tables; to prevent
the aspersion of the Roman majesty, either of the people themselves,
or their religion, or their magistrates: and the infringement of
it was capital; that is, the offender was whipt to death, with the
_fasces_, which were borne before their chief officers of Rome. But
Augustus was the first, who restored that intermitted law. By the
words, _under colour of that law_, he insinuates that Augustus caused
it to be executed, on pretence of those libels, which were written by
Cassius Severus, against the nobility; but, in truth, to save himself
from such defamatory verses. Suetonius likewise makes mention of it
thus: _Sparsos de se in curiâ famosos libellos, nec expavit, et
magnâ curâ redarguit. Ac ne requisitis quidem auctoribus, id modo
censuit, cognoscendum posthac de iis qui libellos aut carmina ad
infamiam cujuspiam sub alieno nomine edant_. "Augustus was not afraid
of libels," says that author; "yet he took all care imaginable to have
them answered; and then decreed, that for the time to come, the authors
of them should be punished." But Aurelius makes it yet more clear,
according to my sense, that this emperor for his own sake durst not
permit them: _Fecit id Augustus in speciem, et quasi gratificaretur
populo Romano, et primoribus urbis; sed revera ut sibi consuleret:
nam habuit in animo, comprimere nimiam quorundam procacitatem in
loquendo, à quâ nec ipse exemptus fuit. Nam suo nomine compescere
erat invidiosum, sub alieno facile et utile. Ergo specie legis
tractavit, quasi populi Romani majestas infamaretur._ This, I think,
is a sufficient comment on that passage of Tacitus. I will add only by
the way, that the whole family of the Cæsars, and all their relations,
were included in the law; because the majesty of the Romans, in the
time of the empire, was wholly in that house; _omnia Cæsar erat_: they
were all accounted sacred who belonged to him. As for Cassius Severus,
he was contemporary with Horace; and was the same poet against whom he
writes in his Epodes, under this title, _In Cassium Severum maledicum
poetam_; perhaps intending to kill two crows, according to our proverb,
with one stone, and revenge both himself and his emperor together.
From hence I may reasonably conclude, that Augustus, who was not
altogether so good as he was wise, had some by-respect in the enacting
of this law; for to do any thing for nothing, was not his maxim.
Horace, as he was a courtier, complied with the interest of his master;
and, avoiding the lashing of greater crimes, confined himself to the
ridiculing of petty vices and common follies; excepting only some
reserved cases, in his Odes and Epodes, of his own particular quarrels,
which either with permission of the magistrate, or without it, every
man will revenge, though I say not that he should; for _prior læsit_ is
a good excuse in the civil law, if christianity had not taught us to
forgive. However, he was not the proper man to arraign great vices, at
least if the stories which we hear of him are true,--that he practised
some, which I will not here mention, out of honour to him. It was not
for a Clodius to accuse adulterers, especially when Augustus was of
that number; so that though his age was not exempted from the worst
of villanies, there was no freedom left to reprehend them by reason
of the edict; and our poet was not fit to represent them in an odious
character, because himself was dipt in the same actions. Upon this
account, without farther insisting on the different tempers of Juvenal
and Horace, I conclude, that the subjects which Horace chose for
satire, are of a lower nature than those of which Juvenal has written.
Thus I have treated, in a new method, the comparison betwixt Horace,
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 tragedy; not declaiming against vice,
but only laughing at it. Neither Persius nor Juvenal were 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, tacitâ sudant præcordia culpa_.
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."