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 poem.
Holyday and Stapylton[40] 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 chastisement
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 is it 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 out 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[41] 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.[42] 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 extravagancies; 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 rally, 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 readers 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.[43] A miserable clench, in my opinion, for Horace to record: I
have heard honest Mr Swan[44] 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 II. 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 chuse 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 it is 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 that
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, flavâque 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
quivers 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 condita_ CCCCCXIV. I have since desired
my learned friend, Mr Maidwell,[45] 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's
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, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli._
This is that in which I have made bold 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 Comoedia_ 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_[46]
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 a-foot, with his pad in his
hand, for his own pleasure; but let not them be accounted no poets, who
chuse 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 Æneid? Certainly he has, and for the better: for Virgil's
age was more civilized, 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 tragi-comedy, there is to be but
one main design; and though there be an underplot, 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 her's. 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
quodvis 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
fruit 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,
altogether, may complete that _olla_, or hotchpotch, 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 stoick; 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 every where 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.
I have already declared who are the only persons that are the adequate
object of private satire, and who they are that may properly be exposed
by name for public examples of vices and follies; and therefore I will
trouble your lordship no farther with them. Of the best and finest
manner of satire, I have said enough in the comparison betwixt Juvenal
and Horace: it is that sharp, well-mannered way of laughing a folly
out of countenance, of which your lordship is the best master in this
age. I will proceed to the versification, which is most proper for it,
and add somewhat to what I have said already on that subject. The sort
of verse which is called burlesque, consisting of eight syllables, or
four feet, is that which our excellent Hudibras has chosen. I ought to
have mentioned him before, when I spoke of Donne: but by a slip of an
old man's memory he was forgotten. The worth of his poem is too well
known to need my commendation, and he is above my censure. His satire
is of the Varronian kind, though unmixed with prose. The choice of his
numbers is suitable enough to his design, as he has managed it; but
in any other hand, the shortness of his verse, and the quick returns
of rhyme, had debased the dignity of style. And besides, the double
rhyme, (a necessary companion of burlesque writing,) is not so proper
for manly satire; for it turns earnest too much to jest, and gives us
a boyish kind of pleasure. It tickles aukwardly with a kind of pain,
to the best sort of readers: we are pleased ungratefully, and, if I
may say so, against our liking. We thank him not for giving us that
unseasonable delight, when we know he could have given us a better, and
more solid. He might have left that task to others, who, not being able
to put in thought, can only make us grin with the excrescence of a word
of two or three syllables in the close. It is, indeed, below so great
a master to make use of such a little instrument.[47] But his good
sense is perpetually shining through all he writes; it affords us not
the time of finding faults. We pass through the levity of his rhyme,
and are immediately carried into some admirable useful thought. After
all, he has chosen this kind of verse, and has written the best in it:
and had he taken another, he would always have excelled: as we say of
a court-favourite, that whatsoever his office be, he still makes it
uppermost, and most beneficial to himself.