The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius. Sulpicia

of those, he says, distinguished for talents or rank, took refuge in the school of Zeno; not so much to learn in it how to live, as how to die. I think, on the contrary, that this would rather have driven them into the arms of Epicurus. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," will generally be found, I believe, to be the maxim of dangerous times. It would not be difficult to show, if this were the place for it, that the prevalency of Stoicism was due to the increase of profligacy, for which it furnished a convenient cloak. This, however, does not apply to Persius.

[23] I believe that Juvenal meant to describe himself in the following spirited picture of Lucilius:

      "Ense velut stricto quoties Lucilius ardens

       Infremuit, rubet auditor, cui frigida mens est

       Criminibus, tacita sudant præcordia culpa."

[24] This is an error which has been so often repeated, that it is believed. What liberty was destroyed by the usurpation of Augustus? For more than half a century, Rome had been a prey to ambitious chiefs, while five or six civil wars, each more bloody than the other, had successively delivered up the franchises of the empire to the conqueror of the day. The Gracchi first opened the career to ambition, and wanted nothing but the means of corruption, which the East afterward supplied, to effect what Marius, Sylla, and the two triumvirates brought about with sufficient ease.

[25] This is a very strange observation. It looks as if Dusaulx had leaped from the times of old Metellus to those of Augustus, without casting a glance at the interval. The chef d'œuvres of Roman literature were in every hand, when he supposed them to be neglected: and, indeed, if Horace had left us nothing, the qualities of which Dusaulx speaks might still be found in many works produced before he was known.

[26] I have often wished that we had some of the pleadings of Juvenal. It can not be affirmed, I think, that there is any natural connection between prose and verse in the same mind, though it may be observed, that most of our celebrated poets have written admirably "solutâ oratione:" yet if Juvenal's oratory bore any resemblance to his poetry, he yielded to few of the best ornaments of the bar. The "torrens dicendi copia" was his, in an eminent degree; nay, so full, so rich, so strong, and so magnificent is his eloquence, that I have heard one well qualified to judge, frequently declare that Cicero himself, in his estimation, could hardly be said to surpass him.

[27] With all my respect for the learning of the good old man, it is impossible, now and then, to suppress a smile at his simplicity. In apologizing for his translation, he says: "As for publishing poetry, it needs no defense; there being, if my Lord of Verulam's judgment shall be admitted, 'a divine rapture in it!'"

[28] He evidently alludes to the versions of the second and eighth Satires by Tate and Stepney, but principally to the latter, in which Juvenal illustrates his argument by the practice of Smithfield and Newmarket! Indeed, Dryden himself, though confessedly aware of its impropriety, is not altogether free from "innovation;" he talks of the Park, and the Mall, and the Opera, and of many other objects, familiar to the translator, but which the original writer could only know by the spirit of prophecy.

      I am sensible how difficult it is to keep the manners of different ages perfectly distinct in a work like this: I have never knowingly confounded them, and, I trust, not often inadvertently; yet more occasions perhaps of exercising the reader's candor will appear, after all, than are desirable.

[29] Yet Johnson knew him well. The peculiarity of Juvenal, he says (vol. ix., p. 424), "is a mixture of gayety and stateliness, of pointed sentences, and declamatory grandeur." A good idea of it may be formed from his own beautiful imitation of the third Satire. His imitation of the tenth (still more beautiful as a poem) has scarcely a trait of the author's manner—that is to say, of that "mixture of gayety and stateliness," which, according to his own definition, constitutes the "peculiarity of Juvenal." "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is uniformly stately and severe, and without those light and popular strokes of sarcasm which abound so much in his "London."

[30] In the fourteenth Satire, for example, there is an omission of fifteen lines, and this, too, in a passage of singular importance.

[31] Sub-Dean and Prebendary of Westminster, and Vicar of Croydon, in Surrey.

[32] The architect of Eton Hall, Cheshire, a structure which even now stands pre-eminent among the works which embellish the nation, and which future times will contemplate with equal wonder and delight.

CHRONOLOGY OF JUVENAL, PERSIUS, AND SULPICIA.

       Table of Contents

A.D. 14–138.
OL.	A.D.	A.U.C.
L. E.
	14	767	Death of Augustus, August 19th. Accession of Tiberius, anno ætat. 55.
	16	769	Rise of Sejanus. Cf. A.D. 31. Tac. Ann. vi. 8.
	18	771	Death of Ovid and Livy. Strabo still writing.
	19	772	Death of Germanicus. Jews banished from Italy (alluded to, Sat. iii. 14; vi. 543).
200	21	774	Tiberius, on the plea of ill health, goes in the spring into Campania.
	23	776	Influence of Sejanus. Cf. Tac. Ann. iv. 6. (Vid. Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. iii. p. 181.)
	24	777	Cassius Severus, an exile in Seriphos. Tac. Ann. iv. 21. [Cf. Sat. i. 73; vi. 563, 564; x. 170; xiii. 246.] C. Plinius Secundus, of Verona, born.
	26	779	Consulship of Cn. Lentulus Gætulicus. (Cf. ad viii. 26.)
	27	780	Tiberius retires to Capreæ. Tac. Ann. iv. 67. Sat. x. 90–95, and 72.
	28	781	Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, married to Domitius. [Nero is the issue of this marriage, born A.D. 37.] Sat. viii. 228; vi. 615.
202	29	782	Death of Livia, mother of Tiberius. (Cf. Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. iii. p. 180.)
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