never rises to the dignity of a decided character. Zeno and Epicurus share his homage, and undergo his ridicule by turns: he passes without difficulty from one school to another, and he thinks it a sufficient excuse for his versatility, that he continues, amidst every change, the zealous defender of virtue. Virtue, however, abstractedly considered, has few obligations to his zeal. But though, as an ethical writer, Horace has not many claims to the esteem of posterity; as a critick, he is entitled to all our veneration. Such is the soundness of his judgment, the correctness of his taste, and the extent and variety of his knowledge, that a body of criticism might be selected from his works, more perfect in its kind than any thing which antiquity has bequeathed us. As he had little warmth of temper, he reproves his contemporaries without harshness. He is content to "dwell in decencies," and, like Pope's courtly dean, never mentions hell to ears polite. Persius, who was infinitely better acquainted with him than we can pretend to be, describes him, I think, with great happiness: "Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico « He, with a sly insinuating grace, "Laugh'd at his friend, and look'd him in the face: These beautiful lines have a defect under which A desperate passes. His aim rather seems to be, to keep the objects of his satire in good humour with himself, and with one another. To raise a laugh at vice, however, (supposing it feasible,) is not the legitimate office of Satire, which is to hold up the vicious, as objects of reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may be deterred by their sufferings. But it is time to be explicit. To laugh even at fools is superfluous; -if they understand you, they will join in the merriment; but more commonly, they will sit with vacant unconcern, and gaze at their own pictures: to laugh at the vicious, is to encourage them; for there is in such men a wilfulness of disposition, which prompts them to bear up against shame, and to show how little they regard slight reproof, by becoming more audacious in guilt. Goodness, of which the characteristick is modesty, may, I fear, be shamed; but vice, like folly, to be restrained, must be overawed. Labeo, says Hall, with great energy: "Labeo is whipt, and laughs me in the face; PERSIUS, who borrowed so much of Horace's language, has little of his manner. The immediate object of his imitation seems to be Lucilius; and if he lashes vice with less severity than his great Mr. Drummond has given this passage with equal elegance, and truth: "With greater art sly Horace gain'd his end, "That tickled fools were rallied, and were pleased." prototype, the cause must not be sought in any desire to spare what he so evidently condemned. But he was thrown "on evil times," he was, besides, of a rank distinguished enough to make his freedom dangerous, and of an age, when life had yet lost little of its novelty; to write, therefore, even as he has written, proves him to be a person of very singular courage and virtue. In the interval between Horace and Persius, despotism had changed its nature: the chains. which the policy of Augustus concealed in flowers, were now displayed in all their hideousness. The arts were neglected, literature of every kind discouraged, or disgraced, and terrour and suspicion substituted in the place of the former ease and security. Stoicism, which Cicero accuses of having infected poetry, even in his days, and of which the professors, as Quintilian observes, always disregarded the graces and elegancies of composition, spread with amazing rapidity.* In this school Persius was educated, under the care of one of its most learned and respectable masters. Satire was not his first pursuit: indeed, he seems to have somewhat mistaken his talents when he applied to it. The true end of this species of writing, as Dusaulx justly says, is the improvement of society; but for this, much knowledge of * Dusaulx accounts for this by the general consternation. Most 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. mankind (quicquid agunt homines) is previously necessary. Whoever is deficient in that, may be an excellent moral and philosophical poet; but cannot with propriety, lay claim to the honours of a satirist. And Persius was moral and philosophical in a high degree: he was also a poet of no mean order. But while he grew pale over the page of Zeno, and Cleanthes, and Chrysippus; while he imbibed, with all the ardour of a youthful mind, the paradoxes of those great masters, together with their principles, the foundations of civil society were crumbling around him, and soliciting his attention in vain. To judge from what he has left us, it might almost be affirmed that he was a stranger in his own country. The degradation of Rome was now complete; yet he felt, at least he expresses, no indignation at the means by which it was elfected a sanguinary buffoon was lording it over the prostrate world; yet he continued to waste his most elaborate efforts on the miserable pretensions of pedants in prose and verse! If this savour of the impassibility of Stoicism, it is intitled to no great praise on the score of outraged humanity, which has stronger claims on a well regulated mind, than criticism, or even philosophy. Dryden gives that praise to the dogmas of Persius, which he denies to his poetry. "His verse," he says, "is scabrous and hobbling, and his measures beneath those of Horace." This is too severe; for Persius has many exquisite passages, which nothing in Horace will be found to equal or approach. The charge of obscurity, has been urged against him with more justice; though this, perhaps, is not so great as it is usually represented. Casaubon could, without question, have defended him more successfully than he has done; but he was overawed by the brutal violence of the elder Scaliger: for I can scarcely persuade myself that he really believed this obscurity to be owing to "the fear of Nero, or the advice of Cornutus." The cause of it should be rather sought in his natural disposition, and in his habits of thinking. Generally speaking, however, it springs from a too frequent use of tropes, approaching in almost every instance to a catachresis, an anxiety of compression, and a quick and unexpected transition from one overstrained figure to another. After all, with the exception of the sixth Satire, which, from its abruptness, does not appear to have received the author's last touches, I do not think there is much to confound an attentive reader: some acquaintance, indeed, with the porch braccatis illita Medis, is previously necessary. His life may be contemplated with unabated pleasure: the virtue he recommends, he practised in the fullest extent; and at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth. JUVENAL wrote at a period still more detestable than that of Persius. Domitian, who now governed the empire, seems to have inherited the bad qualities of all his predecessors. Tiberius was not more hypocritical, nor Caligula more bloody, nor Claudius more sottish, nor Nero more mischievous, than this ferocious despot; who, as Theodorus Gadareus indignantly declared of Tiberius, was truly πηλον αιματι πεφυραμενον, a lump of clay kneaded up with blood! а Juvenal, like Persius, professes to follow Lucilius; but what was in one a simple attempt, is in the other a real imitation, of his manner.* Fluent I believe that Juveual meant to describe himself in the folowing spirited picture of Lucilius: |