VI.

JUVENAL.

IF Tacitus had been a poet, he would have been a poet like Ju've-nal. If Juvenal had been an historian, he would have been an historian like Tacitus. Both alike were satirists. The difference is that Tacitus satirized incidentally, and in prose, while Juvenal satirized expressly, and in

verse.

It was noted by the Romans themselves that satire was a literary form the only one-of their own origination. Juvenal was by no means the first in time, though he is so far the first in power, among Roman satirists. Horace was a satirist before Juvenal, as Lucilius was a satirist before Horace. Of Lucilius, true founder of Roman satire, only fragments remain. Between Horace and Juvenal came Persius, but those two are for us the representative satirists of Rome.

Horace's satires have the character of amateur performances, in comparison with the satires of Juvenal. Horace had not depth enough of nature, had not strength enough of conviction, to make him a really powerful satirist. He experimented, he toyed, with the satiric vein. Juvenal satirized in dead earnest. He did not play at his task. He wrought at it with might and main. His whole soul was in it, and his soul was large and strong. Satire, in his hands, was less a lash, even a Roman lash, than a sword. It did not sting. It cut. It did not cut simply the skin. It cut the flesh. It cut the flesh to the bone. It clove the bone to the marrow. Hardly ever, in the history of literature, has such a weapon been wielded by any writer.

Who was Juvenal? No one knows. He was this satirist. That is all we know of him. As a man, he is nothing but a Not that there are not traditions about Juvenal. But

name.

there are no traditions that we can trust. When he lived, is uncertain. We know only that it was about the close of the first century after Christ. He had seen the empire under several emperors. Some think that, having written earlier, he finally published under Trajan-a ruler great enough, and strong enough, and wise, as well as generous, enough, to let the satirist say his say, unhindered and unharmed. Not quite to the end, however, unharmed-if we are to trust the legend which relates that Juvenal was honorably, and as it were satirically, punished for the freedom of his pen, by being sent to Egypt at eighty years of age to command a cohort stationed in that province. He there soon died of his vexation and chagrin. Such is the story; but the story has no voucher. Juvenal is personally a great unknown. But can the man justly be called unknown who has written what Juvenal has written? The incidents of his life, the traits of his personal appearance, we are ignorant of-but do we not know Juvenal by what is far more central and essential in his character?

The answer to that question depends upon whether we take Juvenal's satires to shadow forth the real sentiments of the satirist, or to have been written by him in mere wanton play of wit, "without a conscience or an aim." Opposite views have been contended for on this point, but the present writer is sure he feels the pulse of personal sincerity beating strong in Juvenal's satires. It was the morals, much more than it was the manners, of the Roman empire, that engaged the genius of Juvenal. That the satirist himself remained a model of virtue, amid the general corruption that rotted around him, we should be far from maintaining. But Juvenal's conscience was on the side of virtue—his conscience, or at least his Roman pride and scorn. He truly despised vice, if he did not truly reprobate vice. blade, and scorn urged the blow.

Scorn edged the

It is a pity, but for reasons of propriety, we cannot show our

readers the one satire in particular which staggers, for many, their faith in Juvenal, but by which, we confess, our own faith in Juvenal is confirmed. Vice was so flagrant in imperial Rome, that only to name what was done there would now be an intolerable offense. But Juvenal named it, and never flinched. He painted it with colors dipped in hell. You look at the picture aghast. No wonder if for a moment you feel such a picture to be as wicked as that itself was, of which this is a picture. The picture breathes and burns. It is not like life-it is life. The artist has not depicted sin he has committed sin.

You are

But look again. There is no enticement here. not allured. You are revolted. It was not because he secretly loved them, that this man dwelt on images of evil. He dwelt on them because he hated, or at least despised, them, and would do his utmost to make them everywhere hateful or despicable. So at least we read Juvenal. But we will speak no more of what we must not show.

Happily what we can show of Juvenal is one of the best of his satires-one of the best, and, on the whole, perhaps quite the most celebrated. There are sixteen satires in all, and this is the tenth of the series. Dr. Samuel Johnson has given it added fame for English readers by his powerful imitative poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes." It will be interesting to study the original and the imitation together.

It is wise always in the reader to expect that satires, like comedies, will be found to depend for their interest so much on that atmosphere of incident and event in which they were produced, as to be sadly deprived of color and tone through lapse of time and change of place. The full text of Juvenal's Tenth Satire would thus, we fear, notwithstanding the extraordinary merit of the poem, prove but dull reading to many. We shall need to be select and to be short.

The motive of the piece is tolerably well expressed in Johnson's title, "The Vanity of Human Wishes." That

expression, however, is ambiguous. It might be understood to convey the idea that human wishes are vain, as impotent to bring about their own fulfillment. The satirist's true thought is rather, not that human wishes are weak, but that human wishes are blind and unwise. We wish at foolish cross-purposes. We desire our own bane, we dread our own blessing.

There is a recent prose translation, published by Macmillan & Co., very good, and interesting the more because coming to us from our antipodes. The translators are English scholars who date their work from the University of Melbourne, in Australia. We resist the temptation to seem fresh by using this version, and go back to the pentameter couplets of Gifford. The relief of verse and of rhyme will be found grateful. Juvenal's point will seem sharper, than it would do sheathed in scholarlike, but not literary, prose.

Let Observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru,

is Johnson's familiar beginning. The tautologous verbosity of this has often been pointed out. It is an extreme specimen of Johnson at his worst. Juvenal gave Johnson the hint, but Johnson is himself responsible for suffering the hint to carry him so far. What Juvenal says is (as our Australian translators give it), "In all the world-from Gades [Cadiz] to the land of the Morning and its Ganges." Gifford rhymes it:

In every clime, from Ganges' distant stream
To Gades, gilded by the western beam.

It will be noted that Gifford, for the sake of his versification, takes the liberty, first, to transpose the points of the compass; and, second, to transfer the poetical amplification, from the East, where Juvenal used it, to the West. The total effect is not thus much modified. At any rate, this freedom on Gifford's part may be taken to exemplify his general habit in

doing his work of translating, with Juvenal. Juvenal says that “in every clime" from West to East, the rule is for men to wish what, if granted, will probably injure them. For example, the universal craving is for wealth, but how often has wealth been the ruin of its possessor. The rich, under bad emperors, became the prey of those emperors, while the poor escaped by their own obscurity. The satirist recalls historic instances (Gifford's translation):

For this, in other times, at Nero's word,

The ruffian bands unsheathed the murderous sword,
Rushed to the swelling coffers of the great,
Chased Lat-e-ra'nus from his lordly seat,
Besieged too-wealthy Seneca's wide walls,
And closed, terrific, round Lon-gi'nus' halls:
While sweetly in their cocklofts slept the poor,
And heard no soldier thundering at their door.
The traveller, freighted with a little wealth,
Sets forth at night, and wins his way by stealth:
Even then, he fears the bludgeon and the blade,
And starts and trembles at a rush's shade;

While, void of care, the beggar trips along,

And, in the spoiler's presence, tolls his song.

Juvenal thinks that if, in their own times, De-moc'ri-tus could laugh incessantly, and Her-a-cli'tus could incessantly weep, over the follies of their fellow-creatures, those philosophers would find much more food for laughter and for tears, were they to enjoy a resurrection under the Roman empire as he himself saw the Roman empire. The laughter of Democritus, by the way, Juvenal says, was intelligibleanybody could laugh; but where could anybody get brine enough to keep him going in tears? This is the fashion in which Juvenal derided the pomp of civic processions and military triumphs in Rome:

Democritus, at every step he took,

His sides with unextinguished laughter shook,
Though, in his days, Abdera's simple towns
No fasces knew, chairs, litters, purple gowns.