PROGRESS OF SATIRE.

173. ation. 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 judgments, 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 excell 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 communius, 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 blindsides 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 greas Trebatius, to whom he addresses the first Satire, his hunting after business, and following the court, as well as in the prosecutor, 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 shews 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, 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 groveling. 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