Note 5 — THE LIFE OF JUVENAL, BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

"Mox magna frequentia, magnoque successu bis ac ter auditus est; ut ea quoque quæ prima fecerat, inferciret novis scriptis,

Erat tum in delitiis aulæ histrio, multique fautorum ejus quotidie provehebantur. Venit ergo in suspicionem quasi tempora figurate notasset; ac statim per honorem militiolæ, quanquam octogenarius, urbe summotus, missusque ad præfecturam cohortis in extrema parte tendentis Ægypti. Id supplicii genus placuit, ut levi atque joculari delicto par esset. Verum intra brevissimum tempus angore et tædio periit." Suet. Passing by the interpolations of the old grammarians, I shall, as before, have recourse to Dodwell. "Recitavit, ni fallor, omnia, emisitque in publicum CXVIII. (Juvenal was now fourscore!) postquam Romam venissit Hadrianus quem ille principem à benevolo ejus in hæc studia animo, in hac ipsa satira in qua occurrunt verba illa de Paride commendat." 161. Salmasius supposed that the last of his Satires only were published under Hadrian; Dodwell goes farther, and maintains that the whole, with the exception of the 15th and 16th[14] ("si tamen vere et illa Juvenalis fuerit"), were then first produced! "Illa in Paridem dicteria histrionem, in suum (cujus nomen non prodidit auctor) histrionem dicta interpretabatur Hadrianus. Inde exilii causa. Scripsit ergo in exilio Sat. XV. Sed cum 'nuper Consulem Junium' fuisse dicat, ante annum ad minimum CXX. scribere illam non potuit Juv. Nec vero postea scripsisse, exinde colligimus, quod 'intra brevissimum tempus' perierit." 164. Such is the manner in which Dodwell accommodates Suetonius to his own ideas: which seem, also, to have been those of a much higher name, Salmasius; and, while I am now writing, to be sanctioned by the adoption of the learned Ruperti. I never affected singularity; yet I find myself constrained to differ from them all: but I will state my reasons. In his 7th Satire, after speaking of Quintilian, Juvenal adds,

Which, taking it for a proverbial expression, I have loosely rendered, Fortune can make kings of pedants and pedants of kings. Dodwell, however, understands it literally. "Hæc sane cum Quintiliani causa dicat, vix est quin Q. talem ostendant è rhetore nimirum 'nobilem, senatorium, consularem,' et quidem illis divitiis instructum, quæ essent etiam ad censum senatorium necessariæ." 152. Now, as Pliny, who probably died before Trajan, observes that Quintilian was a man of moderate fortune, it follows that he must have acquired the wealth and honors of which Juvenal speaks at a later period. Dodwell fixes this to the time when Hadrian entered Rome, CXVIII., which he states to be also that of the author's banishment. It must be confessed that Juvenal lost no time in exerting himself: he had remained silent fourscore years; he now bursts forth at once, as Dodwell expresses it, recites all his Satires without intermission ("unis continuisque recitationibus"), celebrates Quintilian, attacks the emperor, and is immediately dispatched to Egypt! 162. Here is a great deal of business crowded into the compass of a few weeks, or perhaps days; but let us examine it a little more closely. Rigaltius, with several of the commentators, sees in the lines above quoted a sneer at Quintilian, and he accounts for the rhetor's silence respecting our author, by the resentment which he supposes him to have felt at it. As this militates strongly against Dodwell's ideas, he will not allow that any thing severe was intended by the passage in question; and adds that Quintilian could not mention Juvenal as a satirist, because he had not then written any satires. 160. I believe that both are wrong. In speaking of the satirists, Quintilian says that Persius had justly acquired no inconsiderable degree of reputation by the little he had written. Lib. x., c. 1. He then adds, "sunt clari hodieque, et qui olim nominabuntur." There are yet some excellent ones, some who will be better known hereafter. It always appeared to me, that this last phrase alluded to our author, with whose extraordinary merits Quintilian was probably acquainted, but whom he did not choose, or, perhaps, did not dare to mention in a work composed under a prince whose crimes this unnamed satirist persecuted with a severity as unmitigated as it was just. Quintilian had no political courage. Either from a sense of kindness or fear, he flatters Domitian almost as grossly as Martial does: but his life was a life of innocence and integrity; I will therefore say no more on this subject; but leave it to the reader to consider whether such a man was likely to startle the "god of his idolatry" by celebrating the Satires of Juvenal.

Nor do I agree with the commentators whom Dodwell has followed, in the literal interpretation of those famous lines. "Unde igitur tot," etc. Sat. vii., v. 188-194. Quintilian was rich, when the rest of his profession were in the utmost want. Here then was an instance of good fortune. He was lucky; and with luck a man may be any thing; handsome, and witty, and wise, and noble, and high-born, and a member of the senate. Who does not see in this a satirical exaggeration? Wisdom, beauty, and high birth luck can not give: why then should the remainder of this passage be so strictly interpreted, and referred to the actual history of Quintilian? The lines, "Si fortuna volet," etc., are still more lax: a reflection thrown out at random, and expressing the greatest possible extremes of fortune. Yet on these authorities principally (for the passage of Ausonius,[15] written more than two centuries later, is of no great weight) has Quintilian been advanced to consular honors; while Dodwell, who, as we have seen, has taken immense pains to prove that they could only be conferred on him by Hadrian, has hence deduced his strongest arguments for the late date of our author's Satires; which he thus brings down to the period of mental imbecility! Hence, too, he accounts for the different ideas of Quintilian's wealth in Juvenal and Pliny. When the latter wrote, he thinks Quintilian had not acquired much property, he was "modicus facultatibus:" when the former, "he had been enriched by the imperial bounty, and was capable of senatorial honors." Yet Pliny might not think his old master rich enough to give a fortune with his daughter adequate to the expectations of a man of considerable rank (lib. vi., 32), though Juvenal, writing at the same instant, might term him wealthy, in comparison of the rhetoricians who were starving around him; and count him a peculiar favorite of fortune. Let us bear in mind, too, that Juvenal is a satirist, and a poet: in the latter capacity, the minute accuracy of an annalist can not be expected at his hands; and in the former—as his object was to show the general discouragement of literature, he could not, consistently with his plan, attribute the solitary good fortune of Quintilian to any thing but luck.

But why was Quintilian made consul? Because, replies Dodwell (164), when Hadrian first entered Rome he was desirous of gaining the affections of the people; which could be done no way so effectually as by conciliating the esteem of the literati; and he therefore conferred this extraordinary mark of favor on the rhetorician. How did it escape this learned man, that he was likely to do himself more injury in their opinion by the banishment of Juvenal at that same instant? an old man of fourscore, who, by his own testimony, had spoken of him with kindness, in a poem which did more honor to his reign than any thing produced in it! and whose only crime was an allusion to the influence of a favorite player! Indeed, the informers of Hadrian's reign must have had more sagacious noses than those of Domitian's, to smell out his fault. What Statius, in his time, was celebrated for the recitation of a Thebaid, or what Paris, for the purchase of an untouched Agave? And where, might we ask Dodwell, was the "jest" of sending a man on the verge of the grave, in a military capacity, into Egypt? Could the most supple of Hadrian's courtiers look on it as any thing but a wanton exercise of cruelty? At eighty, the business of satirizing, either in prose or verse, is nearly over: what had the emperor then to fear? And to sum up all in a word, can any rational being seriously persuade himself that the Satires of Juvenal were produced, for the first time, by a man turned of fourscore?