Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/842

808 the best ancient standards of propriety, he is also saved by it from prejudices to which the traditions of his class exposed the historian. But both writers are thoroughly national in sentiment, thoroughly masculine in tone. No ancient authors express so strong a hatred of evil, None of the other contemporary writers share this feeling. Pliny has the natural repugnance of a gentleman and honourable nran to coarseness and baseness ; but he liked to live with people of tastes and manners congenial to his own, and to see as little as possible of the corruption which existed under the surface of society. Martial, as a foreigner living in Rome, endowed with a lively observation and a keen capacity for pleasure, enjoyed whatever was enjoyable in the life around him, found in its excesses and perversions materials for his wit, and, after flattering the worst of the emperors assidu ously through all his career, was ready with impartial sycophancy to flatter one of the best. The peculiar greatness and value of both Juvenal and Tacitus is that they did not shut their eyes to the evil through which they had lived, but deeply resented it, the one with a vehement and burning passion, like the "saeva indignatio" of Swift, the other with perhaps even deeper but more restrained emotions of mingled scorn and sorrow, like the scorn arid sorrow of Milton when " fallen on evil days and evil tongues." The wickedness of the age brought out more strongly than at any previous time the opposition between good and evil. The idea of conscience, as the connecting bond between religion and morality, appears in greater prominence in Tacitus and Juvenal than in any other ancient writers. There is a criticism of an eminent living writer 1 to the effect that the secret of Juvenal s concentrated power consisted in this, that he knew what he hated, and that what he did hate was despotism and democracy. But it would be hardly true to say that the animating motive of his satire was political. It is true that he finds the most typical examples of lust, cruelty, levity, and weakness in the emperors and their wives, in Domitian, Otho, Nero, Claudius, and Messalina. It is true also that he shares in the traditional idolatry of Brutus, that he strikes at Augustus in his mention of the " three disciples of Sulla," and that he has no word of recognition for what even Tacitus acknowledges as the beneficent rule of Trajan, So too his scorn for the Roman populace of his time, who cared only for their dole of bread and the public games, is unqualified. But it is only in connexion with its indirect effects that he seems to think of despotism ; and he has.no thought of democracy at all. It is not for the loss of liberty and of the senatorian rule that he chafes, but for the loss of the old national manliness and self-respect, alike in the descendants of "the Latian boors" 2 and in the representatives of the ^Emilii and the Fabii. There is no more grandly imaginative passage in all his satires than that in which he evokes the ghosts of those who died at Cremera and Cannae (ii. 153 sq.) to shame the degener ate debauchees of his own time. While we feel that we know little or nothing of his career, while we may imagine that personal disappointment may have supplied some of the gall in whhh his pen is dipped, and may doubt whether his own life and associations would have justified him in acting as a severer censor on what most Romans regarded as permitted indulgences than Lucilius and Horace, we cannot doubt that both his intellect and character were of a most masculine strength, and that his hatred for all that corrupted the old national character and enfeebled the national intellect was sincere and consistent. This feeling explains his detestation of foreign manners and superstitions, his loathing not only of inhuman crimes and 1 Mr Swinburne. 2 Unde nefas tan turn Latiis pastoribus ? (ii. 127). cruelties but of such derelictions from self-respect as the appearance of a Roman nobleman on the arena or even the more harmless indulgence of a taste for driving, his scorn of luxury and of art as ministering to luxury, his mockery of the poetry and of the stale and dilettante culture of his time, and perhaps, too, his indifference to the schools of philosophy and his readiness to identify all the professors of stoicism with the reserved and close-cropped puritans, Rarus sermo illis et multa libido tacendi Adque supercilio brevior coma," 2 who concealed the worst vices -under an outward appearance of austerity. The great fault of his character, as it appears in his writings, is that he too exclusively indulged this mood. It is much more difficult to find what he loved and admired than what he hated. But it is characteristic of his strong nature that, where he does betray any sign of human sympathy or tenderness, it is for those who by their weakness and position are dependent on others for their protection, as for " the peasant boy with the little dog, Ids playfellow," 4 or, for " the home-sick lad from, the Sabine highlands, who sighs for his mother whom he has not seen for a long time, and for the little hut and the familiar kids." 5 If Juvenal is to be ranked as a great moralist, it is not for his greatness and consistency as a thinker on moral questions. In the rhetorical exaggeration of the famous tenth satire, for instance, the highest energies of patriotism, the gallant and desperate defence of great causes, by sword or speech, are quoted as mere examples of dis appointed ambition ; and, in the indiscriminate condemna tion of the arts by which men sought to gain a livelihood, he leaves no room for the legitimate pursuits of industry. His services to morals do not consist in any positive contri butions to the notions of active duty, but in the strength with which he has realized and expressed the restraining influence of the old Roman and Italian ideal of character, and also of that religious conscience which was becoming a new power in the world. Though he disclaims any debt to philosophy (xiii. 121), yet he really owes more to the " Stoica dogmata," then prevalent, than he is aware of. But his highest and rarest literary quality is his power of painting characters, scenes, incidents, and actions, whether from past history or from contemporary life. In this power, which is also the great power of Tacitus, he has few equals and perhaps no superior among ancient writers. The difference between Tacitus and Juvenal in power of representation is that the prose historian is more of an imaginative poet, the satirist more of a realist and a grotesque humorist. He can paint great historical pictures in all their detail as in the famous representation of the fall of Sejanus, or call them up with all their imaginative associations in a line or two, as for instance in these " Atque ideo postqmim ad Cimbros stragemque volabant Qui nunquam attigerant majora cadavera corvi;" he can describe a character elaborately or hit it off with a single stroke ; and in either case he fixes the impression which he desires to produce firmly in the mind. The picture drawn may be a caricature, or a misrepresentation of the fact, as that of the father of Demosthenes, "blear-eyed with the soot of the glowing mass," <fcc., but it is, with rare exceptions, realistically conceived, and, as is well said by Mr Lewis, it is brought before us with the vivid touches of a, Defoe or a Swift. Still more happily the same editor has illustrated Juvenal s power as a realistic painter of scenes from contemporary life, and of scenes which gene rally combine grotesque and humorous features with serious 3 ii. 14 sq. 4 " Meliusne hie rusticus infans Cum matre et casulis et oonlusore catello," &c. ix. 60. 5 xi. 152, 153.