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Plutarch's Lives; Froude's Caesar; Shakspeare's Antony and Cleopatra; Plato's Dialogues; Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, especially among the poets; Lord's Old Roman World; Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars; Dion Cassius; Rollin's Ancient History; Merivale's History of the Romans; Biographic Universelle; Rees's Encyclopedia has a good article.
Even the Roman school-boys, according to Juvenal, discussed the question whether he did not make a mistake in not attacking Rome. But it is quite doubtful whether he could have taken the city, or, even if he had taken it, whether his success would then have been complete. He took the wiser step of getting into his hands Capua, the second city in Italy.
"That is a disputed point among writers, and has been so since the days of Pliny. Bears are mentioned as having been exhibited in the Roman circus, under the name of Numidian bears; and Herodotus, Virgil, Juvenal, and Martial all mention Libyan bears in their writings.
In Juvenal and Dryden alone we have the sparkle and the heat together. Those great satirists succeeded in communicating the fervour of their feelings to materials the most incombustible, and kindled the whole mass into a blaze, at once dazzling and destructive. We cannot, indeed, think, without regret, of the part which so eminent a writer as Dryden took in the disputes of that period.
Now, would the knowledge that this copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal?
He made the grossest satires of Juvenal more gross, interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted the sweet and limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would have moved the loathing of Virgil. The help of Dryden was welcome to those Roman Catholic divines who were painfully sustaining a conflict against all that was most illustrious in the Established Church.
Upon this account, without further insisting on the different tempers of Juvenal and Horace, I conclude that the subjects which Horace chose for satire are of a lower nature than those of which Juvenal has written. Thus I have treated, in a new method, the comparison betwixt Horace, Juvenal, and Persius.
"You will experience some trouble in finding your way back," said he, "allow me to accompany you." When we had got out he gave me to understand that chance had led me to the "Orange Coffee House," the most disreputable house in London. "But you go there." "Yes, but I can say with Juvenal: "'Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.
'Where honour or where conscience does not bind, No other law shall shackle me; Slave to myself I ne'er will be; Nor shall my future actions be confined By my own present mind. See ante, ii. 21. Juvenal, Sat. iii. 78. Imitated by Johnson in London. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, and Johnson's Tour into Wales, Aug. 1, 1774.
In much of his that seems burlesque, the most audacious, there are hidden springs of thought and tears. Often, when most he seems as the grimed and grinning clown in a circus girded by gaping spectators, he stops to pour out satire as passionate as that of Juvenal, or morality as eloquent and as pure as that of Pascal. And this he does without lengthening his face or taking off his paint.
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