420 © Lyceum of Ancient Literature. —No. XXV II. [March 1, 
that were secretly virtuous, but who were 
borne away by the terrent. He was too 
generous to flatter tyrants, too high-spi- 
rited to solicit the suffrages of their mi-. 
nisters or slaves. Panegyrics are ge- 
nerally given in the expectation of some 
return ; and this wasa trafhic he despised. 
His love for mankind was too sincere to 
permit him to flatter them; he was in- 
dignant at every attempt to injure their 
fame or their virtue; and to this noble 
principle we owe the finest and most 
considerable part of his work; I mean, 
that which 1s the most sententions, and 
the most generally usefulin every age and 
in every country. After combating 
what was acknowledged to be vice, he 
saw that he must ascend higher to reach 
the source of evil, and dissipate the illu- 
sion of false virtues ; for as it 1s observed 
by an old French writer, ‘* it is as neces- 
sary to strip the mask from things, as 
from persons.” Hence proceeded his 
satires, or rather those fine declamations 
against the prejudices of mankind, which, 
unfortunately, are always more powerful 
than reason itself. 
It is easy however to perceive the 
cause that has produced more partizans 
to Horace, than to Juvenal. It is a 
well-known truth that virtue without 
alloy has no currency; and that those 
who profess it in all its purity, have 
always had more adversaries than disci- 
ples. If the rich, who are almost always 
insatiable, were to attempt to increase 
their wealth without regard to character 
or humanity; if money, instead of circu- 
lating through all the members of the 
state, and carrying life along with it, 
only served to foment the insolent luxury 
of those who possessed it; the orator, 
who should plead the cause of super- 
fluity, would soon triumph with these 
imitators of Croesus, over the orator, who 
should plead the cause of the mere ne- 
cessary ; and the latter find none to listen 
to him but the unfortunate. The great 
talent of a writer, among nations which 
begin tq decline in manners and public 
virtue, is not so much to speak the truth, 
as what shall be grateful to those in 
power. Ambitious and sensual men, 
and those who fluctuate in principle ac- 
cording to the prevailing fashions, are 
but too much interested to prefer to the 
cutting censures of Juvenal, the softness 
and urbanity of a more indulgent poet: 
who, not content with embellishing the 
object of their taste, and with palliating 
their caprice, proceeds to the length of 
authorising their foibles by his own exam~ 
ple. ‘1 pursue,” says Horace, “ what 
1 : 
4 
injures me, and I fly from what I know 
would benefit me.” He also confesses 
that he had not power to resist the temps. 
tations of the moment, and that he suited 
his principles to the different circum- 
stances in which be was engaged. We 
may hear him, by turns, exalting his mo- 
deration of mind, and his active pursuit 
of honours; sometimes expatiating on 
the pliancy of Aristippus, and some- 
times on the inflexibility of Cato; and, as 
if the heart could at once suffer the most 
contrary affections, approving im ‘the 
same work, the modesty that courts re- 
treat, and the vanity that pants to display 
itself in public. If it ke true that the 
human race declines and grows depraved 
in proportion as it becomes polished, 
the majority, at the present day, will 
prefer the writer who amuses the mind 
and flatters indolence of disposition, 
without appearing to derogate from the 
essential qualities which constitute the 
man of worth. 
It is principally from these causes that 
Horace never can cease, from age to age, 
to be the friend and confident of a pos. 
terity, which by new arts, and conse= 
quently by new wants, will be led farther 
and farther from the simplicity of nature. 
But the freeman, if the character still 
exist, he who is thoroughly convinced ~ 
that true happiness resides only in our- 
selves; and that, except the relations of. 
duty, benevolence, humanity, and reli- 
gion, all others are either chimerical or 
pernicious; he, who has fixed his princi- 
ples, and knows only of one thing, which 
is good, and one thing to be avoided, 
which is evil; and who is ready to meet — 
death and reproach, rather than betray 
his conscience, the testimony of which 
alone is sufficient to content him; such a 
man will certainly, without hesitation, 
prefer the rigour of an invariable mora- 
lity, to all the palliatives of acomplaisant * 
author, Juvenal then would be the first 
of satirists, if liberty were the first object 
of man; but, as he himself has told us: 
virtus laudatur et algel. 
To conclude: Horace wrote like an 
adroit courtier; and Juvenal like a zea- 
lous citizen: and while the one leaves no- 
thing to be wished for by a refined and 
voluptuous character, the other gives the 
fullest satisfaction to a strict and manly 
mind, ; 
=a 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
On the Mzans of BETTER!ING the CONDI- 
Tion Of the Poor. 
HERE are three great wants of the 
poor in most parts of this Islarid, 
| Toes which 
