The Satires of Juvenal

all I contend for; and which, indeed, if I do not deceive myself, is somewhat more than can be affirmed of what has been hitherto delivered on the subject.

Little is known of Juvenal's circumstances; but, happily, that little is authentic, as it comes from himself. He had a competence. The dignity of poetry is never disgraced in him, as it is in some of his contemporaries, by fretful complaints of poverty or clamorous whinings for meat and clothes: the little patrimony which his foster-father left him, he never diminished, and probably never increased. It seems to have equalled all his wants and, as far as appears, all his wishes. Once only he regrets the narrowness of his fortune; but the occasion does him honor; it is solely because he cannot afford a more costly sacrifice to express his pious gratitude for the preservation of his friend: yet "two lambs and a youthful steer" bespeak the affluence of a philosopher; which is not belied by the entertainment provided for his friend Persius, in that beautiful Satire which is here called the last of his works. Further it is useless to seek; from pride or modesty, he has left no other notices of himself; or they have perished. Horace and Persius, his immediate predecessors, are never weary of speaking of themselves. The life of the former might be written, from his own materials, with all the minuteness of a contemporary history; and the latter, who attained to little more than a third of Juvenal's age, has left nothing to be desired on the only topics which could interest posterity—his parent, his preceptor, and his course of studies.