is a question that I shall not at present examine; but the personal indignation of the satirist commands our reverence.

Juvenal assumed the same province in morals, that Horace did in matters of taste. Horace seldom approached fashiona ble vices; if he did, he passed lightly over them: but Juvenal approached them with firm step, and trampled them under foot. Horace, as one of the old scholiasts says, is a superficial satirist, who contents himself with smiling, and showing his white teeth; but Juvenal bites his prey to the very bone, and rarely quits without destroying him. He was indeed a censor always true to his post, and never did censor have more to correct.* To form a just estimate of his satires we ought to take a general survey of their subjects, their character and design, and their adaptation to the end proposed.

It will hardly be disputed that the state of Rome was excessively corrupt, and that the standard of morals had fallen to the extreme degree of turpitude, at the time when he wrote. Allow ever so much for the exaggeration of the poet, and we have still enough left to vindicate this conclusion. It is the applicability of satire to times, and persons, and circumstances, that gives it all its savour and pungency. And Juvenal could scarcely have been accounted less than mad, to have aimed with such vengeance, and such particularity of discrimination at the most shocking vices, if they had no existence except in his own imagination. When therefore he describes the corruption of the men, and indeed the profligacy of both sexes, the rapacity of private guardians, and publick rulers and magis trates, the hypocrisy of philosophers, the rich adding insult to oppression in their conduct towards the poor, and all with a minuteness, and a gravity of invective, that give the strongest proof of his own knowledge and convictions, we are compelled to believe the reality of the scenes, of which we find such striking pictures, though sometimes probably coloured beyond nature and truth.

I have foreborne to extend the parallel between Juvenal and Horace, as satirists. The ground has been passed over by Dryden and Dusanex, Rupert and Gifford. It is not singular to prefer Juvenal to Horace: compare, says Scaliger, Juvenal's twelfth with Horace's first satire, and Sane ille tibi Juvenalis poeta videbitur; hic Horatius, jejunae cujuspiam theseos He pursues the comparison still farther in favour of Ju

tenuis tentator:

venal.

Such in general are the subjects of Juvenal's satires. It would be indecent to adduce all the particulars, and unnecessary to the completion of my purpose in these cursory remarks. Nor can there be any doubt that the poet intended, while he expressed his virtuous indignation, to contribute his share, by the poignan+ cy of his satire, towards the suppression of those vices, which are the principal topicks of discourse.

Respecting the adaptation of the means to the end, a matter of the first consequence to be justly estimated by all reformers, the criticks upon Juvenal have been much divided. He has so thoroughly denudated the objects of satire, as to render them disgusting to every pure mind: but there are those of a more vulgar cast, which take pleasure in this unrestrained exposure, and listen without much emotion to the thunder of his declamation against the guilty. There have not been wanting pagan writers, who have blamed him for indiscretion; and it has been thought, that he sometimes rather teaches to commit a crime, than inspires an abhorrence of those moral disorders, against which he seems to declaim. It has even been believed that he derived too much pleasure from the obscenity of some of his own descriptions; and it has been conjectured, that he was not quite so immaculate himself, as to take very deep offence at the black spots that he discerned in others. But in general he has deservedly been praised for his sincerity; and, while many have examined with too little aversion the pictures of gross sensuali ty drawn by his pen, it is very manifest that his intention was to present a visible object, at which he was to direct the bitterness of his reproaches. It is true there are portions that ought never to see the light; before which translators have stood appalled, and have not ventured to give them a full and faithful delineation. But in such cases we must allow for the times, when it was usual to call things by their true names, and to speak of them without reserve.

Having selected such enormities for the subjects of his satire, and brought them so plainly into view, there seems to have been left no option respecting the manner in which they were to be treated. Accordingly we find in Juvenal a style of vehement declamation and angry invective. He makes no efforts at persuasion, because he is not sufficiently cool. He seldom sports with the guilty, but aims generally to wound them deeply; and

he chooses rather to prostrate them at once by a bold and imperious tone of satire, than merely to vex and irritate them by a malicious sort of raillery. Yet it has been denied that he was influenced as much by a genuine zeal to correct the disorders and excesses of his own age, as by a spirit of vanity and ostenta tion, which led him to aspire after the reputation of an intrepid reformer. Granting that pride had some concern in his undertaking, there can be no doubt, at the same time, that he was actuated also by an aversion to the crimes, which he appears so much to detest. Whether he adopted the means that promised most certainly to correct them, is a distinct question. Folly and fashionable absurdities, whether in manners or opinions, are best met by wit and ridicule. But these are weapons less easily weilded against gross vices; for the consideration of such vices serves to make the moralist more grave and contemplative, or more angry and indignant. Every thing like levity is remote from his thoughts, or studiously suppressed; and while he takes care not to give dignity and importance to folly, by applying serious correctives, he is no less cautious so to distinguish between real wickedness and venial foibles, as to direct all the strength of our aversion and abhorrence against the first.

Severity must be looked for as a prominent feature in a poet, who, like Juvenal, entered the lists in opposition to the licen tious and profane. To him we look not in vain: for we find him always inflexible, never satisfied with gentle stripes and partial reproofs, nor willing to close with any compromise for wickedness or impiety.

Some have thought the tenth satire too philosophical for this kind of writing, and have been ready to remark in others too much affectation of learning, and of intellectual excellence, more becoming the ancient sophists and rhetoricians. He wrote when letters had began to decline; and being chiefly concerned about morals, he sometimes offended, probably without much solici tude, against the rules of taste.

There is a story told by Suetonius, whose truth however is doubted by some, that Juvenal was banished by the emperour at the advanced age of eighty years. According to his account it was a sort of banishment in disguise; for he was sent in a publick capacity, without any pretence of punishment for his indirect severity upon the sovereign and the nobles of Rome. So

much of the account is unquestionably true, as asserts that he went into Egypt; under what circumstances, or with what design, cannot with certainty be ascertained. It is probable that the fifteenth satire was the fruit of this visit.

SILVA, No. 73.

Interea Dryadum sylvas saltusque sequamur

Intactos.

VIRG. 3. Geo. v. 40.

FRANKLIN'S MOTTO.

It has been a question, Who was the author of that beautiful line which was applied to Dr. Franklin.

Eripuit Coelo fulmen Sceptrumque Tyrannis.

It has generally been imputed to Mr. Turgot: but some have said it was composed by a poet in Holland; and that Turgot only altered or corrected it, to read

Eripuit Coelo fulmen, mox Sceptra Tyrannis.

The hint of it, nevertheless, whoever was the author of it, was probably taken from a poem more ancient, in which is this line, Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi.

This is in a Latin poem on Astronomy, called Astronomicon, written by Marcus Manilius, in the reign of Tiberius, five books of which only have been preserved, concerning the fixed stars. The best editions of this work are those of Paris, in usum Delphini in 1679, in quarto, and that of London, with the notes of Bentley, in 1739, in quarto. That of Bologna, in 1474, in folio, is very rare.

STAGE BLUNDERS.

EVERY one has heard of the ludicrous perversions of Shakespeare, which have been occasioned by a slip of the tongue in these lines;

"Stand by my lord, and let the coffin pass." (parson cough.) "Art thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d.” (damn'd goblin.) Several mistakes of a similar kind which have graced the French stage, are not less laughable. An actor in exclaiming "arrête, lâche, arrete," "halt, coward, halt;" pronounced the 'words in such rapid succession that the audience heard "arrete la charette;"" stop the cart." Another, who should have said,

"Sonnez, trompettes;" in his warmth exclaimed, "Trompez sonnettes."

DREAMS.

FROM time immemorial the credulity of a part of mankind has been duped by the interpretation, and apparent fulfilment of dreams. There is no doubt that any one who will be at pains to treasure up the night-rovings of his fancy, may not unfrequently observe a considerable analogy between the visions of his sleep, and the subsequent events of his waking hours. The cause of this correspondence is to be sought, not from any preternatural source, but simply from chance. Among the thousand dreams which an individual has in the course of a year, it would be very singular if some one did not bear a certain degree of similitude to some future transaction, sufficient to cause the one to be recognized as the representative of the other. Now if any person possesses a sufficient share of prejudice or credulity, to induce him, out of an hundred dreams which he treasures up, to take advantage of one, which happens to be fulfilled, as a step in his demonstration; while he makes no account of the ninety and nine of which he is never again reminded; such a man may readily become an infallible interpreter, and rest strong in the conviction that οναρ εκ διος εςιν.

PHILOLOGY.

APROPOS to the above subject is the fortuitous similarity be tween words in different languages, which our wiseacres and interpreters of derivations find so advantageous in indicating the pedigree of nations. Probably no two different tongues exist in which a dozen words may not be found very nearly resembling each other in sound and sense. Yet from neglect of this consideration, how many laborious hours have been spent in making out the direct line of genealogy from the Tartars to the Esquimaux, or from Welch to the Mohawks, which is considered to be demonstratively proved, when it can be shewn that the name of tomahawk in one corresponds to that of frying pan in

the other.

HUMANITY REWARDED.

A SURGEON in Florence, happened to discover in the street a dog whose leg had just been broken by a cart wheel. Compas