The meat of Horace is more nourishing,
but the cookery of Juvenal more exquisite; so that, granting Horace
to be the more general philosopher, we cannot deny that Juvenal was
the greater poet--I mean, in satire. His thoughts are sharper, his
indignation against vice is more vehement, his spirit has more of
the commonwealth genius; he treats tyranny, and all the vices
attending it, as they deserve, with the utmost rigour; and
consequently a noble soul is better pleased with a zealous
vindicator of Roman liberty than with a temporising poet, a well-
mannered court slave, and a man who is often afraid of laughing in
the right place--who is ever decent, because he is naturally
servile.
After all, Horace had the disadvantage of the times in which he
lived; they were better for the man, but worse for the satirist. It
is generally said that those enormous vices which were practised
under the reign of Domitian were unknown in the time of Augustus
Caesar; that therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace.
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