Little follies were out of doors when oppression was to be scourged
instead of avarice; it was no longer time to turn into ridicule the
false opinions of philosophers when the Roman liberty was to be
asserted. There was more need of a Brutus in Domitian's days to
redeem or mend, than of a Horace, if he had then been living, to
laugh at a fly-catcher. This reflection at the same time excuses
Horace, but exalts Juvenal. I have ended, before I was aware, the
comparison of Horace and Juvenal upon the topics of instruction and
delight; and indeed I may safely here conclude that commonplace:
for if we make Horace our minister of state in satire, and Juvenal
of our private pleasures, I think the latter has no ill bargain of
it. Let profit have the pre-eminence of honour in the end of
poetry; pleasure, though but the second in degree, is the first in
favour. And who would not choose to be loved better rather than to
be more esteemed! But I am entered already upon another topic,
which concerns the particular merits of these two satirists.
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