verse more numerous; and his words are suitable to his thoughts,
sublime and lofty. All these contribute to the pleasure of the
reader; and the greater the soul of him who reads, his transports
are the greater. Horace is always on the amble, Juvenal on the
gallop, but his way is perpetually on carpet-ground. He goes with
more impetuosity than Horace, but as securely; and the swiftness
adds a more lively agitation to the spirits. The low style of
Horace is according to his subject--that is, generally grovelling.
I question not but he could have raised it, for the first epistle of
the second book, which he writes to Augustus (a most instructive
satire concerning poetry), is of so much dignity in the words, and
of so much elegancy in the numbers, that the author plainly shows
the sermo pedestris in his other satires was rather his choice than
his necessity. He was a rival to Lucilius, his predecessor, and was
resolved to surpass him in his own manner. Lucilius, as we see by
his remaining fragments, minded neither his style, nor his numbers,
nor his purity of words, nor his run of verse. Horace therefore
copes with him in that humble way of satire, writes under his own
force, and carries a dead weight, that he may match his competitor
in the race. This, I imagine, was the chief reason why he minded
only the clearness of his satire, and the cleanness of expression,
without ascending to those heights to which his own vigour might
have carried him. But limiting his desires only to the conquest of
Lucilius, he had his ends of his rival, who lived before him, but
made way for a new conquest over himself by Juvenal his successor.
He could not give an equal pleasure to his reader, because he used
not equal instruments. The fault was in the tools, and not in the
workman. But versification and numbers are the greatest pleasures
of poetry. Virgil knew it, and practised both so happily that, for
aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction. In all