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.
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.
However, I will pursue my business where I left it, and carry it
farther than that common observation of the several ages in which
these authors flourished.

When Horace writ his satires, the monarchy of his Caesar was in its
newness, and the government but just made easy to the conquered