Great fortitude, and elevation of mind, have not always, indeed, been
employed in the attainment of valuable ends; but they are always
respectable, and they are always necessary when we would act for the good
of mankind, in any of the more arduous stations of life. While, therefore,
we blame their misapplication, we should beware of depreciating their
value. Men of a severe and sententious morality have not always
sufficiently observed this caution; nor have they been duly aware of the
corruptions they flattered, by the satire they employed against what is
aspiring and prominent in the character of the human soul.
It might have been expected, that, in an age of hopeless debasement, the
talents of Demosthenes and Tully, even the ill governed magnanimity of a
Macedonian, or the daring enterprise of a Carthaginian leader, might have
escaped the acrimony of a satirist, [Footnote: Juvenal's tenth satire] who
had so many objects of correction in his view, and who possessed the arts
of declamation in so high a degree.
I, demens, et saevos curre per Alpes,
Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias,
is part of the illiberal censure which is thrown by this poet on the person
and action of a leader, who, by his courage and conduct, in the very
service to which the satire referred, had well nigh saved his country from
the ruin with which it was at last at last overwhelmed.
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