The difficulty is often felt of distinguishing between a powerful rhetorician and a genuine poet, and it is felt particularly in the case of Juvenal. He himself knew and has well described (vii. 53 seq.) the conditions under which a great poet could flourish; and he felt that his own age was incapable of producing one. He has little sense of beauty either in human life or nature. Whenever such sense is evoked it is only as a momentary relief to his prevailing sense of the hideousness of contemporary life, or in protest against what he regarded as the enervating influences of art. Even his references to the great poets of the past indicate rather a _blase_ sense of indifference and weariness than a fresh enjoyment of them. Yet his power of touching the springs of tragic awe and horror is a genuine poetical gift, of the same kind as that which is displayed by some of the early English dramatists. But he is, on the whole, more essentially a great rhetorician than a great poet. His training, the practical bent of his understanding, his strong but morose character, the circumstances of his time, and the materials available for his art, all fitted him to rebuke his own age and all after-times in the tones of a powerful preacher, rather than charm them with the art of an accomplished poet. The composition of his various satires shows no negligence, but rather excess of elaboration; but it produces the impression of mechanical contrivance rather than of organic growth. His movement is sustained and powerful, but there is no rise and fall in it. The verse is most carefully constructed, and is also most effective, but it is so with the rhetorical effectiveness of Lucan, not with the musical charm of Virgil. The diction is full, even to excess, of meaning, point and emphasis. Few writers have added so much to the currency of quotation. But his style altogether wants the charm of ease and simplicity. It wearies by the constant strain after effect, its mock-heroics and allusive periphrasis, and excites distrust by its want of moderation.