Little is known of Juvenal's circumstances; but, happily, that little is authentic, as it comes from himself. He had a competence. The dignity of poetry is never disgraced in him, as it is in some of his contemporaries, by fretful complaints of poverty, or clamorous whinings for meat and clothes: the little patrimony which his fosterfather left him, he never diminished, and probably never increased. It seems to have equaled all his wants, and, as far as appears, all his wishes. Once only he regrets the narrowness of his fortune; but the occasion does him honor; it is solely because he can not afford a more costly sacrifice to express his pious gratitude for the preservation of his friend: yet "two lambs and a youthful steer" bespeak the affluence of a philosopher; which is not belied by the entertainment provided for his friend Persicus, in that beautiful Satire which is here called the last of his works. Farther it is useless to seek: from pride or modesty, he has left no other notices of himself; or they have perished. Horace and Persius, his immediate predecessors, are never weary of speaking of themselves. The life of the former might be written, from his own materials, with all the minuteness of a contemporary history: and the latter, who attained to little more than a third of Juvenal's age, has left nothing to be desired on the only topics which could interest posterity--his parent, his preceptor, and his course of studies. FOOTNOTES: [1] "Junius Juvenalis liberti locupletis incertum filius an alumnus, ad mediam ætatem declamavit, animi magis causa, quam quod scholæ aut foro se præpararet." The learned reader knows that this is taken from the brief account of Juvenal, commonly attributed to Suetonius; but which is probably posterior to his time; as it bears very few marks of being written by a contemporary author: it is, however, the earliest extant. The old critics, struck with its deficiencies, have attempted to render it more complete by variations, which take from its authenticity, without adding to its probability.