The Country Ideal in Johnson’s Imitation
of Juvenal’s Third Satire

Virginia Rimmer

The third of Juvenal’s fourteen satires is considered by many to be one of his best and sharpest works. The vices, woes, and travails of first-century Rome depicted in this poem could describe just about any large city in the world in any time; so it is not surprising that Dr. Samuel Johnson, the famous English polymath of the eighteenth century, found Juvenal’s satire apt to the London of his day. Johnson’s “London: A Poem,” published in 1738, is not so much a translation of the earlier work, though it does closely follow the subject matter of the original. Rather, it is a self-described “imitation.” Johnson has updated all the references to people, places, and events in Juvenal’s Rome to his own time and place, so that the Greeks are the French, Cumae is Scotland or Wales, chains are the gallows’ rope, and so on. And Johnson’s gibes at the inhabitants of his city equal Juvenal’s in their sting. But he has also occasionally added patriotic and political allusions concerning Eliza, Spain, and Alfred the Great whose counterparts are either entirely lacking or whose tone is decidedly unpatriotic in Juvenal’s version. On the subject of the appeal of country life, as well, Johnson has mistranslated Juvenal’s understated irony as ebullient sincerity.

In Juvenal’s satire, the weary city-dweller Umbricius departs for the countryside after contrasting the perils and frustrations of life in Rome with the more peaceful and simple ways of the outlying villages. Juvenal, however, is no Horace or Vergil, extolling to the skies the delights of the country and the moral fortitude of agricultural life. He is instead using country life as a device with which to set off city life, while also gently poking fun at the small towns of Italy. He teases Cumae for its population problem with the words vacuis quod sedem figere Cumis/destinet atque unum civem donare Sibyllae (“he resolves to make a home at empty Cumae and grant the Sibyl one citizen”) (3-4), and says that he would rather live on the tiny deserted island of Prochyta than in Subura, though in the next line he implies that Cumae and Prochyta are wretched and lonely (tam miserum, tam solum) (6). When comparing the dandies of Rome with the simply-clad folk of Italy, Juvenal describes the typical garb of the latter as “a cowl of rough Venetian blue” (veneto duroque cucullo) (170), and disdains their “grassy theater” (herboso…theatro) and its plays’ repetitive “well-known introduction” (notum exordium) (173-5). His most humorous jest at the little towns’ expense comes in lines 223-231, where the “best house” (optima…domus) one could get at these places has a “tiny garden,” a hortulus, where, by learning to love the hoe, one can grow only “thin plants” (tenuis plantas) for Pythagoreans—no animals being available for meat, just one little lizard. One gets the impression from these descriptions that Juvenal finds country life to be lonely, backward, overly austere, and cold (gelida Praeneste (190) and gelidos… agros (322)). It is significant that it is Umbricius who leaves Rome for remote regions, while Juvenal stands at the gate and waves goodbye, still willing to bear the annoyances of the big city in exchange for its excitements and pleasures.

Johnson takes a different approach in his description of the provincial areas of Great Britain. He wrings the irony out of Juvenal’s words about Cumae and Prochyta with his earnest parallels, “Give to St. David one true Briton more” and “For who would leave, unbrib’d, Hibernia’s Land,/Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?” (8-10). And Juvenal’s comic scene of 223-231 is replaced by a resplendent passage in which the hortulus has grown into an “elegant Retreat,/ Some hireling Senator’s deserted Seat,” and the tenuis plantas are the “Bow’rs” and “Flow’rs” of an English country estate (212-17). To Samuel Johnson, the country meant “Nature’s Music” and wide, open spaces where “ev’ry Breeze bears Health upon its Wings” (220-21), rather than boredom and asceticism. If one may be allowed to update the satire once again, Johnson is comparing New York City to Martha’s Vineyard, while Juvenal is comparing it to Stamps, Arkansas. It may be that Johnson felt differently about the subject than did Juvenal and knowingly made this subtle change in tone. Combined with his patriotic pronouncements, Johnson’s more enthusiastic depiction of country life reveals a general optimism and an attempt to use his negative portrayal of London in a politically positive way. On the other hand, in his satire, Juvenal simply (and pessimistically) exposes the ills and hypocrisies of his Rome; he does not indicate any political program or hope for change.

References

Johnson, Samuel. 1971. Samuel Johnson: The Complete English Poems. Ed. J. D. Fleeman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Juvenal. 1962. Fourteen Satires of Juvenal. Ed. J. D. Duff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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