the proper names, because I thought they woold not much edify the reader. To conclude, if in two or three places I have deserted all the commentators, it is because they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much ob. scurity, that too much room is left for guessing. STILL shall I hear, and never quit the score, Stunn'd with hoarse Codrus Theseid, o'er and o'er?
Shall this inan's Elegies and t'other's Play
Unpunish'd murder a long summer's day?
Huge Telephus, a formidable page,
Cries vengeance; and Orestes' bulky rage,
Unsatisfied with margins closely writ,
Foams o'er the covers, and not finish'd yet.
No man can take a more familiar note
Of his own home, than I of Vulcan's grot,
Or Mars his grove, or hollow winds that blow
From Etna's top, or tortur'd ghosts below.
I know by rote the fam'd exploits of Greece;
The Centaurs' fury, and the golden fleece;
Through the thick shades th' eternal scribbler
bawls,
And shakes the statues on their pedestals.
The best and worst on the same theme employs'
His muse, and plagues us with an equal noise.
Provok'd by these incorrigible fools,
I left declaiming in pedantic schools;
Where, with men-boys, I stove to get renown,
Advising Sylla to a private gown.
But since the world with writing is possest,
I'll versify in spite; and do my best,
To make as much waste paper as the rest.
But why I lift aloft the Satire's rod,
And tread the path which fam'd Lucilius tro,
Attend the causes which my Muse have led :
When sapless eunuchs mount the marriage-
bed,
When mannish Mevia, that two-handel whore,
Astride on horseback hunts the Tuscan boar,
When all our lords are by his wealth outvied,
Whose razor on my callow beard was tried;
When I behold the spawn of conquer'd Nile
Crispinus, both in birth and manners vile,
Pacing in pomp, with cloak of Tyrian dye,
Chang'd oft a day for needless luxury;
And finding oft occasion to be fann'd,
Ambitious to produce his lady-hand;
And but the wish'd occasion does attend
From the poor nobles the last spoils to rend,
Whom e'en spies dread as their superior fiend,
And bribe with presents; or, when presents fail,
They send their prostituted wives for bail:
When night-performance holds the place of
And brawn and back the next of kin fisherit;
For such good parts are in prefermen's way,
The rich old madam never fails to pay
Her legacies, by nature's standard gin,
One
gains an ounce, another gains eleven:
A dear-bought bargain, all things duly weigh'd,
For which their thrice concocted blood is paid.
With looks as wan, as he who in the brake
At unawares has trod upon a snake;
Or play'd at Lyons a declaiming prize,
For which the vanquish'd rhetorician dies.
What indignation boils within my veins, When perjur'd guardians, proud with impious gains,
Choke up the streets, too narrow for their trains! Whose wards by want betray'd, to crimes are
Too foul to name, too fulsome to be read!
When he who pill'd his province scapes the laws,
And keeps his money, though he lost his cause:
His fine begg'd off, contemns his infamy,
Can rise at twelve, and get him drunk ere three:
Enjoys his exile, and, condemn'd in vain,
Leaves thee, prevailing province, to complain'
Such villanies rous'd Horace into wrath:
And 't is more noble to pursue his path,
Than an old tale of Diomede to repeat,
Or lab'ring after Hercules to sweat,
Or wand'ring in the winding maze of Crete;
Or with the winged smith aloft to fly,
Or flutt'ring perish with his foolish boy.
With what impatience must the muse behold
The wife, by her procuring husband sold?
For though the law makes null th' adulterer's
Of lands to her, the cuckold may succeed; Who his taught eyes up to the ceiling throws, And sleeps all over but his wakeful nose. When he dares hope a colonel's command,
Charg'd with light summer-rings his fingers Whose coursers kept, ran out his father's land.
Unable to support a gera of weight:
Such fulsome objects meeting every where, 'T is hard to write, but harder to forbear.
To view so lewd a town, and to refrain, What hoops of iron could my spleen contain! When pleading Matho, borne abroad for air, With his fat paunch fills his new-fashion'd chair, And after him the wretch in pomp convey'd, Whose evidence his lord and friend betray'd,
Who, yet a stripling, Nero's chariot drove, Whirl'd o'er the streets, while his vain maste
With boasted art to please his eunuch-love.
Would it not make a modest author dare To draw his table-book within the square, And fill with notes, when lolling at his ease, Mecænas-like, the happy rogue he sees Borne by six wearied slaves in open view, Who cancell'd an old will, and forg'd a new;
Made wealthy at the small expense of signing With a wet seal, and a fresh interlining?
The lady, next, requires a lashing line, Who squeez'd a toad into her husband's wine: So well the fashionable med'cine thrives, That now 't is practis'd e'en by country wives: Pois'ning, without regard of fame or fear: And spotted corpse are frequent on the bier. Wouldst thou to honours and preferments climb? Be bold in mischief, dare some mighty crime, Which dungeons, death, or banishment de
For virtue is but dryly prais'd, and starves. Great men, to great crimes, owe their plate emboss'd,
Fair palaces, and furniture of cost;
And high commands: a sneaking sin is lost.
Who can behold that rank old lecher keep
His son's corrupted wife, and hope to sleep?
Or that male-harlot or that unfledg'd boy,
Eager to sin, before he can enjoy ?
If nature could not, anger would indite
Such woful stuff as I or Shadwell write.
Count from the time, since old Deucalion's boat,
Rais'd by the flood, did on Parnassus float;
And scarcely mooring on the cliff, implor'd
An oracle how man might be restor❜d;
When soften'd stones and vital breath ensu'd,
And virgins naked were by lovers view'd;
What ever since that Golden Age was done,
What human kind desires, and what they shun,
Rage, passions, pleasures, impotenco of will,
Shall this satirical collection fill.
What age so large a crop of vices bore,
Or when was avarice extended more?
When were the dice with more profusion
thrown?
The well-fill'd fob not emptied now alone,
But gamesters for whole patrimonies play;
The steward brings the deeds which must convey
The lost estate: what more than madness reigns,
When one short sitting many hundreds drains,
And not enough is left him to supply
Board-wages, or a footman's livery?
What age so many summer seats did see?
Or which of our forefathers far'd so well,
As on a seven dishes, at a private meal?
Clients of old were feasted; now a poor
Divided dole is dealt at th' outward door;
Which by the hungry rout is soon despatch'd:
The paltry largess, too, severely watch'd
Ere given; and ev'ry face observ'd with care,
That no intruding guest usurp a share.
Known, you receive: the crier calls aloud
Our old nobility of Trojan blood,
The prætors' and the tribunes' voice is heard The freedman justles, and will be preferr'd; First come, first serv'd, he cries; and I, in spite
Of your great lordships, will maintain my right. Though born a slave, though my torn ears are bor'd,
"T is not the birth, 't is money makes the lord.
The rent of five fair houses I receive;
What greater honours can the purple give?
The poor patrician is reduc'd to keep,
In melancholy walks, a grazier's sheep:
Not Pallas nor Licinius had my treasure;
Then let the sacred tribunes wait my leisure,
Once a poor rogue, 't is true, I trod the street,
And trudg'd to Rome upon my naked feet:
Gold is the greatest god; through yet we see
No temples rais'd to Money's majesty,
No altars fuming to her power divine,
Such as to Valour, Peace, and Virtue shine,
And Faith, and Concord: where the stork on
high
Seems to salute her infant progeny:
Presaging pious love with her auspicious cry.
But since our knights and senators account To what their sordid begging vails amount, Judge what a wretched share the poor attends, Whose whole subsistence on those alms depends!
Their household fire, their raiment, and their food,
Prevented by those harpies; when a wood
Of litters thick besiege the donor's gate,
And begging lords and teeming ladies wait
The promis'd dole: nay, some have learn'd the
trick
To beg for absent persons; feign them sick,
Close mew'd in their sedans, for fear of air:
And for their wives produce an empty chair.
This is my spouse: despatch her with her share
'Tis Galla: Let her ladyship but peep:
No, Sir, 't is pity to disturb her sleep.
Such fine employments our whole days di-
vide:
The salutations of the morning tide
Call up the sun; those ended, to the hall
We wait the patron, hear the lawyers bawl;
Then to the statues; where amidst the race
Of conqu❜ring Rome, some Arab shows his
face,
Inscrib'd with titles, and profanes the place;
Fit to be piss'd against, and somewhat more.
The great man, home conducted, shuts his
door;
Old clients, wearied out with fruitless care,
Dismiss their hopes of eating, and despair.
Who gape among the crowd for their preca- Though much against the grain forc'd to retire
Buy roots for supper, and provide a fire.
Meantime his lordship lolls within at ease,
Panip'ring his paunch with foreign rarities;
Both sea and land are ransack'd for the feast;
And his own gut the sole invited guest.
Such plate, such tables, dishes drest so well,
That whole estates are swallow'd at a meal.
E'en parasites are banish'd from his board:
(At once a sordid and luxurious lord :) [drest;
Prodigious throat, for which whole boars are
(A creature form'd to furnish out a feast.)
But present punishment pursues his maw,
When surfeited and swell'd, the peacock raw ;
He bears into the bath; whence want of breath,
Repletions, apoplex, intestate death.
His fate makes table talk, divulg'd with scorn,
And he, a jest, into his grave is borne.
No age can go beyond us; future times
Can add no farther to the present crimes.
Our sons but the same things can wish and do;
Vice is at stand, and at the highest flow.
Then Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds
[yield
Some may, perhaps, demand what Muse can
Sufficient strength for such a spacious field?
From whence can be deriv'd so large a vein,
Bold truths to speak, and spoken to maintain;
When god-like freedom is so far bereft
The noble mind, that scarce the name is left?
Ere scandalum magnatum was begot,
No matter if the great forgave or not:
But if that honest license now you take,
If into rogues omnipotent you rake,
Death is your doom, impal'd upon a stake.
Smear'd o'er with wax, and set on fire, to light
The streets, and make a dreadful blaze by
night.
[draught
Shall they, who drench'd three uncles in a
Of pois'nous juice, be then in triumph brought,
Make lanes among the people where they go,
And, mounted high on downy chariots, throw
Disdainful glances on the crowd below?
Be silent, and beware, if such you see;
"T is defamation but to say, That's he!
Against bold Turnus the great Trojan arm,
Amidst their strokes the poets gets no harm:
Achilles may in epique verse be slain,
And none of all his Myrmidons complain :
Hylas may drop his pitcher, none will cry;
Not if he drown himself for company :
But when Lucilius brandishes his pen,
And flashes in the face of guilty men,
A cold sweat stands in drops on ev'ry part;
And
rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.
Muse, be advis'd; 't is past consid'ring time,
When enter'd once the dang'rous lists of
Since none the living vill tins dare implead,
Arraign them in the persons of the dead.
THE THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL
The story of this satire speaks itself. Umbritius the supposed friend of Juvenal, and himself a poet, is leaving Rome, and retiring to Cumæ, Our author accompanies him out of town. Before they take leave of each other, Umbritius tells his friend the reasons which oblige him to lead a private life, in an obscure place. He complains that an honest man cannot get his bread at Rome. That none but flatterers make their fortunes there: that Grecians and other foreigners raise themselves by these sordid arts which he describes, and against which he bitter ly inveighs. He reckons up the several inconveniencies which arise from a city life; and the many dangers which attend it. Upbraids the noblemen with covetousness, for not rewarding good poets; and arraigns the govenment for starv ing them. The great art of this satire is par ticularly shown, in common places; and drawing in as many vices, as could naturally fall into the compass of it.
GRIEV'D though I am an ancient friend to lose,
I like the solitary seat he chose :
In quiet Cuma fixing his repose:
Where, far from noisy Rome secure he lives,
And one more citizen to Sybil gives.
The road to Baja, and that soft recess,
Which all the gods with all their bounty bless.
Though I in Prochyta with greater ease
Could live, than in a street of palaces.
What scene so desert, or so full of fright,
As tow'ring houses tumbling in the night,
And Rome on fire beheld by its own blazing
But worse than all, the clatt'ring tiles; and worse
light?
Than thousand padders, is the poet's curse.
Rogues that in dog-days cannot rhyme forbear:
But without mercy read, and make you hear.
Now while my friend, just ready to depart,
Was packing all his goods in one poor cart;
He stopp'd a little at the Conduit-gate,
Where Numa modell'd once the Roman state,
In mighty councils with his Nymph* retir'd:
Though now the sacred shades and founts are
hir'd
By banish'd Jews, who their whole wealth can
[lay
In a small basket, on a wisp of hay;
Yet such our avarice is, that ev'ry tree
Pays for his head; nor sleep itself is free:
Nor place, nor persons, now are sacred held,
From their own grove the Muses are expell'd.
Into this lonely vale our steps we bend,
I and my sullen discontented friend:
The marble caves, and aqueducts we view;
But how adult'rate now,
and different from the
Nymph) Egeria, a nymph, or goddess; with whom Numa feigned to converse by night, and to be instructed by her in modelling his superstitions.
How much more beauteous had the fountain Unskill'd in schemes by planets to foreshow,
Embellish'd with her first created green, Where crystal streams through living turf had
Contented with an urn of native stone!
Then thus Umbritius (with an angry frown,
And looking back on this degen'rate town,)
Since noble arts in Rome have no support,
And ragged virtue not a friend at court,
No profit rises from th' ungrateful stage,
My poverty increasing with my age,
'Tis time to give my just disdain a vent,
And, cursing, leave so base a government.
Where Daedalus his borrow'd wings laid by,
To that obscure retreat I choose to fly :
While yet few furrows on my face are seen,
While I walk upright, and old age is green,
And Lachesis has somewhat left to spin.
Now, now 't is time to quit this cursed place,
And hide from villains my too honest face :
Here let Arturius live, and such as he;
Such manners will with such a town agree,
Knaves who in full assemblies have the knack
Of turning truth to lies, and white to black;
Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
By farm'd excise; can cleanse the common-
shore;
And rent the fishery; can bear the dead;
And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed,
All this for gain; for gain they sell their very
These fellows (see what fortune's power can do)
Were once the minstrels of a country show:
Follow'd the prizes through each paltry town,
By trumpet-cheeks and bloated faces known.
But now, grown rich, on drunken holydays,
At their own costs exhibit public plays;
Where influenc'd by the rabble's bloody will,
With thumbs bent back, they popularly kill.
From thence return'd, their sordid avarice
In excrements again, and hires the jakes.
Why hire they not the town, not ev'ry thing,
Since such as they have fortune in a string
Who, for her pleasure, can her fools advance:
And toss 'em topmost on the wheel of chance.
What's Rome to me, what bus'ness have I
there,
I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear?
Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes,
Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times;
• With thumbs beni lak In a prize of swordplayers, when one of the fencers had the other at his mercy, the vanquished party implored the clemency of the spectators. If they thought he deserved it not, they held up their thumbs and bent them backwards, in sign of death.
Like canting rascals, how the wars will go :
I neither will, nor can prognosticate
To the young gaping heir, his father's fate:
Nor in the entrails of a toad have pry'd,
Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride:
For want of these town-virtues, thus, alone,
I go
conducted on my way by none :
Like a dead member from the body rent;
Maim'd, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is lov'd, but he who loves the timer,
Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes;
Lab'ring with secrets which his bosom burn,
Yet never must to public light return?
They get reward alone who can betray:
For keeping honest counsels none will pay.
He who can Verres, when he will, accuse,
The purse of Verres may at pleasure use:
But let not all the gold which Tagus hides,
And pays the sea in tributary tides,
Be bribe sufficient to corrupt thy breast;
Or violate with dreams thy peaceful rest.
Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold,
Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold.
I haste to tell thee, nor shall shame oppose,
What confidants our wealthy Romans chose;
And whom I most abhor: to speak my mind,
I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find:
To see the scum of Greece transplanted here,
Receiv'd like gods, is what I cannot bear.
Nor Greeks alone, but Syrians here abound,
Obscene Orontes, diving under ground,
Conveys his wealth to Tyber's hungry shores,
And fattens Italy with foreign whores :
Hither their crooked harps and customs come:
All find receipt in hospitable Rome.
The barbarous harlots crowd the public place:
Go, fools, and purchase an unclean embrace;
The painted mitre court, and the more painted
fice.
Old Romulus, and father Mars look down,
Your herdsman primitive, your homely clown
Is turn'd a beau in a loose tawdry gown.
His once unkemb'd, and horrid locks, behold
Stilling sweet oil: his neck inchain'd with gold:
Aping the foreigners, in ev'ry dress;
Which, bought at greater cost, becomes him
less,
Meantime they wisely leave their native land,
From Sicyon, Samos, and from Alaband,
And Amydon, to Rome they swarm in shoals.
So sweet and easy is the gain from fools.
Poor refugees at first, they purchase here:
And, soon as denizen'd, they domineer.
Grow to the great, a flatt'ring servile rout.
Work themselves inward, and their patrons out.
Quick-witted,brazen-fac'd, with fluent tongues,
Patient of labours, and dissembling wrongs.
Riddle me this, and guess him if you can,
Who bears a nation in a single man?
A cook, a conjuror, a rhetorician,
A painter, pedant, a geometrician,
A dancer on the ropes, and a physician.
All things the hungry Greek exactly knows :
And bid him go to heav'n, to heav'n he goes.
In short, no Scythian, Moor, or Thracian born,
But in that town which arms and arts adorn.*
Shall he be plac'd above me at the board,
In purple cloth'd, and lolling like a lord?
Shall he before me sign, whom t'other day
A small-craft vessel hither did convey; [lay?
Where, stow'd with prunes, and rotten figs, he
How little is the privilege become
Of being born a citizen of Rome!
The Greeks get all by fulsome flatteries;
A most peculiar stroke they have at lies.
They make a wit of their insipid friend ;
His blobber-lips, and beetle-brows commend;
His long crane neck, and narrow shoulders
praise;
You'd think they were describing Hercules.
A creaking voice for a clear treble goes;
'Though harsher than a cock that treads and
We can as grossly praise; but, to our grief,
No flatt'ry but from Grecians gains belief.
Besides these qualities, we must agree
They mimic better on the stage than we :
The wife, the whore, the shepherdess they play,
In such a free, and such a graceful way,
That we believe a very woman shown,
And fancy something underneath the gown.
But not Antiochus, nor Stratocles, t
Our ears and ravish'd eyes can only please:
The nation is compos'd of such as these.
All Greece is one comedian: laugh, and they
Return it louder than an ass can bray:
Grieve, and they grieve; if you weep silently,
There seems a silent echo in their eye:
They cannot mourn like you, but they can cry.
Call for a fire, their winter clothes they take:
Begin but you to shiver, and they shake:
In frost and snow, if you complain of heat,
They rub th' unsweating brow, and swear they
We live not on the square with such as these,
Such are our betters who can better please:
Who day and night are like a looking-glass;
Still ready to reflect their patron's face.
The panegyric hand, and lifted eye,
Prepar'd for some new piece of flattery.
E'en nastiness, occasions will afford;
But in that town, &c.] Athens; of which Pallas the goddess of arms and arts was patroness.
Antiochus, nor Stratocles] Two famous Grecian mimics, or actors, in the poet's time.
Besides, there's nothing sacred, nothing free From bold attempts of their rank lechery. Through the whole family their labours run; The daughter is debauch'd, the wife is won: Nor 'scapes the bridegroom,or the blooming son. If none they find for their lewd purpose fit, They with the walls and very floors commit. They search the secrets of the house, and so Are worshipp'd there, and fear d for what they know.
And, now we talk of Grecians, cast a view On what, in schools, their men of morals do; A rigid Stoic his own pupil slew :
A friend against a friend of his own cloth,
Turn'd evidence, and murder'd on his oath.
What room is left for Romans in a town
Where Grecians rule, and cloaks control the
gown?
Some Diphilus, or some Protogenes,
Look sharply out, our senators to seize :
Engross 'em wholly, by their native art,
And fear'd no rivals in their bubbles' heart:
One drop of poison in my patron's ear,
One slight suggestion of a senseless fear,
Infus'd with cunning, serves to ruin me;
Disgrac'd, and banish'd from the family.
In vain forgotten services I boast;
My long dependence in an hour is lost:
Look round the world, what country will ap
Where friends are left with greater ease than here?
At Rome (nor think me partial to the poor)
All offices of ours are out of door:
In vain we rise, and to their levees run;
My lord himself is up, before, and gone :
The prætor bids his lictors mend their pace,
Lest his colleague outstrip him in the race :
The childless matrons are, long since, awake;
And, for affronts, the tardy visits take.
"T is frequent, here, to see a freeborn son
On the left hand of a rich hireling run:
Because the wealthy rogue can throw away,
For half a brace of bouts, a tribune's pay:
But you, poor sinner though you love the vice,
And, like the whore, demur upon the price :
And, frighted with the wicked sum, forbear
To lend a hand, and help her from the chair.
Produce a witness of unblemish'd life,
Holy as Nunia or as Numa's wife,
Or him who bid th' unhallow'd flames retire, And snatch'd the trembling goddess from the fire.
The question is not put, how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends:
Quick, to the bus'ness; how he lives and eats,
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats:
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