The works of John Dryden Illustrated with notes, historical, critical, and explanatory, and a life of the author, by Sir Walter Scott |
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 | XIII. | VOL. XIII. |
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| XIV, XV. |
 | The works of John Dryden |  |
XIII. VOL. XIII.
TRANSLATIONS FROM JUVENAL.
THE FIRST SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
The Poet gives us first a kind of humorous reason for his writing: that being provoked by hearing so many ill poets rehearse their works, he does himself justice on them, by giving them as bad as they bring. But since no man will rank himself with ill writers, it is easy to conclude, that if such wretches could draw an audience, he thought it no hard matter to excel them, and gain a greater esteem with the public. Next, he informs us more openly, why he rather addicts himself to satire than any other kind of poetry. And here he discovers that it is not so much his indignation to ill poets as to ill men, which has prompted him to write. He, therefore, gives us a summary and general view of the vices and follies reigning in his time. So that this first satire is the natural groundwork of all the rest. Herein he confines himself to no one subject, but strikes indifferently at all men in his way: in every following satire he has chosen some particular moral which he would inculcate, and lashes some particular vice or folly, (an art with which our lampooners are not much acquainted.) But our poet being desirous to reform his own age, and not daring to attempt it by an overt act of naming living persons, inveighs only against those who were infamous in the times immediately preceding his, whereby he not only gives a fair warning to great men, that their memory lies at the mercy of future poets and historians, but also, with a finer stroke of his pen, brands even the living, and personates them under dead men's names.
I have avoided, as much as I could possibly, the borrowed learning of marginal notes and illustrations, and for that reason have translated this satire somewhat largely; and freely own, (if it be a fault,) that I have likewise omitted most of the proper names, because I thought they would not much edify the reader. To conclude, if in two or three places I have deserted all the commentators, it is because I thought they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much obscurity, that too much room is left for guessing.
Stunned with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er?
Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play
Unpunished 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 finished 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 Ætna's top, or tortured ghosts below.
I know by rote the famed exploits of Greece,
The Centaurs' fury, and the Golden Fleece;
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.
I left declaiming in pedantic schools;
Where, with men-boys, I strove 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.
And tread the path which famed Lucilius trod,
Attend the causes which my muse have led:—
When sapless eunuchs mount the marriage-bed;
When mannish Mævia, that two-handed 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 conquered Nile,
Crispinus, both in birth and manners vile,
Pacing in pomp, with cloak of Tyrian dye,
Changed oft a-day for needless luxury;
And finding oft occasion to be fanned,
Ambitious to produce his lady-hand;
Unable to support a gem of weight:
Such fulsome objects meeting everywhere,
'Tis hard to write, but harder to forbear.
What hoops of iron could my spleen contain!
When pleading Matho, borne abroad for air,
With his fat paunch fills his new-fashioned chair,
And after him the wretch in pomp conveyed,
Whose evidence his lord and friend betrayed,
And but the wished occasion does attend
From the poor nobles the last spoils to rend,
Whom even 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 merit,
And brawn and back the next of kin disherit;
(For such good parts are in preferment's way,)
The rich old madam never fails to pay
Her legacies, by nature's standard given,
One gains an ounce, another gains eleven:
A dear-bought bargain, all things duly weighed,
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 played at Lyons a declaiming prize,
For which the vanquished rhetorician dies.
When perjured guardians, proud with impious gains,
Choke up the streets, too narrow for their trains!
Whose wards, by want betrayed, to crimes are led
Too foul to name, too fulsome to be read!
When he who pilled his province 'scapes the laws,
And keeps his money, though he lost his cause;
His fine begged off, contemns his infamy,
Can rise at twelve, and get him drunk ere three;
Enjoys his exile, and, condemned in vain,
Leaves thee, prevailing province, to complain.
And 'tis more noble to pursue his path,
Than an old tale of Diomede to repeat,
Or labouring after Hercules to sweat,
Or wandering in the winding maze of Crete;
Or with the winged smith aloft to fly,
Or fluttering perish with his foolish boy.
The wife, by her procuring husband sold?
For though the law makes null the adulterer's deed
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,
Whose coursers kept, ran out his father's land;
Whirled o'er the streets, while his vain master strove
With boasted art to please his eunuch love.
To draw his table-book within the square,
And fill with notes, when, lolling at his ease,
Mæcenas-like, the happy rogue he sees
Borne by six wearied slaves in open view,
Who cancelled an old will, and forged 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 squeezed a toad into her husband's wine:
So well the fashionable medicine thrives,
That now 'tis practised even by country wives;
Poisoning, 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 deserves;
For virtue is but drily praised, and starves.
Great men to great crimes owe their plate embost,
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 unfledged boy,
Eager to sin, before he can enjoy?
Such woful stuff as I or Sh---ll write.
Raised by the flood, did on Parnassus float,
And, scarcely mooring on the cliff, implored
An oracle how man might be restored;
When softened stones and vital breath ensued,
And virgins naked were by lovers viewed;
What ever since that golden age was done,
What humankind desires, and what they shun;
Rage, passions, pleasures, impotence of will,
Shall this satirical collection fill.
Or when was avarice extended more?
When were the dice with more profusion thrown?
The well-filled 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?
Or which of our forefathers fared so well,
As on seven dishes at a private meal?
Clients of old were feasted; now, a poor
Divided dole is dealt at the outward door;
Which by the hungry rout is soon dispatched:
The paltry largess, too, severely watched,
That no intruding guest usurp a share.
Known, you receive; the crier calls aloud
Our old nobility of Trojan blood,
Who gape among the crowd for their precarious food.
The prætor's and the tribune's voice is heard;
The freedman jostles, and will be preferred;
“First come, first served,” he cries; “and I, in spite
Of your great lordships, will maintain my right;
Though born a slave, though my torn ears are bored,
'Tis not the birth, 'tis money makes the lord.
The rents of five fair houses I receive;
What greater honours can the purple give?
The poor patrician is reduced 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, 'tis true, I trod the street,
And trudged to Rome upon my naked feet:
Gold is the greatest God; though yet we see
No temples raised 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.”
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 promised dole; nay, some have learned the trick
To beg for absent persons; feign them sick,
Close mewed in their sedans, for fear of air;
And for their wives produce an empty chair.
“This is my spouse; dispatch her with her share;
'Tis Galla.”—“Let her ladyship but peep.”—
“No, sir, 'tis pity to disturb her sleep.”
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 conquering Rome, some Arab shows his face,
Inscribed with titles, and profanes the place;
The great man, home conducted, shuts his door.
Old clients, wearied out with fruitless care,
Dismiss their hopes of eating, and despair;
Though much against the grain, forced to retire,
Buy roots for supper, and provide a fire.
Pampering his paunch with foreign rarities;
Both sea and land are ransacked for the feast,
And his own gut the sole invited guest.
Such plate, such tables, dishes dressed so well,
That whole estates are swallowed at a meal.
Even parasites are banished from his board;
(At once a sordid and luxurious lord;)
Prodigious throat, for which whole boars are drest:
(A creature formed to furnish out a feast.)
But present punishment pursues his maw,
When, surfeited and swelled, the peacock raw
He bears into the bath; whence want of breath,
Repletions, apoplex, intestate death.
His fate makes table-talk, divulged with scorn,
And he, a jest, into his grave is borne.
Can add no further 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 can blow!
Some may, perhaps, demand what muse can yield
Sufficient strength for such a spacious field?
From whence can be derived so large a vein,
Bold truths to speak, and spoken to maintain,
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 licence now you take,
If into rogues omnipotent you rake,
Death is your doom, impaled upon a stake;
Smeared o'er with wax, and set on fire, to light
The streets, and make a dreadful blaze by night.
Of poisonous 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;
'Tis defamation but to say, That's he!
Against bold Turnus the great Trojan arm,
Amidst their strokes the poet gets no harm:
Achilles may in epic 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 every part,
And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.
Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time,
When entered once the dangerous lists of rhyme;
Since none the living villains dare implead,
Arraign them in the persons of the dead.
Some commentators take this grove to be a place where poets were used to repeat their works to the people; but more probably, both this and Vulcan's grot, or cave, and the rest of the places and names here mentioned, are only meant for the common places of Homer in his Iliads and Odysseys.
This was one of the themes given in the schools of rhetoricians, in the deliberative kind; whether Sylla should lay down the supreme power of dictatorship, or still keep it?
The Romans were grown so effeminate in Juvenal's time, that they wore light rings in the summer and heavier in the winter.
Here the poet complains that the governors of provinces, being accused for their unjust exactions, though they were condemned at their trials, yet got off by bribery.
Horace, who wrote satires; it is more noble, says our author, to imitate him in that way, than to write the labours of Hercules, the sufferings of Diomedes and his followers, or the flight of Dædalus, who made the Labyrinth, and the death of his son Icarus.
The meaning is, that the very consideration of such a crime will hinder a virtuous man from taking his repose.
Deucalion and Pyrrha, when the world was drowned, escaped to the top of Mount Parnassus, and were commanded to restore mankind, by throwing stones over their heads; the stones he threw became men, and those she threw became women.
The ears of all slaves were bored, as a mark of their servitude; which custom is still usual in the East Indies, and in other parts, even for whole nations, who bore prodigious holes in their ears, and wear vast weights at them.
Pallas, a slave freed by Claudius Cæsar, and raised by his favour to great riches. Licinius was another wealthy freedman belonging to Augustus.
He calls the Roman knights, etc., harpies, or devourers. In those days the rich made doles intended for the poor; but the great were either so covetous, or so needy, that they came in their litters to demand their shares of the largess, and thereby prevented, and consequently starved, the poor.
The meaning is, that noblemen would cause empty litters to be carried to the giver's door, pretending their wives were within them. “'Tis Galla,” that is, “my wife;” the next words, “Let her ladyship but peep,” are of the servant who distributes the dole; “Let me see her, that I may be sure she is within the litter.” The husband answers, “She is asleep, and to open the litter would disturb her rest.”
The poet here tells you how the idle passed their time, in going first to the levees of the great, then to the hall, that is, to the temple of Apollo, to hear the lawyers plead, then to the market-place of Augustus, where the statues of the famous Romans were set in ranks on pedestals, amongst which statues were seen those of foreigners, such as Arabs, etc., who, for no desert, but only on account of their wealth or favour, were placed amongst the noblest.
A poet may safely write an heroic poem, such as that of Virgil, who describes the duel of Turnus and Æneas; or of Homer, who writes of Achilles and Hector; or the death of Hylas, the catamite of Hercules, who, stooping for water, dropt his pitcher, and fell into the well after it: but it is dangerous to write satire, like Lucilius.
THE THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
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 those sordid arts which he describes, and against which he bitterly inveighs. He reckons up the several inconveniences 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 government for starving them. The great art of this satire is particularly shown in common-places, and drawing in as many vices as could naturally fall into the compass of it.
I like the solitary seat he chose,
In quiet Cumæ fixing his repose:
And one more citizen to Sibyl gives;
The road to Baiæ, 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 towering houses, tumbling in the night,
And Rome on fire beheld by its own blazing light?
But worse than all the clattering tiles, and worse
Than thousand padders, is the poet's curse;
Rogues, that in dog-days cannot rhyme forbear,
But without mercy read, and make you hear.
Was packing all his goods in one poor cart,
He stopt a little at the Conduit-gate,
Where Numa modelled once the Roman State,
In mighty councils with his nymph retired;
Though now the sacred shades and founts are hired
By banished Jews, who their whole wealth can lay
In a small basket, on a wisp of hay:
Pays for his head, nor sleep itself is free;
Nor place, nor persons, now are sacred held,
From their own grove the muses are expelled.
Into this lonely vale our steps we bend,
I and my sullen discontented friend;
The marble caves and aqueducts we view;
But how adulterate now, and different from the true!
How much more beauteous had the fountain been
Embellished with her first created green,
Where crystal streams through living turf had run,
Contented with an urn of native stone!
And looking back on this degenerate town:—
“Since noble arts in Rome have no support,
And ragged virtue not a friend at court,
No profit rises from the 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 Dædalus his borrowed 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 'tis 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.
Of turning truth to lies, and white to black,
Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
By farmed 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 head.
These fellows (see what fortune's power can do!)
Were once the minstrels of a country show;
Followed the prizes through each paltry town,
By trumpet-cheeks and bloated faces known.
But now, grown rich, on drunken holidays,
At their own costs exhibit public plays;
Where, influenced by the rabble's bloody will,
With thumbs bent back, they popularly kill.
From thence returned, their sordid avarice rakes
In excrements again, and hires the jakes.
Why hire they not the town, not every thing,
Since such as they have fortune in a string,
Who, for her pleasure, can her fools advance,
And toss them topmost on the wheel of chance?
What's Rome to me, what business 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?
Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow,
Like canting rascals, how the wars will go:
I neither will, nor can, prognosticate
To the young gaping heir, his father's fate;
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,
Maimed, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is loved, but he who loves the times,
Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes,
Labouring 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.
What confidents our wealthy Romans chose;
And whom I must abhor: to speak my mind,
I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find;
To see the scum of Greece transplanted here,
Received like gods, is what I cannot bear.
Nor Greeks alone, but Syrians here abound;
Obscene Orontes, diving under ground,
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 face.
Old Romulus, and father Mars, look down!
Your herdsman primitive, your homely clown,
Is turned a beau in a loose tawdry gown.
His once unkem'd and horrid locks, behold
'Stilling sweet oil; his neck enchained with gold;
Aping the foreigners in every 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 denizened, they domineer;
Grow to the great, a flattering, servile rout,
Work themselves inward, and their patrons out.
Quick-witted, brazen-faced, 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 conjurer, 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 heaven, to heaven he goes.
But in that town which arms and arts adorn.
Shall he be placed above me at the board,
In purple clothed, and lolling like a lord?
Shall he before me sign, whom t'other day
A small-craft vessel hither did convey,
Where, stowed with prunes, and rotten figs, he lay?
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 blubber-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 crows.
We can as grossly praise; but, to our grief,
No flattery 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,
Our ears and ravished eyes can only please;
The nation is composed of such as these.
All Greece is one comedian; laugh, and they
Return it louder than an ass can bray;
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 the unsweating brow, and swear they sweat.
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,
Prepared for some new piece of flattery.
Even nastiness occasions will afford;
They praise a belching, or well-pissing lord.
Besides, there's nothing sacred, nothing free
From bold attempts of their rank lechery.
Through the whole family their labours run;
The daughter is debauched, 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 worshipped there, and feared for what they know.
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,
Turned evidence, and murdered on his oath.
What room is left for Romans in a town
Where Grecians rule, and cloaks control the gown?
Look sharply out, our senators to seize;
Engross them wholly, by their native art,
And fear no rivals in their bubbles' heart:
And drop of poison in my patron's ear,
One slight suggestion of a senseless fear,
Infused with cunning, serves to ruin me;
Disgraced, and banished from the family.
In vain forgotten services I boast;
My long dependence in an hour is lost.
Look round the world, what country will appear,
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.
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.
Holy as Numa, or as Numa's wife,
Or him who bid the unhallowed flames retire,
And snatched the trembling goddess from the fire;
His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.
Swear by our gods, or those the Greeks adore,
Thou art as sure forsworn, as thou art poor:
The poor must gain their bread by perjury;
And e'en the gods, that other means deny,
In conscience must absolve them, when they lie.
And will be monstrous witty on the poor;
For the torn surtout and the tattered vest,
The wretch and all his wardrobe, are a jest;
The greasy gown, sullied with often turning,
Gives a good hint, to say,—‘The man's in mourning;’
Or, if the shoe be ripped, or patches put,—
‘He's wounded! see the plaister on his foot.’
Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,
And wit in rags is turned to ridicule.
‘Pack hence, and from the covered benches rise,’
(The master of the ceremonies cries,)
‘This is no place for you, whose small estate
Is not the value of the settled rate;
The sons of happy punks, the pander's heir,
Are privileged to sit in triumph there,
To clap the first, and rule the theatre.
Up to the galleries, for shame, retreat;
For, by the Roscian law, the poor can claim no seat.’—
The man that polled but twelve pence for his head?
Who ever named a poor man for his heir,
Or called him to assist the judging chair?
The poor were wise, who, by the rich oppressed,
Withdrew, and sought a sacred place of rest.
Once they did well, to free themselves from scorn;
But had done better, never to return.
Rarely they rise by virtue's aid, who lie
Plunged in the depth of helpless poverty.
At Rome 'tis worse, where house-rent by the year,
And servants' bellies, cost so devilish dear,
And tavern-bills run high for hungry cheer.
To drink or eat in earthenware we scorn,
Which cheaply country-cupboards does adorn,
And coarse blue hoods on holidays are worn.
Some distant parts of Italy are known,
Where none but only dead men wear a gown;
On theatres of turf, in homely state,
Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate;
The same rude song returns upon the crowd,
And, by tradition, is for wit allowed.
The mimic yearly gives the same delights;
And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights.
Are plain, alike; the same simplicity,
Both on the stage, and in the pit, you see.
In his white cloak the magistrate appears;
The country bumpkin the same livery wears.
But here attired beyond our purse we go,
For useless ornament and flaunting show;
We take on trust, in purple robes to shine,
And poor, are yet ambitious to be fine.
This is a common vice, though all things here
Are sold, and sold unconscionably dear.
What will you give that Cossus may but view
Your face, and in the crowd distinguish you;
May take your incense like a gracious God,
And answer only with a civil nod?
To please our patrons, in this vicious age,
We make our entrance by the favourite page;
Shave his first down, and when he polls his hair,
The consecrated locks to temples bear;
Pay tributary cracknels, which he sells,
And with our offerings help to raise his vails.
Or to be caught betwixt a riven wall?
But we inhabit a weak city here,
Which buttresses and props but scarcely bear;
And 'tis the village-mason's daily calling,
To keep the world's metropolis from falling,
To cleanse the gutters, and the chinks to close,
And, for one night, secure his lord's repose.
At Cumæ we can sleep quite round the year,
Nor falls, nor fires, nor nightly dangers fear;
While rolling flames from Roman turrets fly,
And the pale citizens for buckets cry.
Thy neighbour has removed his wretched store,
Few hands will rid the lumber of the poor;
Art drenched in fumes of undigested wine.
For if the lowest floors already burn,
Cock-lofts and garrets soon will take the turn,
Where thy tame pigeons next the tiles were bred,
Which, in their nests unsafe, are timely fled.
That his short wife's short legs hung dangling out;
His cupboard's head six earthen pitchers graced,
Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed;
And, to support this noble plate, there lay
A bending Chiron cast from honest clay;
His few Greek books a rotten chest contained,
Whose covers much of mouldiness complained;
Where mice and rats devoured poetic bread,
And with heroic verse luxuriously were fed.
'Tis true, poor Codrus nothing had to boast,
And yet poor Codrus all that nothing lost;
Begged naked through the streets of wealthy Rome,
And found not one to feed, or take him home.
The nobles change their clothes, the matrons mourn;
The city-prætor will no pleadings hear;
The very name of fire we hate and fear,
And look aghast, as if the Gauls were here.
While yet it burns, the officious nation flies,
Some to condole, and some to bring supplies.
One sends him marble to rebuild, and one
White naked statues of the Parian stone,
While others images for altars give;
One books and screens, and Pallas to the breast;
Another bags of gold, and he gives best.
Childless Arturius, vastly rich before,
Thus, by his losses, multiplies his store;
Suspected for accomplice to the fire,
That burnt his palace but to build it higher.
To the dear playhouse, and the players too,
Sweet country-seats are purchased everywhere,
With lands and gardens, at less price than here
You hire a darksome dog-hole by the year.
A small convenience decently prepared,
A shallow well, that rises in your yard,
That spreads his easy crystal streams around,
And waters all the pretty spot of ground.
There, love the fork, thy garden cultivate,
And give thy frugal friends a Pythagorean treat;
'Tis somewhat to be lord of some small ground,
In which a lizard may, at least, turn round.
Which fumes of undigested feasts deny,
And, with imperfect heat, in languid stomachs fry.
What house secure from noise the poor can keep,
When even the rich can scarce afford to sleep?
So dear it costs to purchase rest in Rome,
And hence the sources of diseases come.
The drover, who his fellow-drover meets
In narrow passages of winding streets;
The wagoners, that curse their standing teams,
Would wake even drowsy Drusus from his dreams.
But sweep above our heads, and make their way,
In lofty litters borne, and read and write,
Or sleep at ease, the shutters make it night;
Yet still he reaches first the public place.
The press before him stops the client's pace;
The crowd that follows crush his panting sides,
And trip his heels; he walks not, but he rides.
One elbows him, one jostles in the shole,
A rafter breaks his head, or chairman's pole;
Stockinged with loads of fat town-dirt he goes,
And some rogue-soldier, with his hobnailed shoes,
Indents his legs behind in bloody rows.
A hundred guests, invited, walk in state;
A hundred hungry slaves, with their Dutch kitchens, wait.
Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear,
Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear;
Yet they must walk upright beneath the load,
Nay run, and, running, blow the sparkling flames abroad.
Their coats, from botching newly brought, are torn.
Unwieldy timber-trees, in wagons borne,
Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie,
That nod, and threaten ruin from on high;
For, should their axle break, its overthrow
Would crush, and pound to dust, the crowd below;
Nor limbs, nor bones, nor carcase, would remain,
But a mashed heap, a hotchpotch of the slain;
One vast destruction; not the soul alone,
But bodies, like the soul, invisible are flown.
Meantime, unknowing of their fellow's fate,
The servants wash the platter, scour the plate,
Then blow the fire, with puffing cheeks, and lay
The rubbers, and the bathing-sheets display,
And oil them first; and each is handy in his way.
But he, for whom this busy care they take,
Poor ghost! is wandering by the Stygian lake;
Affrighted with the ferryman's grim face,
New to the horrors of that uncouth place,
His passage begs, with unregarded prayer,
And wants two farthings to discharge his fare.
And, first, behold our houses' dreadful height;
From whence come broken potsherds tumbling down,
And leaky ware from garret-windows thrown;
Well may they break our heads, that mark the flinty stone.
'Tis want of sense to sup abroad too late,
Unless thou first hast settled thy estate;
As many fates attend thy steps to meet,
As there are waking windows in the street.
Bless the good Gods, and think thy chance is rare,
To have a piss-pot only for thy share.
The scouring drunkard, if he does not fight
Before his bed-time, takes no rest that night;
Passing the tedious hours in greater pain
Than stern Achilles, when his friend was slain;
A bully cannot sleep without a brawl.
Yet, though his youthful blood be fired with wine,
He wants not wit the danger to decline;
Is cautious to avoid the coach and six,
And on the lacqueys will no quarrel fix.
His train of flambeaux, and embroidered coat,
May privilege my lord to walk secure on foot;
But me, who must by moonlight homeward bend,
Or lighted only with a candle's end,
Poor me he fights, if that be fighting, where
He only cudgels, and I only bear.
He stands, and bids me stand; I must abide,
For he's the stronger, and is drunk beside.
“And shred the leeks that in your stomach rise?
Whose windy beans have stuft your guts, and where
Have your black thumbs been dipt in vinegar?
With what companion-cobbler have you fed,
On old ox-cheeks, or he-goat's tougher head?
What, are you dumb? Quick, with your answer, quick,
Before my foot salutes you with a kick.
Say, in what nasty cellar, under ground,
Or what church-porch, your rogueship may be found?”—
Answer, or answer not, 'tis all the same,
He lays me on, and makes me bear the blame.
Before the bar for beating him you come;
This is a poor man's liberty in Rome.
You beg his pardon; happy to retreat
With some remaining teeth, to chew your meat.
To sleep securely, when the candles wink,
When every door with iron chains is barred,
And roaring taverns are no longer heard;
The ruffian robbers, by no justice awed,
And unpaid cut-throat soldiers, are abroad;
Those venal souls, who, hardened in each ill,
To save complaints and prosecution, kill.
Chased from their woods and bogs, the padders come
To this vast city, as their native home,
To live at ease, and safely skulk in Rome.
Our iron mines exhausted and destroyed
In shackles; for these villains scarce allow
Goads for the teams, and ploughshares for the plough.
Oh, happy ages of our ancestors,
Beneath the kings and tribunitial powers!
One jail did all their criminals restrain,
Which now the walls of Rome can scarce contain.
For my departure, but the sun is low;
The wagoner grows weary of my stay,
And whips his horses forwards on their way.
Farewell! and when, like me, o'erwhelmed with care,
You to your own Aquinum shall repair,
To take a mouthful of sweet country air,
Be mindful of your friend; and send me word,
What joys your fountains and cool shades afford.
Then, to assist your satires, I will come,
And add new venom when you write of Rome.
Cumæ, a small city in Campania, near Puteoli, or Puzzolo, as it is called. The habitation of the Cumæan Sybil.
Egeria, a nymph, or goddess, with whom Numa feigned to converse by night, and to be instructed by her in modelling his superstitions.
Lachesis is one of the three Destinies, whose office was to spin the life of every man; as it was of Clotho to hold the distaff, and Atropos to cut the thread.
In a prize of sword-players, 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.
Verres, prætor in Sicily, contemporary with Cicero, by whom, accused of oppressing the province, he was condemned: his name is used here for any rich vicious man.
Tagus, a famous river in Spain, which discharges itself into the ocean near Lisbon, in Portugal. It was held of old to be full of golden sands.
Romulus was the first King of Rome, and son of Mars, as the poets feign. The first Romans were herdsmen.
The meaning is, that men in some parts of Italy never wore a gown, the usual habit of the Romans, till they were buried in one.
Codrus, a learned man, very poor: by his books, supposed to be a poet; for, in all probability, the heroic verses here mentioned, which rats and mice devoured, were Homer's work.
Corbulo was a famous general, in Nero's time, who conquered Armenia, and was afterwards put to death by that tyrant, when he was in Greece, in reward of his great services. His stature was not only tall above the ordinary size, but he was also proportionably strong.
THE SIXTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
This Satire, of almost double length to any of the rest, is a bitter invective
against the fair sex. It is, indeed, a common-place,
from whence all the moderns have notoriously stolen their
sharpest railleries. In his other satires, the poet has only
glanced on some particular women, and generally scourged
the men; but this he reserved wholly for the ladies. How
they had offended him, I know not; but, upon the whole
matter, he is not to be excused for imputing to all the vices
of some few amongst them. Neither was it generously done
of him to attack the weakest, as well as the fairest, part of
the creation; neither do I know what moral he could reasonably
draw from it. It could not be to avoid the whole sex, if
all had been true which he alleges against them; for that
had been to put an end to humankind. And to bid us
beware of their artifices, is a kind of silent acknowledgment
that they have more wit than men; which turns the
satire upon us, and particularly upon the poet, who thereby
makes a compliment where he meant a libel. If he intended
only to exercise his wit, he has forfeited his judgment,
by making the one-half of his readers his mortal enemies;
and amongst the men, all the happy lovers, by their own
experience, will disprove his accusations. The whole world
must allow this to be the wittiest of his satires; and truly he
had need of all his parts to maintain with so much violence
so unjust a charge. I am satisfied he will bring but few
over to his opinion; and on that consideration chiefly
There was that thing called Chastity on earth;
When in a narrow cave, their common shade,
The sheep, the shepherds, and their gods were laid;
When reeds, and leaves, and hides of beasts, were spread,
By mountain-housewives, for their homely bed,
And mossy pillows raised, for the rude husband's head.
Unlike the niceness of our modern dames,
(Affected nymphs, with new-affected names,)
The Cynthias, and the Lesbias of our years,
Who for a sparrow's death dissolve in tears,
Those first unpolished matrons, big and bold,
Gave suck to infants of gigantic mould;
Rough as their savage lords, who ranged the wood,
And, fat with acorns, belched their windy food.
For when the world was buxom, fresh, and young,
Her sons were undebauched, and therefore strong;
And whether born in kindly beds of earth,
Or struggling from the teeming oaks to birth,
Or from what other atoms they begun,
No sires they had, or, if a sire, the sun.
Some thin remains of chastity appeared
Even under Jove, but Jove without a beard;
By heads of kings; while yet the bounteous year
Her common fruits in open plains exposed;
Ere thieves were feared, or gardens were inclosed.
At length uneasy Justice upwards flew,
And both the sisters to the stars withdrew;
From that old era whoring did begin,
So venerably ancient is the sin.
Adulterers next invade the nuptial state,
And marriage-beds creaked with a foreign weight;
All other ills did iron times adorn,
But whores and silver in one age were born.
Yet thou, they say, for marriage dost provide;
Is this an age to buckle with a bride?
They say thy hair the curling art is taught,
The wedding-ring perhaps already bought;
A sober man like thee to change his life!
What fury would possess thee with a wife?
Art thou of every other death bereft,
No knife, no ratsbane, no kind halter left?
(For every noose compared to hers is cheap.)
Is there no city-bridge from whence to leap?
Wouldst thou become her drudge, who dost enjoy
A better sort of bedfellow, thy boy?
He keeps thee not awake with nightly brawls,
Nor, with a begged reward, thy pleasure palls;
Nor, with insatiate heavings, calls for more,
When all thy spirits were drained out before.
But still Ursidius courts the marriage-bait,
Longs for a son to settle his estate,
And takes no gifts, though every gaping heir
Would gladly grease the rich old bachelor.
As such a lecher such a life to change?
A rank, notorious whoremaster, to choose
To thrust his neck into the marriage-noose?
He who so often, in a dreadful fright,
Had, in a coffer, 'scaped the jealous cuckold's sight;
That he, to wedlock dotingly betrayed,
Should hope, in this lewd town, to find a maid!—
The man's grown mad! to ease his frantic pain,
Run for the surgeon, breathe the middle vein;
But let a heifer, with gilt horns, be led
To Juno, regent of the marriage-bed;
And let him every deity adore,
If his new bride prove not an arrant whore,
In head, and tail, and every other pore.
On Ceres' feast, restrained from their delight,
Few matrons there, but curse the tedious night;
Few whom their fathers dare salute, such lust
Their kisses have, and come with such a gust.
With ivy now adorn thy doors, and wed;
Such is thy bride, and such thy genial bed.
Think'st thou one man is for one woman meant?
She sooner with one eye would be content.
In some small village, though fame says not where.
'Tis possible; but sure no man she found;
'Twas desert all about her father's ground.
And yet some lustful God might there make bold;
Are Jove and Mars grown impotent and old?
Many a fair nymph has in a cave been spread,
And much good love without a feather-bed.
The park, the mall, the playhouse, or the court?
Which way soever thy adventures fall,
Secure alike of chastity in all.
And raves, and pisses, with pure ecstasy;
Another does with all his motions move,
And gapes, and grins, as in the feat of love;
A third is charmed with the new opera notes,
Admires the song, but on the singer dotes.
The country lady in the box appears,
Softly she warbles over all she hears,
And sucks in passion both at eyes and ears.
The noisy hall and theatres grown dumb)
Their memories to refresh, and cheer their hearts,
In borrowed breeches, act the players' parts.
The poor, that scarce have wherewithal to eat,
Will pinch, to make the singing-boy a treat;
The rich, to buy him, will refuse no price,
And stretch his quail-pipe, till they crack his voice.
Tragedians, acting love, for lust are sought,
Though but the parrots of a poet's thought.
The pleading lawyer, though for counsel used,
In chamber-practice often is refused.
Still thou wilt have a wife, and father heirs,
The product of concurring theatres.
Perhaps a fencer did thy brows adorn,
And a young swordsman to thy lands is born.
And left him for a brother of the sword.
To wondering Pharos with her love she fled,
To show one monster more than Afric bred;
Even children too, she sails before the wind;
False to them all, but constant to her kind.
But, stranger yet, and harder to conceive,
She could the playhouse and the players leave.
Born of rich parentage, and nicely bred,
She lodged on down, and in a damask bed;
Yet daring now the dangers of the deep,
On a hard mattress is content to sleep.
Ere this, 'tis true, she did her fame expose;
But that great ladies with great ease can lose.
The tender nymph could the rude ocean bear,
So much her lust was stronger than her fear.
But had some honest cause her passage prest,
The smallest hardship had disturbed her breast.
Each inconvenience makes their virtue cold;
But womankind in ills is ever bold.
Were she to follow her own lord to sea,
What doubts and scruples would she raise to stay?
Her stomach sick, and her head giddy grows,
The tar and pitch are nauseous to her nose;
But in love's voyage nothing can offend,
Women are never sea-sick with a friend.
Amidst the crew she walks upon the board,
She eats, she drinks, she handles every cord;
And if she spews, 'tis thinking of her lord.
Now ask, for whom her friends and fame she lost?
What youth, what beauty, could the adulterer boast?
What was the face, for which she could sustain
To be called mistress to so base a man?
The gallant of his days had known the best;
Deep scars were seen indented on his breast,
And all his battered limbs required their needful rest;
Stood high upon the handle of his face:
His blear-eyes ran in gutters to his chin;
His beard was stubble, and his cheeks were thin.
But 'twas his fencing did her fancy move;
'Tis arms, and blood, and cruelty, they love.
But should he quit his trade, and sheathe his sword,
Her lover would begin to be her lord.
What fruits the sacred brows of monarchs bear:
The good old sluggard but began to snore,
When, from his side, up rose the imperial whore;
She, who preferred the pleasures of the night
To pomps, that are but impotent delight,
Strode from the palace, with an eager pace,
To cope with a more masculine embrace.
Muffled she marched, like Juno in a cloud,
Of all her train but one poor wench allowed;
One whom in secret service she could trust,
The rival and companion of her lust.
To the known brothel-house she takes her way,
And for a nasty room gives double pay;
That room in which the rankest harlot lay.
Prepared for fight, expectingly she lies,
With heaving breasts, and with desiring eyes.
Still as one drops, another takes his place,
And, baffled, still succeeds to like disgrace.
At length, when friendly darkness is expired,
And every strumpet from her cell retired,
She lags behind, and, lingering at the gate,
With a repining sigh submits to fate;
Tired with the toil, unsated with the sin.
Old Cæsar's bed the modest matron seeks,
The steam of lamps still hanging on her cheeks
In ropy smut; thus foul, and thus bedight,
She brings him back the product of the night.
With all their trumpery of charms beside,
And all their arts of death,—it would be known,
Lust is the smallest sin the sex can own.
Cæsinia still, they say, is guiltless found
Of every vice, by her own lord renowned;
And well she may, she brought ten thousand pound.
She brought him wherewithal to be called chaste;
His tongue is tied in golden fetters fast:
He sighs, adores, and courts her every hour;
Who would not do as much for such a dower?
She writes love-letters to the youth in grace,
Nay, tips the wink before the cuckold's face;
And might do more, her portion makes it good;
Wealth has the privilege of widowhood.
Who with his wife is monstrously in love:
But know him better; for I heard him swear,
'Tis not that she's his wife, but that she's fair.
Let her but have three wrinkles in her face,
Let her eyes lessen, and her skin unbrace,
Soon you will hear the saucy steward say—
“Pack up with all your trinkets, and away;
You grow offensive both at bed and board;
Your betters must be had to please my lord.”
And, knowing time is precious, loses none.
Than silk, and vineyards of the noblest wine;
Whole droves of pages for her train she craves,
And sweeps the prisons for attending slaves.
In short, whatever in her eyes can come,
Or others have abroad, she wants at home.
When winter shuts the seas, and fleecy snows
Make houses white, she to the merchant goes;
Rich crystals of the rock she takes up there,
Huge agate vases, and old china ware;
Then Berenice's ring her finger proves,
More precious made by her incestuous loves,
And infamously dear; a brother's bribe,
Even God's anointed, and of Judah's tribe;
Where barefoot they approach the sacred shrine,
And think it only sin to feed on swine.
In all this town? Suppose her free from strife,
Rich, fair, and fruitful, of unblemished life;
Chaste as the Sabines, whose prevailing charms,
Dismissed their husbands' and their brothers' arms;
Grant her, besides, of noble blood, that ran
In ancient veins, ere heraldry began;
Suppose all these, and take a poet's word,
A black swan is not half so rare a bird.
A wife, so hung with virtues, such a freight,
What mortal shoulders could support the weight!
Some country girl, scarce to a curtsey bred,
Would I much rather than Cornelia wed;
She brought her father's triumphs in her train.
Away with all your Carthaginian state;
Let vanquished Hannibal without-doors wait,
Too burly, and too big, to pass my narrow gate.
Against my wife, and let my children go!”
But sullen Pæan shoots at sons and mothers too.
His Niobe and all his boys he lost;
Even her, who did her numerous offspring boast,
As fair and fruitful as the sow that carried
The thirty pigs, at one large litter farrowed.
So great a price, if, stately and severe,
She still insults, and you must still adore?
Grant that the honey's much, the gall is more.
Upbraided with the virtues she displays,
Seven hours in twelve you loathe the wife you praise.
Some faults, though small, intolerable grow;
For what so nauseous and affected too,
As those that think they due perfection want,
Who have not learnt to lisp the Grecian cant?
In Greece, their whole accomplishments they seek:
Their fashion, breeding, language, must be Greek;
But, raw in all that does to Rome belong,
They scorn to cultivate their mother-tongue.
In Greek they flatter, all their fears they speak;
Tell all their secrets; nay, they scold in Greek:
Such affectations may become the young;
But thou, old hag, of threescore years and three,
Is showing of thy parts in Greek for thee?
Ζωη και ψυχη! All those tender words
The momentary trembling bliss affords;
The kind soft murmurs of the private sheets
Are bawdy, while thou speak'st in public streets.
Those words have fingers; and their force is such,
They raise the dead, and mount him with a touch.
But all provocatives from thee are vain;
No blandishment the slackened nerve can strain.
What reason should thy mind to marriage move?
Why all the charges of the nuptial feast,
Wine and desserts, and sweetmeats to digest?
The endowing gold that buys the dear delight,
Given for thy first and only happy night?
If thou art thus uxoriously inclined,
To bear thy bondage with a willing mind,
Prepare thy neck, and put it in the yoke;
But for no mercy from thy woman look.
For though, perhaps, she loves with equal fires,
To absolute dominion she aspires,
Joys in the spoils, and triumphs o'er thy purse;
The better husband makes the wife the worse.
Nothing is thine to give, or sell, or buy,
All offices of ancient friendship die,
Nor hast thou leave to make a legacy.
By thy imperious wife thou art bereft
A privilege, to pimps and panders left;
Thy testament's her will; where she prefers
Her ruffians, drudges, and adulterers,
Adopting all thy rivals for thy heirs.
Should the poor innocent be doomed to die?
What proofs? For, when man's life is in debate,
The judge can ne'er too long deliberate.”
“Call'st thou that slave a man?” the wife replies;
“Proved, or unproved the crime, the villain dies.
I have the sovereign power to save, or kill,
And give no other reason but my will.”
Her wild affections to new empires range;
Another subject-husband she desires;
Divorced from him, she to the first retires,
While the last wedding-feast is scarcely o'er,
And garlands hang yet green upon the door.
So still the reckoning rises; and appears
In total sum, eight husbands in five years.
The title for a tombstone might be fit,
But that it would too commonly be writ.
She sharpens her, instructs her how to flay
Her husband bare, and then divides the prey.
She takes love-letters, with a crafty smile,
And, in her daughter's answer, mends the style.
In vain the husband sets his watchful spies;
She cheats their cunning, or she bribes their eyes.
The doctor's called; the daughter, taught the trick,
Pretends to faint, and in full health is sick.
The panting stallion, at the closet door,
Hears the consult, and wishes it were o'er.
Canst thou, in reason, hope, a bawd so known,
Should teach her other manners than her own?
Her interest is in all the advice she gives
'Tis on the daughter's rents the mother lives.
But women plaintiffs or defendants are;
They form the process, all the briefs they write,
The topics furnish, and the pleas indict,
And teach the toothless lawyer how to bite.
They try, and smear the naked limbs with oil;
Against the post their wicker shields they crush,
Flourish the sword, and at the plastron push.
Of every exercise the mannish crew
Fulfils the parts, and oft excels us too;
Prepared not only in feigned fights to engage,
But rout the gladiators on the stage.
What sense of shame in such a breast can lie,
Inured to arms, and her own sex to fly?
Yet to be wholly man she would disclaim;
To quit her tenfold pleasure at the game,
For frothy praises and an empty name.
Oh what a decent sight 'tis to behold
All thy wife's magazine by auction sold!
The belt, the crested plume, the several suits
Of armour, and the Spanish leather boots!
Yet these are they, that cannot bear the heat
Of figured silks, and under sarcenet sweat.
Behold the strutting Amazonian whore,
She stands in guard with her right foot before;
Her coats tucked up, and all her motions just,
She stamps, and then cries,—“Hah!” at every thrust;
But laugh to see her, tired with many a bout,
Call for the pot, and like a man piss out.
The ghosts of ancient Romans, should they rise,
Would grin to see their daughters play a prize.
The curtain-lecture makes a mournful bed.
Then, when she has thee sure within the sheets,
Her cry begins, and the whole day repeats.
Thy servants are accused; thy whore is curst;
She acts the jealous, and at will she cries;
For women's tears are but the sweat of eyes.
Poor cuckold fool! thou think'st that love sincere,
And sucks between her lips the falling tear;
But search her cabinet, and thou shalt find
Each tiller there with love-epistles lined.
Suppose her taken in a close embrace,
This you would think so manifest a case,
No rhetoric could defend, no impudence outface;
And yet even then she cries, “The marriage-vow
A mental reservation must allow;
And there's a silent bargain still implied,
The parties should be pleased on either side,
And both may for their private needs provide.
Though men yourselves, and women us you call,
Yet homo is a common name for all.”
There's nothing bolder than a woman caught;
Guilt gives them courage to maintain their fault.
Once poor, and therefore chaste, in former times
Our matrons were; no luxury found room,
In low-roofed houses, and bare walls of loam;
Their hands with labour hardened while 'twas light,
And frugal sleep supplied the quiet night;
While pinched with want, their hunger held them straight,
When Hannibal was hovering at the gate:
But wanton now, and lolling at our ease,
We suffer all the inveterate ills of peace,
Revenge the vanquished world of our victorious arms.
No crime, no lustful postures are unknown,
Since Poverty, our guardian god, is gone;
Pride, laziness, and all luxurious arts,
Pour, like a deluge, in from foreign parts:
Since gold obscene, and silver found the way,
Strange fashions, with strange bullion, to convey,
And our plain simple manners to betray.
Wine no distinction makes of tail or head,
Who lewdly dancing at a midnight ball,
For hot eringoes and fat oysters call:
Full brimmers to their fuddled noses thrust,
Brimmers, the last provocatives of lust;
When vapours to their swimming brains advance,
And double tapers on the table dance.
What Tullia talks to her confiding slave,
At Modesty's old statue; when by night
They make a stand, and from their litters light;
The good man early to the levee goes,
And treads the nasty puddle of his spouse.
Are even by boys and barbers understood;
Where the rank matrons, dancing to the pipe,
Jig with their bums, and are for action ripe;
With music raised, they spread abroad their hair,
And toss their heads like an enamoured mare;
Laufella lays her garland by, and proves
The mimic lechery of manly loves.
For here not blood, but virtue, gives the prize.
Nothing is feigned in this venereal strife;
'Tis downright lust, and acted to the life.
So full, so fierce, so vigorous, and so strong,
That looking on would make old Nestor young.
Impatient of delay, a general sound,
An universal groan of lust goes round;
For then, and only then, the sex sincere is found.
“Now is the time for action; now begin,”
They cry, “and let the lusty lovers in.
The whoresons are asleep; then bring the slaves,
And watermen, a race of strong-backed knaves.”
From those pollutions of obscenity:
But 'tis well known what singer, how disguised,
A lewd audacious action enterprised;
Into the fair, with women mixed, he went,
Armed with a huge two-handed instrument;
A grateful present to those holy choirs,
Where the mouse, guilty of his sex, retires,
And even male pictures modestly are veiled:
Yet no profaneness in that age prevailed;
No scoffers at religious rites were found,
Though now at every altar they abound.
“Keep close your women under lock and key:”
But, who shall keep those keepers? Women, nurst
In craft; begin with those, and bribe them first.
The sex is turned all whore; they love the game,
And mistresses and maids are both the same.
Will borrow clothes and chair to see the play;
She, who before had mortgaged her estate,
And pawned the last remaining piece of plate.
Some are reduced their utmost shifts to try;
But women have no shame of poverty.
They live beyond their stint, as if their store,
The more exhausted, would increase the more:
Some men, instructed by the labouring ant,
Provide against the extremities of want;
But womankind, that never knows a mean,
Down to the dregs their sinking fortune drain:
Hourly they give, and spend, and waste, and wear,
And think no pleasure can be bought too dear.
To shun the scrubbing of a bearded kiss,
And 'scape abortion; but their solid joy
Is when the page, already past a boy,
Is caponed late, and to the gelder shown,
With his two-pounders to perfection grown;
When all the navel-string could give, appears;
All but the beard, and that's the barber's loss, not theirs.
Seen from afar, and famous for his ware,
He struts into the bath among the fair;
The admiring crew to their devotions fall,
And, kneeling, on their new Priapus call.
Kerved for his lady's use, with her he lies;
And let him drudge for her, if thou art wise,
Rather than trust him with thy favourite boy;
He proffers death, in proffering to enjoy.
Beyond his compass, till his quail-pipe's hoarse.
With knots they trim it, and with gems adorn;
Run over all the strings, and kiss the case,
And make love to it in the master's place.
To Janus vowed, and Vesta's deity,
That Pollio might, in singing, win the prize;
Pollio, the dear, the darling of her eyes:
She prayed, and bribed; what could she more have done
For a sick husband, or an only son?
With her face veiled, and heaving up her hands,
The shameless suppliant at the altar stands;
The forms of prayer she solemnly pursues,
And, pale with fear, the offered entrails views.
Answer, ye Powers; for, if you heard her vow,
Your Godships, sure, had little else to do.
An impudence unknown to heaven before.
The Aruspex, tired with this religious rout,
Is forced to stand so long, he gets the gout.
But suffer not thy wife abroad to roam:
If she loves singing, let her sing at home;
Not strut in streets with Amazonian pace,
For that's to cuckold thee before thy face.
They vent their own, and hear what others say;
Know what in Thrace, or what in France is done;
The intrigues betwixt the stepdame and the son;
Tell who loves who, what favours some partake,
And who is jilted for another's sake;
How oft she did, and, doing, what she said.
Knows whom it threatens, and what lands destroys;
Still for the newest news she lies in wait,
And takes reports just entering at the gate.
Wrecks, floods, and fires, whatever she can meet,
She spreads, and is the fame of every street.
A very judgment, and her neighbours' curse;
For, if their barking dog disturb her ease,
No prayer can bend her, no excuse appease.
The unmannered malefactor is arraigned;
But first the master, who the cur maintained,
Must feel the scourge. By night she leaves her bed,
By night her bathing equipage is led,
That marching armies a less noise create;
She moves in tumult, and she sweats in state.
Meanwhile, her guests their appetites must keep;
Some gape for hunger, and some gasp for sleep.
At length she comes, all flushed; but ere she sup,
Swallows a swinging preparation-cup,
And then, to clear her stomach, spews it up.
The deluge-vomit all the floor o'erflows,
And the sour savour nauseates every nose.
She drinks again, again she spews a lake;
Her wretched husband sees, and dares not speak;
But mutters many a curse against his wife,
And damns himself for choosing such a life.
The book-learned wife, in Greek and Latin bold;
The critic-dame, who at her table sits,
Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits,
And pities Dido's agonising fits.
The prating pedant puts not in one word;
The man of law is nonplussed in his suit,
Nay, every other female tongue is mute.
Hammers, and beating anvils, you would swear,
And Vulcan, with his whole militia, there.
Tabors and trumpets, cease; for she alone
Is able to redeem the labouring moon.
Even wit's a burthen, when it talks too long;
But she, who has no continence of tongue,
Should walk in breeches, and should wear a beard,
And mix among the philosophic herd.
O what a midnight curse has he, whose side
Is pestered with a mood and figure bride!
Let mine, ye Gods! (if such must be my fate,)
No logic learn, nor history translate,
But rather be a quiet, humble fool;
I hate a wife to whom I go to school,
Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle grows;
Corrects her country-neighbour; and, abed,
For breaking Priscian's breaks her husband's head.
In jewels drest, and at each ear a bob,
Goes flaunting out, and, in her trim of pride,
Thinks all she says or does is justified.
When poor, she's scarce a tolerable evil;
But rich, and fine, a wife's a very devil.
Meantime, it lies in daub, and hid in grease.
He takes fat kisses, and is stuck in glue.
But to the loved adulterer when she steers,
Fresh from the bath, in brightness she appears:
For him the rich Arabia sweats her gum,
And precious oils from distant Indies come,
How haggardly soe'er she looks at home.
The eclipse then vanishes, and all her face
Is opened, and restored to every grace;
The crust removed, her cheeks, as smooth as silk,
Are polished with a wash of asses' milk;
And should she to the furthest north be sent,
A train of these attend her banishment.
But hadst thou seen her plaistered up before,
'Twas so unlike a face, it seemed a sore.
They do, and how they pass their time away;
For, if o'ernight the husband has been slack,
Or counterfeited sleep, and turned his back,
Next day, be sure, the servants go to wrack.
The chambermaid and dresser are called whores,
The page is stripped, and beaten out of doors;
The whole house suffers for the master's crime,
And he himself is warned to wake another time.
Her visitors, and talks, but still she beats;
Beats while she paints her face, surveys her gown,
Casts up the day's account, and still beats on:
Tired out, at length, with an outrageous tone,
She bids them in the devil's name be gone.
Compared with such a proud, insulting dame,
Sicilian tyrants may renounce their name.
Or goes to Isis' church, (the bawdy house of prayer,)
She hurries all her handmaids to the task;
Her head, alone, will twenty dressers ask.
Psecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare,
Trembling, considers every sacred hair;
If any straggler from his rank be found,
A pinch must for the mortal sin compound.
Psecas is not in fault; but in the glass,
The dame's offended at her own ill face.
That maid is banished; and another girl,
More dexterous, manages the comb and curl.
The rest are summoned on a point so nice,
And, first, the grave old woman gives advice;
The next is called, and so the turn goes round,
As each for age, or wisdom, is renowned:
Such counsel, such deliberate care they take,
As if her life and honour lay at stake:
With curls on curls, they build her head before,
And mount it with a formidable tower.
A giantess she seems; but look behind,
And then she dwindles to the pigmy kind.
Duck-legged, short-waisted, such a dwarf she is,
That she must rise on tiptoes for a kiss.
Meanwhile, her husband's whole estate is spent!
He may go bare, while she receives his rent.
She minds him not; she lives not as a wife,
But, like a bawling neighbour, full of strife:
Near him in this alone, that she extends
Her hate to all his servants and his friends.
About the streets a mad procession lead;
O'erlooks the herd of his inferior fry.
His awkward clergymen about him prance,
And beat the timbrels to their mystic dance;
Guiltless of testicles, they tear their throats,
And squeak, in treble, their unmanly notes.
Meanwhile, his cheeks the mitred prophet swells,
And dire presages of the year foretells;
Unless with eggs (his priestly hire) they haste
To expiate, and avert the autumnal blast;
And add beside a murrey-coloured vest,
Which, in their places, may receive the pest,
And, thrown into the flood, their crimes may bear,
To purge the unlucky omens of the year.
The astonished matrons pay, before the rest;
That sex is still obnoxious to the priest.
If so the God has warned them in a dream.
Weak in their limbs, but in devotion strong,
On their bare hands and feet they crawl along
A whole field's length, the laughter of the throng.
Should Io (Io's priest, I mean) command
A pilgrimage to Meroe's burning sand,
Through deserts they would seek the secret spring,
And holy water for lustration bring.
How can they pay their priests too much respect,
Who trade with heaven, and earthly gains neglect?
With him domestic gods discourse by night;
By day, attended by his choir in white,
And smile to see with how much ease they cheat.
The ghostly sire forgives the wife's delights,
Who sins, through frailty, on forbidden nights,
And tempts her husband in the holy time,
When carnal pleasure is a mortal crime.
The sweating image shakes his head, but he,
With mumbled prayers, atones the deity.
The pious priesthood the fat goose receive,
And, they once bribed, the godhead must forgive.
A gipsy Jewess whispers in your ear,
And begs an alms; an high-priest's daughter she,
Versed in their Talmud, and divinity,
And prophesies beneath a shady tree.
Her goods a basket, and old hay her bed,
She strolls, and, telling fortunes, gains her bread:
Farthings, and some small moneys, are her fees;
Yet she interprets all your dreams for these,
Foretells the estate, when the rich uncle dies,
And sees a sweetheart in the sacrifice.
Such toys, a pigeon's entrails can disclose,
Which yet the Armenian augur far outgoes;
In dogs, a victim more obscene, he rakes;
And murdered infants for inspection takes:
For gain his impious practice he pursues;
For gain will his accomplices accuse.
What they foretell, is deemed the voice of heaven.
Their answers, as from Hammon's altars, come;
Since now the Delphian oracles are dumb,
Believes what fond astrologers relate.
Beyond seas, is returned from banishment;
His art who to aspiring Otho sold,
And sure succession to the crown foretold;
For his esteem is in his exile placed;
The more believed, the more he was disgraced.
No astrologic wizard honour gains,
Who has not oft been banished, or in chains.
He gets renown, who, to the halter near,
But narrowly escapes, and buys it dear.
When the black jaundice shall her mother kill;
Her sister's and her uncle's end would know,
But, first, consults his art, when you shall go;
And,—what's the greatest gift that heaven can give,—
If after her the adulterer shall live.
She neither knows, nor cares to know, the rest,
If Mars and Saturn shall the world infest;
Or Jove and Venus, with their friendly rays,
Will interpose, and bring us better days.
Who in these studies does herself delight,
By whom a greasy almanac is borne,
With often handling, like chafed amber worn:
Not now consulting, but consulted, she
Of the twelve houses, and their lords, is free.
She, if the scheme a fatal journey show,
Stays safe at home, but lets her husband go.
If but a mile she travel out of town,
The planetary hour must first be known,
Or itches, its decumbiture she takes;
No nourishment receives in her disease,
But what the stars and Ptolemy shall please.
The middle sort, who have not much to spare,
To chiromancers' cheaper art repair,
Who clap the pretty palm, to make the lines more fair.
But the rich matron, who has more to give,
Her answers from the Brachman will receive;
Skilled in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands,
And, with his compass, measures seas and lands.
To know their fortunes, equal to the rich.
The dairymaid inquires, if she shall take
The trusty tailor, and the cook forsake.
And without nurses their own infants rear:
You seldom hear of the rich mantle spread
For the babe, born in the great lady's bed.
Such is the power of herbs, such arts they use
To make them barren, or their fruit to lose.
But thou, whatever slops she will have bought,
Be thankful, and supply the deadly draught;
Help her to make manslaughter; let her bleed,
And never want for savin at her need.
For, if she holds till her nine months be run,
Thou may'st be father to an Ethiop's son;
By law is to inherit all thy lands;
One of that hue, that, should he cross the way,
His omen would discolour all the day.
At doors exposed, whom matrons make their own;
And into noble families advance
A nameless issue, the blind work of chance.
Indulgent fortune does her care employ,
And, smiling, broods upon the naked boy:
Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold,
And covers with her wings from nightly cold:
Gives him her blessing, puts him in a way,
Sets up the farce, and laughs at her own play.
Him she promotes; she favours him alone,
And makes provision for him as her own.
And philtres for the unable husband buys;
The potion works not on the part designed,
But turns his brains, and stupefies his mind.
The sotted moon-calf gapes, and, staring on,
Sees his own business by another done:
A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head, and yesterday is lost.
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and rave,
Like that Cæsonia to her Caius gave,
His mother's love, infused it in the bowl;
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his brains.
The Thunderer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the poisoning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom be forgot,
Given to a slavering, old, unuseful sot;
That only closed the driv'ling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies;
But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword,
Nor spares the commons, when it strikes the lord.
So many mischiefs were in one combined;
So much one single poisoner cost mankind.
'Tis venial trespass—let them have their will;
But let the child, intrusted to the care
Of his own mother, of her bread beware;
Beware the food she reaches with her hand,—
The morsel is intended for thy land.
Thy tutor be thy taster, thou eat;
There's poison in thy drink and in thy meat.
Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage;
Forgets his business is to laugh and bite,
And will of deaths and dire revenges write.
But Drymon's wife pleads guilty to the deed.
“I,” she confesses, “in the fact was caught,
Two sons despatching at one deadly draught.”
“What, two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!”
“Yes, seven,” she cries, “if seven were in my way.”
Medea's legend is no more a lie,
Our age adds credit to antiquity.
Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign,
And murders then were done, but not for gain.
Less admiration to great crimes is due,
Which they through wrath, or through revenge pursue;
For, weak of reason, impotent of will,
The sex is hurried headlong into ill;
And like a cliff, from its foundations torn
By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne.
But those are fiends, who crimes from thought begin,
And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin,
They read the example of a pious wife,
Redeeming, with her own, her husband's life;
Yet if the laws did that exchange afford,
Would save their lap-dog sooner than their lord.
And Clytemnestras grow in every street;
But here's the difference,—Agamemnon's wife
Was a gross butcher with a bloody knife;
And subtle poisons are employed alone;
Unless some antidote prevents their arts,
And lines with balsam all the nobler parts.
In such a case, reserved for such a need,
Rather than fail, the dagger does the deed.
The poet makes Justice and Chastity sisters; and says that they fled to heaven together, and left earth for ever.
His meaning is, that a wife who brings a large dowry may do what she pleases, and has all the privileges of a widow.
A ring of great price, which Herod Agrippa gave to his sister Berenice. He was King of the Jews, but tributary to the Romans.
Cornelia was mother to the Gracchi, of the family of the Cornelii, from whence Scipio the African was descended, who triumphed over Hannibal.
He alludes to the known fable of Niobe, in Ovid. Amphion was her husband. Pæan was Apollo; who with his arrows killed her children, because she boasted that she was more fruitful than Latona, Apollo's mother.
All the Romans, even the most inferior and most infamous sort of them, had the power of making wills.
He alludes to the story of P. Clodius, who, disguised in the habit of a singing woman, went into the house of Cæsar, where the feast of the Good Goddess was celebrated, to find an opportunity with Cæsar's wife, Pompeia.
A woman-grammarian, who corrects her husband for speaking false Latin, which is called “breaking Priscian's head.”
A garment was given to the priest, which he threw, or was supposed to throw, into the river; and that, they thought, bore all the sins of the people, which were drowned with it.
The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day, and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to another.
Juvenal's meaning is, help her to any kind of slops which may cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a black Moor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that bastard may, by law, inherit thy estate.
The Romans thought it ominous to see a black Moor in the morning, if he were the first man they met.
Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him, and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.
Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius by a former wife
The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estates. This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.
The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousins-german; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting Hypermnestra, who saved her husband Linus [Lynceus].
THE TENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
The Poet's design, in this divine Satire, is to represent the various wishes and desires of mankind, and to set out the folly of them. He runs through all the several heads, of riches, honours, eloquence, fame for martial achievements, long life, and beauty; and gives instances in each, how frequently they have proved the ruin of those that owned them. He concludes, therefore, that, since we generally choose so ill for ourselves, we should do better to leave it to the gods to make the choice for us. All we can safely ask of heaven lies within a very small compass—it is but health of body and mind; and if we have these, it is not much matter what we want besides; for we have already enough to make us happy.
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue.
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well designed, so luckily begun,
But when we have our wish, we wish undone?
Are often ruined at their own request.
When made obnoxious to our own desire.
Some, who the depths of eloquence have found,
In that unnavigable stream were drowned.
In that presuming confidence was lost;
But more have been by avarice opprest,
And heaps of money crowded in the chest:
Unwieldy sums of wealth, which higher mount
Than files of marshalled figures can account;
To which the stores of Crœsus, in the scale,
Would look like little dolphins, when they sail
In the vast shadow of the British whale.
When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime,
A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize
The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces:
The mob, commissioned by the government,
Are seldom to an empty garret sent.
The fearful passenger, who travels late,
Charged with the carriage of a paltry plate,
Shakes at the moonshine shadow of a rush,
And sees a red-coat rise from every bush;
The beggar sings, even when he sees the place
Beset with thieves, and never mends his pace.
Of each, is—to be richer than the rest:
And yet no doubts the poor man's draught control,
He dreads no poison in his homely bowl;
Enchase the cup, and sparkle in the wine.
Who the same end pursued by several ways?
One pitied, one contemned, the woful times;
One laughed at follies, one lamented crimes.
Laughter is easy; but the wonder lies,
What stores of brine supplied the weeper's eyes.
Democritus could feed his spleen, and shake
His sides and shoulders, till he felt them ache;
Though in his country town no lictors were,
Nor rods, nor axe, nor tribune, did appear;
Nor all the foppish gravity of show,
Which cunning magistrates on crowds bestow.
Our prætor seated in mock majesty;
His chariot rolling o'er the dusty place,
While, with dumb pride, and a set formal face,
He moves, in the dull ceremonial track,
With Jove's embroidered coat upon his back!
A suit of hangings had not more opprest
His shoulders, than that long laborious vest;
A heavy gewgaw, called a crown, that spread
About his temples, drowned his narrow head,
And would have crushed it with the massy freight,
But that a sweating slave sustained the weight;
A slave, in the same chariot seen to ride,
To mortify the mighty madman's pride.
Add now the imperial eagle, raised on high,
With golden beak, the mark of majesty;
Trumpets before, and on the left and right
A cavalcade of nobles, all in white;
In their own natures false and flattering tribes,
But made his friends by places and by bribes.
Sufficient cause to laugh at humankind:
With ditches fenced, a heaven fat with fogs,
May form a spirit fit to sway the State,
And make the neighbouring monarchs fear their fate.
At their vain triumphs, and their vainer tears:
An equal temper in his mind he found,
When fortune flattered him, and when she frowned.
'Tis plain, from hence, that what our vows request
Are hurtful things, or useless at the best.
Pursues, and hurries headlong to their fate:
Down go the titles; and the statue crowned,
Is by base hands in the next river drowned.
The guiltless horses, and the chariot wheel,
The same effects of vulgar fury feel:
The smith prepares his hammer for the stroke,
While the lung'd bellows hissing fire provoke.
Sejanus, almost first of Roman names,
The great Sejanus crackles in the flames:
Formed in the forge, the pliant brass is laid
On anvils; and of head and limbs are made,
Pans, cans, and piss-pots, a whole kitchen trade.
Milk white, and large, lead to the Capitol;
Sejanus with a rope is dragged along,
The sport and laughter of the giddy throng;
How foul a snout, and what a hanging face!
By heaven, I never could endure his sight!
But say, how came his monstrous crimes to light?
What is the charge, and who the evidence,
(The saviour of the nation and the prince?)”
“Nothing of this; but our old Cæsar sent
A noisy letter to his parliament.”
“Nay, sirs, if Cæsar writ, I ask no more;
He's guilty, and the question's out of door.”
How goes the mob? (for that's a mighty thing,)
When the king's trump, the mob are for the king;
They follow fortune, and the common cry
Is still against the rogue condemned to die.
Had cried “Sejanus,” with a shout as loud,
Had his designs (by fortune's favour blest)
Succeeded, and the prince's age opprest.
But long, long since, the times have changed their face,
The people grown degenerate and base;
Not suffered now the freedom of their choice
To make their magistrates, and sell their voice.
Had once the power and absolute command;
All offices of trust themselves disposed;
Raised whom they pleased, and whom they pleased deposed:
But we, who give our native rights away,
And our enslaved posterity betray,
Are now reduced to beg an alms, and go
On holidays to see a puppet-show.
For warrants are already issued out:
He's dipt for certain, and plays least in sight;
I fear the rage of our offended prince,
Who thinks the senate slack in his defence.
Come, let us haste, our loyal zeal to show,
And spurn the wretched corpse of Cæsar's foe:
But let our slaves be present there; lest they
Accuse their masters, and for gain betray.”
Such were the whispers of those jealous times,
About Sejanus' punishment and crimes.
To be, like him, first minister of State?
To have thy levees crowded with resort,
Of a depending, gaping, servile court;
Dispose all honours of the sword and gown,
Grace with a nod, and ruin with a frown;
To hold thy prince in pupilage, and sway
That monarch, whom the mastered world obey?
While he, intent on secret lusts alone,
Lives to himself, abandoning the throne;
Cooped in a narrow isle, observing dreams
With flattering wizards, and erecting schemes!
For every man's a fool to that degree:
All wish the dire prerogative to kill;
Even they would have the power, who want the will:
But wouldst thou have thy wishes understood,
To take the bad together with the good?
To be the mayor of some poor paltry town;
Bigly to look, and barbarously to speak;
To pound false weights, and scanty measures break?
Then, grant we that Sejanus went astray
In every wish, and knew not how to pray;
For he, who grasped the world's exhausted store,
Yet never had enough, but wished for more,
Raised a top-heavy tower, of monstrous height,
Which, mouldering, crushed him underneath the weight.
And ruined him, who, greater than the Great,
The stubborn pride of Roman nobles broke,
And bent their haughty necks beneath his yoke:
What else but his immoderate lust of power,
Prayers made and granted in a luckless hour?
For few usurpers to the shades descend
By a dry death, or with a quiet end.
To his proud pedant, or declined a noun,
(So small an elf, that, when the days are foul,
He and his satchel must be borne to school,)
Yet prays, and hopes, and aims at nothing less,
To prove a Tully, or Demosthenes:
But both those orators, so much renowned,
In their own depths of eloquence were drowned:
Who dealt in doggrel, or who punned in prose.
Till I, thy consul sole, consoled thy doom.”
His fate had crept below the lifted swords,
Had all his malice been to murder words.
I rather would be Mævius, thrash for rhymes
Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times,
Than that Philippic, fatally divine,
Which is inscribed the second, should be mine.
Nor he, the wonder of the Grecian throng,
Who drove them with the torrent of his tongue,
Who shook the theatres, and swayed the State
Of Athens, found a more propitious fate.
Whom, born beneath a boding horoscope,
His sire, the blear-eyed Vulcan of a shop,
From Mars his forge, sent to Minerva's schools,
To learn the unlucky art of wheedling fools.
All things beyond their native worth we strain;
The spoils of war, brought to Feretrian Jove,
An empty coat of armour hung above
The conqueror's chariot, and in triumph borne,
A streamer from a boarded galley torn,
A chapfallen beaver loosely hanging by
The cloven helm, an arch of victory;
On whose high convex sits a captive foe,
And, sighing, casts a mournful look below; —
Such toys as these have cheated into fame;
Exchanging solid quiet, to obtain
The windy satisfaction of the brain.
So many would be great, so few be good:
For who would Virtue for herself regard,
Or wed, without the portion of reward?
Yet this mad chase of fame, by few pursued,
Has drawn destruction on the multitude;
This avarice of praise in times to come,
Those long inscriptions crowded on the tomb;
Should some wild fig-tree take her native bent,
And heave below the gaudy monument,
Would crack the marble titles, and disperse
The characters of all the lying verse.
For sepulchres themselves must crumbling fall
In time's abyss, the common grave of all.
And tell how many pounds his ashes weigh;
Whom Afric was not able to contain,
Whose length runs level with the Atlantic main,
And wearies fruitful Nilus, to convey
His sun-beat waters by so long a way;
Which Ethiopia's double clime divides,
And elephants in other mountains hides.
Spain first he won, the Pyreneans past,
And steepy Alps, the mounds that nature cast;
And with corroding juices, as he went,
A passage through the living rocks he rent:
Then, like a torrent rolling from on high,
He pours his headlong rage on Italy,
In three victorious battles overrun;
Yet, still uneasy, cries,—“There's nothing done,
Till level with the ground their gates are laid,
And Punic flags on Roman towers displayed.”
His picture scarcely would deserve a frame:
A sign-post dauber would disdain to paint
The one-eyed hero on his elephant.
Now, what's his end, O charming Glory! say,
What rare fifth act to crown this huffing play?
In one deciding battle overcome,
He flies, is banished from his native home;
Begs refuge in a foreign court, and there
Attends, his mean petition to prefer;
Repulsed by surly grooms, who wait before
The sleeping tyrant's interdicted door.
Distinguished from the herd of humankind,
For so untamed, so turbulent a mind?
Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war;
But poison, drawn through a ring's hollow plate,
Must finish him—a sucking infant's fate.
Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
Cooped up, he seemed in earth and seas confined,
And, struggling, stretched his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out:
Yet entered in the brick-built town, he tried
The tomb, and found the strait dimensions wide.
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds,
The mighty soul how small a body holds.
Cut from the continent, and sailed about;
The channel, on a bridge from shore to shore:
Rivers, whose depth no sharp beholder sees,
Drunk at an army's dinner to the lees;
With a long legend of romantic things,
Which in his cups the boozy poet sings.
But how did he return, this haughty brave,
Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave?
(Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound,
And Eurus never such hard usage found
In his Æolian prison under ground;)
What god so mean, even he who points the way,
So merciless a tyrant to obey?
But how returned he, let us ask again?
In a poor skiff he passed the bloody main,
Choked with the slaughtered bodies of his train.
For fame he prayed, but let the event declare
He had no mighty penn'worth of his prayer:—
Heap on my bending back! I ask no more.”
Both sick and healthful, old and young, conspire
In this one silly mischievous desire.
Mistaken blessing, which old age they call!
'Tis a long, nasty, darksome hospital:
Deformed, unfeatured, and a skin of buff;
A stitch-fallen cheek, that hangs below the jaw;
Such wrinkles as a skilful hand would draw
For an old grandame ape, when, with a grace,
She sits at squat, and scrubs her leathern face.
No shape, or feature, just alike are found;
The fair, the black, the feeble, and the strong:
But the same foulness does to age belong,
The self-same palsy, both in limbs and tongue;
The skull and forehead one bald barren plain,
And gums unarmed to mumble meat in vain;
Besides, the eternal drivel, that supplies
The dropping beard, from nostrils, mouth, and eyes.
His wife and children loathe him, and, what's worse,
Himself does his offensive carrion curse!
Flatterers forsake him too; for who would kill
Himself, to be remembered in a will?
His taste not only palled to wine and meat,
But to the relish of a nobler treat.
The limber nerve, in vain provoked to rise,
Inglorious from the field of battle flies;
Poor feeble dotard! how could he advance
With his blue head-piece, and his broken lance?
Add, that, endeavouring still, without effect,
A lust more sordid justly we suspect.
The soul dislodging from another seat.
What music, or enchanting voice, can cheer
A stupid, old, impenetrable ear?
No matter in what place, or what degree
Of the full theatre he sits to see;
Cornets and trumpets cannot reach his ear;
Under an actor's nose he's never near.
The hour o' the day, or such a lord's at hand;
The little blood that creeps within his veins,
Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.
In fine, he wears no limb about him sound,
With sores and sicknesses beleaguered round.
Ask me their names, I sooner could relate
How many drudges on salt Hippia wait;
What crowds of patients the town doctor kills,
Or how, last fall, he raised the weekly bills;
What provinces by Basilus were spoiled;
What herds of heirs by guardians are beguiled;
How many bouts a-day that bitch has tried;
How many boys that pedagogue can ride;
What lands and lordships for their owner know
My quondam barber, but his worship now.
One his legs fail, and one his shoulder pains:
Another is of both his eyes bereft,
And envies who has one for aiming left;
A fifth, with trembling lips expecting stands
As in his childhood, crammed by others' hands;
One, who at sight of supper opened wide
His jaws before, and whetted grinders tried,
Now only yawns, and waits to be supplied;
Like a young swallow, when, with weary wings,
Expected food her fasting mother brings.
But all his faculties decayed, a worse.
His servants' names he has forgotten quite;
Knows not his friend who supped with him last night:
Not even the children he begot and bred;
Or his will knows them not; for, in their stead,
In form of law, a common hackney jade,
Sole heir, for secret services, is made:
That she defies all comers at her door.
Well, yet suppose his senses are his own,
He lives to be chief mourner for his son:
Before his face, his wife and brother burns;
He numbers all his kindred in their urns.
These are the fines he pays for living long,
And dragging tedious age in his own wrong;
Griefs always green, a household still in tears,
Sad pomps, a threshold thronged with daily biers,
And liveries of black for length of years.
Was longest lived of any two-legged thing.
Blest, to defraud the grave so long, to mount
His numbered years, and on his right hand count!
Three hundred seasons, guzzling must of wine!—
But hold a while, and hear himself repine
At fate's unequal laws, and at the clew
Which, merciless in length, the midmost sister drew.
When his brave son upon the funeral pyre
He saw extended, and his beard on fire,
He turned, and, weeping, asked his friends, what crime
Had cursed his age to this unhappy time?
And thus Ulysses' father did complain.
Among his ancestors a mighty shade,
While Troy yet stood; when Hector, with the race
Of royal bastards, might his funeral grace;
Amidst the tears of Trojan dames inurned,
And by his loyal daughters truly mourned!
Had heaven so blest him, he had died before
The fatal fleet to Sparta Paris bore:
But mark what age produced,—he lived to see
His town in flames, his falling monarchy.
In fine, the feeble sire, reduced by fate
To change his sceptre for a sword, too late,
His last effort before Jove's altar tries,
A soldier half, and half a sacrifice:
Falls like an ox that waits the coming blow,
Old and unprofitable to the plough.
To howl, and in a barking body lived.
Great Mithridates, and rich Crœsus' fate;
The name of happy, till he knew his end.
Was ta'en, in ruined Carthage begged his bread;
All these were owing to a life too long:
For whom had Rome beheld so happy, young?
High in his chariot, and with laurel crowned,
When he had led the Cimbrian captives round
The Roman streets, descending from his state,
In that blest hour he should have begged his fate;
Then, then, he might have died of all admired,
And his triumphant soul with shouts expired.
To Pompey an indulgent fever sent;
But public prayers imposed on heaven to give
Their much loved leader an unkind reprieve;
The city's fate and his conspired to save
The head reserved for an Egyptian slave.
And tortured, 'scaped this ignominious fate;
And Sergius, who a bad cause bravely tried,
All of a piece, and undiminished, died.
That all her sons and daughters may be fair:
True, for the boys a mumbling vow she sends,
But for the girls the vaulted temple rends:
Diana's beauty made Latona proud,
And pleased to see the wondering people pray
To the new-rising sister of the day.
And fair Virginia would her fate bestow
On Rutila, and change her faultless make
For the foul rumple of her camel back.
His parents have by day, what anxious nights!
Form joined with virtue is a sight too rare;
Chaste is no epithet to suit with fair.
Suppose the same traditionary strain
Of rigid manners in the house remain;
Inveterate truth, an old plain Sabine's heart;
Suppose that nature too has done her part,
Infused into his soul a sober grace,
And blushed a modest blood into his face,
(For nature is a better guardian far
Than saucy pedants, or dull tutors are;)
Yet still the youth must ne'er arrive at man,
(So much almighty bribes and presents can;)
Even with a parent, where persuasions fail,
Money is impudent, and will prevail.
Who gelt a boy deformed, to hear him sing;
Nor Nero, in his more luxurious rage,
E'er made a mistress of an ugly page:
With mountain back, and belly, from the game
Cross-barred; but both his sexes well became.
Go, boast your springald, by his beauty curst
To ills, nor think I have declared the worst;
His form procures him journey-work; a strife
Betwixt town-madams, and the merchant's wife:
Guess, when he undertakes this public war,
What furious beasts offended cuckolds are.
Born under Mars, they cannot 'scape the net;
And, from revengeful husbands, oft have tried
Worse handling than severest laws provide:
One stabs, one slashes, one, with cruel art,
Makes colon suffer for the peccant part.
Unrivalled, shall a beauteous dame enjoy.
Not so: one more salacious, rich, and old,
Outbids, and buys her pleasure for her gold:
Now, he must moil, and drudge, for one he loathes;
She keeps him high in equipage and clothes;
She pawns her jewels, and her rich attire,
And thinks the workman worthy of his hire.
In all things else immoral, stingy, mean,
But, in her lusts, a conscionable quean.
Good observator, not so fast away;
Did it not cost the modest youth his life,
Who shunned the embraces of his father's wife?
Who coldly did his patron's queen deny,
And pleaded laws of hospitality?
The ladies charged them home, and turned the tale;
With shame they reddened, and with spite grew pale.
'Tis dangerous to deny the longing dame;
She loses pity, who has lost her shame.
Wed Cæsar's wife, or die—the choice is nice.
Her comet-eyes she darts on every grace,
And takes a fatal liking to his face.
Adorned with bridal pomp, she sits in state;
The public notaries and aruspex wait;
The genial bed is in the garden dressed,
The portion paid, and every rite expressed,
Which in a Roman marriage is professed.
'Tis no stolen wedding this; rejecting awe,
She scorns to marry, but in form of law:
In this moot case, your judgment to refuse
Is present death, besides the night you lose:
If you consent, 'tis hardly worth your pain,
A day or two of anxious life you gain;
Till loud reports through all the town have past,
And reach the prince—for cuckolds hear the last.
For not to take is but the self-same thing;
Inevitable death before thee lies,
But looks more kindly through a lady's eyes.
Must we not wish, for fear of wishing ill?
Receive my counsel, and securely move;—
Intrust thy fortune to the powers above;
Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant
What their unerring wisdom sees thee want:
In goodness, as in greatness, they excel;
Ah, that we loved ourselves but half so well!
We, blindly by our headstrong passions led,
Are hot for action, and desire to wed;
Then wish for heirs; but to the gods alone
Our future offspring, and our wives, are known;
The audacious strumpet, and ungracious son.
That altars be not wholly built in vain,
Forgive the gods the rest, and stand confined
To health of body, and content of mind;
A soul, that can securely death defy,
And count it nature's privilege to die;
Serene and manly, hardened to sustain
The load of life, and exercised in pain;
Guiltless of hate, and proof against desire,
That all things weighs, and nothing can admire;
That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,
To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.
Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;
Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,
But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.
Milo, of Crotona; who, for a trial of his strength, going to rend an oak, perished in the attempt, for his arms were caught in the trunk of it, and he was devoured by wild beasts.
Sejanus was Tiberius's first favourite; and, while he continued so, had the highest marks of honour bestowed on him. Statues and triumphal chariots were everywhere erected to him. But, as soon as he fell into disgrace with the emperor, these were all immediately dismounted, and the senate and common people insulted over him as meanly as they had fawned on him before.
The island of Caprea, which lies about a league out at sea from the Campanian shore, was the scene of Tiberius's pleasures in the latter part of his reign. There he lived, for some years, with diviners, soothsayers, and worse company; and from thence despatched all his orders to the senate.
Demosthenes and Tully both died for their oratory: Demosthenes gave himself poison, to avoid being carried to Antipater, one of Alexander's captains, who had then made himself master of Athens. Tully was murdered by M. Antony's order, in return for those invectives he made against him.
The Latin of this couplet is a famous verse of Tully's, in which he sets out the happiness of his own consulship, famous for the vanity and the ill poetry of it; for Tully, as he had a good deal of the one, so he had no great share of the other.
The orations of Tully against M. Antony were styled by him “Philippics,” in imitation of Demosthenes, who had given that name before to those he made against Philip of Macedon.
Xerxes is represented in history after a very romantic manner: affecting fame beyond measure, and doing the most extravagant things to compass it. Mount Athos made a prodigious promontory in the Ægean Sea; he is said to have cut a channel through it, and to have sailed round it. He made a bridge of boats over the Hellespont, where it was three miles broad; and ordered a whipping for the winds and seas, because they had once crossed his designs; as we have a very solemn account of it in Herodotus. But, after all these vain boasts, he was shamefully beaten by Themistocles at Salamis; and returned home, leaving most of his fleet behind him.
Mercury, who was a god of the lowest size, and employed always in errands between heaven and hell, and mortals used him accordingly; for his statues were anciently placed where roads met, with directions on the fingers of them, pointing out the several ways to travellers.
Nestor, King of Pylus; who was three hundred years old, according to Homer's account; at least as he is understood by his expositors.
The ancients counted by their fingers; their left hands served them till they came up to an hundred; after that they used their right, to express all greater numbers.
The Fates were three sisters, who had all some peculiar business assigned them by the poets, in relation to the lives of men. The first held the distaff, the second spun the thread, and the third cut it.
Whilst Troy was sacking by the Greeks, old King Priam is said to have buckled on his armour to oppose them; which he had no sooner done, but he was met by Pyrrhus, and slain before the altar of Jupiter, in his own palace; as we have the story finely told in Virgil's second Æneid.
Hecuba, his queen, escaped the swords of the Grecians, and outlived him. It seems she behaved herself so fiercely and uneasily to her husband's murderers while she lived, that the poets thought fit to turn her into a bitch when she died.
Mithridates, after he had disputed the empire of the world for forty years together, with the Romans, was at last deprived of life and empire by Pompey the Great.
Crœsus, in the midst of his prosperity, making his boast to Solon how happy he was, received this answer from the wise man,—that no one could pronounce himself happy, till he saw what his end should be. The truth of this Crœsus found, when he was put in chains by Cyrus, and condemned to die.
Pompey, in the midst of his glory, fell into a dangerous fit of sickness, at Naples. A great many cities then made public supplications for him. He recovered; was beaten at Pharsalia; fled to Ptolemy, King of Egypt; and, instead of receiving protection at his court, had his head struck off by his order, to please Cæsar.
Virginia was killed by her own father, to prevent her being exposed to the lust of Appius Claudius, who had ill designs upon her. The story at large is in Livy's third book; and it is a remarkable one, as it gave occasion to the putting down the power of the Decemviri, of whom Appius was one.
Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, was loved by his mother-in-law, Phædra; but he not complying with her, she procured his death.
Bellerophon, the son of King Glaucus, residing some time at the court of Prœtus, king of the Argives, the queen, Sthenobæa, fell in love with him; but he refusing her, she turned the accusation upon him, and he narrowly escaped Prœtus's vengeance.
Messalina, wife to the Emperor Claudius, infamous for her lewdness. She set her eyes upon C. Silius, a fine youth; forced him to quit his own wife, and marry her, with all the formalities of a wedding, whilst Claudius Cæsar was sacrificing at Ostia. Upon his return, he put both Silius and her to death.
THE SIXTEENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
The Poet in this satire proves, that the condition of a soldier is much better than that of a countryman; first, because a countryman, however affronted, provoked, and struck himself, dares not strike a soldier, who is only to be judged by a court-martial; and, by the law of Camillus, which obliges him not to quarrel without the trenches, he is also assured to have a speedy hearing, and quick dispatch; whereas, the townsman, or peasant, is delayed in his suit by frivolous pretences, and not sure of justice when he is heard in the court. The soldier is also privileged to make a will, and to give away his estate, which he got in war, to whom he pleases, without consideration of parentage, or relations, which is denied to all other Romans. This satire was written by Juvenal when he was a commander in Egypt: it is certainly his, though I think it not finished. And, if it be well observed, you will find he intended an invective against a standing army.
Accruing to the mighty man of war!
For if into a lucky camp I light,
Though raw in arms, and yet afraid to fight,
Befriend me my good stars, and all goes right.
Than mother Juno's recommending letter,
Or Venus, when to Mars she would prefer
My suit, and own the kindness done to her.
As, first, no saucy citizen shall dare
To strike a soldier, nor, when struck, resent
The wrong, for fear of further punishment.
Not though his teeth are beaten out, his eyes
Hang by a string, in bumps his forehead rise,
Shall he presume to mention his disgrace,
Or beg amends for his demolished face.
A booted judge shall sit to try his cause,
Not by the statute, but by martial laws;
Which old Camillus ordered, to confine
The brawls of soldiers to the trench and line:
A wise provision; and from thence 'tis clear,
That officers a soldier's cause should hear;
And taking cognisance of wrongs received,
An honest man may hope to be relieved.
So far 'tis well; but with a general cry,
The regiment will rise in mutiny,
The freedom of their fellow-rogue demand,
And, if refused, will threaten to disband.
Withdraw thy action, and depart in peace,
The remedy is worse than the disease.
This cause is worthy him, who in the hall
Would for his fee, and for his client, bawl:
(Which, heaven be praised, thou yet may'st call thy own,)
Would'st thou to run the gauntlet these expose
To a whole company of hob-nailed shoes?
Sure the good-breeding of wise citizens
Should teach them more good-nature to their shins.
Who dares appear thy business to defend?
Dry up thy tears, and pocket up the abuse,
Nor put thy friend to make a bad excuse;
The judge cries out, “Your evidence produce.”
Will he, who saw the soldier's mutton-fist,
And saw thee mauled, appear within the list,
To witness truth? When I see one so brave,
The dead, think I, are risen from the grave;
And with their long spade beards, and matted hair,
Our honest ancestors are come to take the air.
Against a clown, with more security,
A witness may be brought to swear a lie,
Than, though his evidence be full and fair,
To vouch a truth against a man of war.
Which are a standing army's perquisites.
If any rogue vexatious suits advance
Against me for my known inheritance,
Enter by violence my fruitful grounds,
Or take the sacred land-mark from my bounds,
And offered cakes, have been my annual care;
Or if my debtors do not keep their day,
Deny their hands, and then refuse to pay;
I must with patience all the terms attend,
Among the common causes that depend,
Till mine is called; and that long-looked-for day
Is still encumbered with some new delay.
Perhaps the cloth of state is only spread,
Some of the quorum may be sick a-bed;
That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this
O'er night was boozy, and goes out to piss:
So many rubs appear, the time is gone
For hearing, and the tedious suit goes on;
But buff-and-beltmen never know these cares,
No time, nor trick of law, their action bars:
Their cause they to an easier issue put;
They will be heard, or they lug out, and cut.
Remains, beyond their boundless right to kill,
Their father yet alive, empowered to make a will.
For what their prowess gained, the law declares
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs:
No share of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the son fights well, and plunders better,
Does a remembrance in his will desire,
Inquisitive of fights, and longs in vain
To find him in the number of the slain:
But still he lives, and rising by the war,
Enjoys his gains, and has enough to spare.
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part
To cherish valour, and reward desert;
Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore;
Sometimes be lousy, but be never poor.
Camillus (who being first banished by his ungrateful countrymen the Romans, afterwards returned, and freed them from the Gauls) made a law, which prohibited the soldiers from quarrelling without the camp, lest upon that pretence they might happen to be absent when they ought to be on duty.
The poet names a Modenese lawyer, whom he calls Vagellius, who was so impudent, that he would plead any cause, right or wrong, without shame or fear.
The Roman soldiers wore plates of iron under their shoes, or stuck them with nails, as countrymen do now.
Landmarks were used by the Romans almost in the same manner as now; and as we go once a year in procession about the bounds of parishes, and renew them, so they offered cakes upon the stone, or landmark.
The courts of judicature were hung, and spread, as with us; but spread only before the hundred judges were to sit, and judge public causes, which were called by lot.
The Roman soldiers had the privilege of making a will, in their father's lifetime, of what they had purchased in the wars, as being no part of their patrimony. By this will, they had power of excluding their own parents, and giving the estate so gotten to whom they pleased: therefore, says the poet, Coranus (a soldier contemporary with Juvenal, who had raised his fortune by the wars) was courted by his own father, to make him his heir.
TRANSLATIONS FROM PERSIUS.
THE FIRST SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST SATIRE.
ARGUMENT OF THE PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST SATIRE.
The design of the author was to conceal his name and quality. He lived in the dangerous times of the tyrant Nero, and aims particularly at him in most of his Satires. For which reason, though he was a Roman knight, and of a plentiful fortune, he would appear in this Prologue but a beggarly poet, who writes for bread. After this, he breaks into the business of the First Satire; which is chiefly to decry the poetry then in fashion, and the impudence of those who were endeavouring to pass their stuff upon the world.
Nor taste the sacred Heliconian stream;
Nor can remember when my brain, inspired,
Was by the Muses into madness fired.
And claim no part in all the mighty Nine.
Statues, with winding ivy crowned, belong
To nobler poets, for a nobler song;
Heedless of verse, and hopeless of the crown,
Scarce half a wit, and more than half a clown,
Before the shrine I lay my rugged numbers down.
Who taught the parrot human notes to try,
Or with a voice endued the chattering pye?
'Twas witty Want, fierce hunger to appease;
Want taught their masters, and their masters these.
Let gain, that gilded bait, be hung on high,
The hungry witlings have it in their eye;
Pyes, crows, and daws, poetic presents bring;
You say they squeak, but they will swear they sing.
Parnassus and Helicon were hills consecrated to the Muses, and the supposed place of their abode. Parnassus was forked on the top; and from Helicon ran a stream, the spring of which was called the Muses' Well.
Before the shrine; that is, before the shrine of Apollo, in his temple at Rome, called the Palatine.
THE FIRST SATIRE.
IN DIALOGUE BETWIXT THE POET AND HIS FRIEND, OR MONITOR.
ARGUMENT.
I need not repeat, that the chief aim of the author is against bad poets in this Satire. But I must add, that he includes also bad orators, who began at that time (as Petronius in the beginning of his book tells us) to enervate manly eloquence by tropes and figures, ill placed, and worse applied. Amongst the poets, Persius covertly strikes at Nero, some of whose verses he recites with scorn and indignation. He also takes notice of the noblemen, and their abominable poetry, who, in the luxury of their fortunes, set up for wits and judges. The Satire is in dialogue betwixt the author and his friend, or monitor; who dissuades him from this dangerous attempt of exposing great men. But Persius, who is of a free spirit, and has not forgotten that Rome was once a commonwealth, breaks through all those difficulties, and boldly arraigns the false judgment of the age in which he lives. The reader may observe, that our poet was a Stoic philosopher; and that all his moral sentences, both here and in all the rest of his Satires, are drawn from the dogmas of that sect.
How anxious are our cares, and yet how vain
The bent of our desires!
Friend.
Thy spleen contain;
For none will read thy satires.
This to me?
Friend.
None, or, what's next to none, but two or three.
'Tis hard, I grant.
Persius.
'Tis nothing; I can bear,
That paltry scribblers have the public ear;
That this vast universal fool, the town,
Should cry up Labeo's stuff, and cry me down.
They damn themselves; nor will my muse descend
To clap with such, who fools and knaves commend:
Their smiles and censures are to me the same;
I care not what they praise, or what they blame.
In full assemblies let the crowd prevail;
I weigh no merit by the common scale.
The conscience is the test of every mind;
“Seek not thyself, without thyself, to find.”
But where's that Roman—Somewhat I would say,
But fear—let fear, for once, to truth give way.
Truth lends the Stoic courage; when I look
On human acts, and read in Nature's book,
From the first pastimes of our infant age,
To elder cares, and man's severer page;
When stern as tutors, and as uncles hard,
We lash the pupil, and defraud the ward,
Then, then I say—or would say, if I durst—
But, thus provoked, I must speak out, or burst.
Once more forbear.
Persius.
My scorn rebels, and tickles me within.
In lonely rooms, secured from public sight;
Whether in prose, or verse, 'tis all the same,
The prose is fustian, and the numbers lame:
All noise, and empty pomp, a storm of words,
Labouring with sound, that little sense affords.
They comb, and then they order every hair;
A gown, or white, or scoured to whiteness, wear,
A birthday jewel bobbing at their ear;
Next, gargle well their throats; and, thus prepared,
They mount, a-God's name, to be seen and heard;
From their high scaffold, with a trumpet cheek,
And ogling all their audience ere they speak.
The nauseous nobles, even the chief of Rome,
With gaping mouths to these rehearsals come,
And pant with pleasure, when some lusty line
The marrow pierces, and invades the chine;
At open fulsome bawdry they rejoice,
And slimy jests applaud with broken voice.
Base prostitute! thus dost thou gain thy bread?
Thus dost thou feed their ears, and thus art fed?
At his own filthy stuff he grins and brays,
And gives the sign where he expects their praise.
I choke the noble vigour of my mind?
Know, my wild fig-tree, which in rocks is bred,
Will split the quarry, and shoot out the head.
Fine fruits of learning! old ambitious fool,
Darest thou apply that adage of the school,
As if 'tis nothing worth that lies concealed,
And “science is not science till revealed”?
Oh, but 'tis brave to be admired, to see
The crowd, with pointing fingers, cry,—That's he;
That's he, whose wondrous poem is become
A lecture for the noble youth of Rome!
Who, by their fathers, is at feasts renowned,
And often quoted when the bowls go round.
Full gorged and flushed, they wantonly rehearse,
And add to wine the luxury of verse.
One, clad in purple, not to lose his time,
Eats and recites some lamentable rhyme,
Some senseless Phyllis, in a broken note,
Snuffling at nose, and croaking in his throat.
Then graciously the mellow audience nod;
Is not the immortal author made a god?
Are not his manes blest, such praise to have?
Lies not the turf more lightly on his grave?
And roses (while his loud applause they sing)
Stand ready from his sepulchre to spring?
Mere malice, and you drive the jest too far:
For does there breathe a man, who can reject
A general fame, and his own lines neglect?
That need not fish, or frankincense, to fear?
Be answered thus:—If I by chance succeed
In what I write (and that's a chance indeed),
Know, I am not so stupid, or so hard,
Not to feel praise, or fame's deserved reward;
But this I cannot grant, that thy applause
Is my work's ultimate, or only cause.
Prudence can ne'er propose so mean a prize;
For mark what vanity within it lies.
Like Labeo's Iliads, in whose verse is found
Nothing but trifling care, and empty sound;
Such little elegies as nobles write,
Who would be poets, in Apollo's spite.
Them and their woful works the Muse defies;
Products of citron beds, and golden canopies.
To give thee all thy due, thou hast the heart
To make a supper, with a fine dessert,
And to thy thread-bare friend a cast old suit impart.
(For I love truth, nor can plain speech offend,)
What says the world of me and of my muse?”
But shall I speak? Thy verse is wretched rhyme,
And all thy labours are but loss of time.
Thy strutting belly swells, thy paunch is high;
Thou writ'st not, but thou pissest poetry.
Hadst thou but, Janus-like, a face behind,
To see the people, what splay-mouths they make;
To mark their fingers, pointed at thy back;
Their tongues lolled out, a foot beyond the pitch,
When most athirst, of an Apulian bitch:
But noble scribblers are with flattery fed,
For none dare find their faults, who eat their bread.
To pass the poets of patrician blood,
What is't the common reader takes for good?
The verse in fashion is, when numbers flow,
Soft without sense, and without spirit slow;
So smooth and equal, that no sight can find
The rivet, where the polished piece was joined;
So even all, with such a steady view,
As if he shut one eye to level true.
Whether the vulgar vice his satire stings,
The people's riots, or the rage of kings,
The gentle poet is alike in all;
His reader hopes no rise, and fears no fall.
Friend.
Attempt to mount, and fights and heroes sing;
Who for false quantities was whipt at school
But t'other day, and breaking grammar-rule;
Whose trivial art was never tried above
The bare description of a native grove;
Who knows not how to praise the country store,
Nor paint the flowery fields that paint themselves before;
Where Romulus was bred, and Quintius born,
Whose shining plough-share was in furrows worn,
Met by his trembling wife returning home,
And rustically joyed, as chief of Rome:
She wiped the sweat from the Dictator's brow,
And o'er his back his robe did rudely throw;
The lictors bore in state their lord's triumphant plough.
And some on antiquated authors pore;
Rummage for sense, and think those only good
Who labour most, and least are understood.
When thou shalt see the blear-eyed fathers teach
Their sons this harsh and mouldy sort of speech,
Or others new affected ways to try,
Of wanton smoothness, female poetry;
One would inquire from whence this motley style
Did first our Roman purity defile.
For our old dotards cannot keep their seat,
But leap and catch at all that's obsolete.
When called before the bar, to save their head,
Bring trifling tropes, instead of solid sense,
And mind their figures more than their defence;
Well moved, oh finely said, and decently!
Theft (says the accuser) to thy charge I lay,
O Pedius: what does gentle Pedius say?
Studious to please the genius of the times,
With periods, points, and tropes, he slurs his crimes:
“He robbed not, but he borrowed from the poor,
“And took but with intention to restore.”
He lards with flourishes his long harangue;
'Tis fine, say'st thou;—what, to be praised, and hang?
Effeminate Roman, shall such stuff prevail
To tickle thee, and make thee wag thy tail?
Say, should a shipwrecked sailor sing his woe,
Wouldst thou be moved to pity, or bestow
An alms? What's more preposterous than to see
A merry beggar, mirth in misery?
Persius.
He seems a trap for charity to lay,
And cons, by night, his lesson for the day.
Friend.
But to raw numbers, and unfinished verse,
Sweet sound is added now, to make it terse:
“'Tis tagged with rhyme, like Berecynthian Atys,
The mid-part chimes with art, which never flat is.
Or he who in his line can chine the long-ribbed Apennine.”
Persius.
All this is doggrel stuff.
Friend.
What if I bring
A nobler verse? “Arms and the man I sing.”
Persius.
Why name you Virgil with such fops as these?
He's truly great, and must for ever please:
Not fierce, but awful, is his manly page;
Bold is his strength, but sober is his rage.
Friend.
What poems think you soft, and to be read
With languishing regards, and bending head?
Persius.
With blasts inspired; and Bassaris, who slew
The scornful calf, with sword advanced on high,
Made from his neck his haughty head to fly:
And Mænas, when with ivy bridles bound,
She led the spotted lynx, then Evion rung around;
Evion from woods and floods repairing echoes sound.”
Were any manly greatness left in Rome?
And never hatched within the labouring head;
No blood from bitten nails those poems drew,
But churned, like spittle, from the lips they flew.
Friend.
'Tis fustian all; 'tis execrably bad;
But if they will be fools, must you be mad?
Your satires, let me tell you, are too fierce;
The great will never bear so blunt a verse.
Their doors are barred against a bitter flout;
Snarl, if you please, but you shall snarl without.
Expect such pay as railing rhymes deserve;
You're in a very hopeful way to starve.
Persius.
All, all is admirably well, for me.
My harmless rhyme shall 'scape the dire disgrace
Of common-shores, and every pissing-place.
Two painted serpents shall on high appear;
'Tis holy ground; you must not urine here.
This shall be writ, to fright the fry away,
Who draw their little baubles when they play.
But lashed the city, and dissected crimes.
Mutius and Lupus both by name he brought;
He mouthed them, and betwixt his grinders caught.
Did crafty Horace his low numbers join;
And, with a sly insinuating grace,
Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face;
Would raise a blush where secret vice he found,
And tickle while he gently probed the wound,
With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled,
But made the desperate passes when he smiled.
By servile awe? Born free, and not be bold?
At least, I'll dig a hole within the ground,
And to the trusty earth commit the sound;
The reeds shall tell you what the poet fears,
“King Midas has a snout, and ass's ears.”
This mean conceit, this darling mystery,
Which thou think'st nothing, friend, thou shalt not buy;
Nor will I change for all the flashy wit,
That flattering Labeo in his Iliads writ.
Who dares, with angry Eupolis, to frown;
He who, with bold Cratinus, is inspired
With zeal, and equal indignation fired;
Who at enormous villainy turns pale,
And steers against it with a full-blown sail,
On this my honest work, though writ in homely style;
And if two lines or three in all the vein
Appear less drossy, read those lines again.
May they perform their author's just intent,
Glow in thy ears, and in thy breast ferment!
But from the reading of my book and me,
Be far, ye foes of virtuous poverty;
Who fortune's fault upon the poor can throw,
Point at the tattered coat, and ragged shoe;
Lay nature's failings to their charge, and jeer
The dim weak eye-sight, when the mind is clear;
When thou thyself, thus insolent in state,
Art but, perhaps, some country magistrate,
Whose power extends no further than to speak
Big on the bench, and scanty weights to break.
Who thinks all science, as all virtue, vain;
Who counts geometry, and numbers, toys,
And with his foot the sacred dust destroys;
Whose pleasure is to see a strumpet tear
A cynic's beard, and lug him by the hair.
Such all the morning to the pleadings run;
But when the business of the day is done,
On dice, and drink, and drabs, they spend their afternoon.
Nothing is remaining of Atticus Labeo (so he is called by the learned Casaubon); nor is he mentioned by any other poet besides Persius. Casaubon, from an old commentator on Persius, says that he made a very foolish translation of Homer's Iliads.
He describes a poet, preparing himself to rehearse his works in public, which was commonly performed in August. A room was hired, or lent, by some friend; a scaffold was raised, and a pulpit placed for him who was to hold forth; who borrowed a new gown, or scoured his old one, and adorned his ears with jewels, etc.
Trees of that kind grow wild in many parts of Italy, and make their way through rocks, sometimes splitting the tombstones.
The Romans wrote on cedar and cypress tables, in regard of the duration of the wood. Ill verses might justly be afraid of frankincense; for the papers in which they were written, were fit for nothing but to wrap it up.
Janus was the first king of Italy, who refuged Saturn when he was expelled, by his son Jupiter, from Crete (or, as we now call it, Candia). From his name the first month of the year is called January. He was pictured with two faces, one before and one behind—as regarding the past time and the future. Some of the mythologists think he was Noah, for the reason given above.
He speaks of the country in the foregoing verses; the praises of which are the most easy theme for poets, but which a bad poet cannot naturally describe: then he makes a digression to Romulus, the first king of Rome, who had a rustical education; and enlarges upon Quintius Cincinnatus, a Roman senator, who was called from the plough to be dictator of Rome.
Persius here names antitheses, or seeming contradictions; which, in this place, are meant for rhetorical flourishes, as I think, with Casaubon.
Foolish verses of Nero, which the poet repeats; and which cannot be translated properly into English.
Other verses of Nero, that were mere bombast. I only note, that the repetition of these and the former verses of Nero, might justly give the poet a caution to conceal his name.
Poems on the Mænades, who were priestesses of Bacchus; and of Atys, who made himself an eunuch to attend on the sacrifices of Cybele, called Berecynthia by the poets. She was mother of the gods.
Two snakes, twined with each other, were painted on the walls, by the ancients, to show the place was holy.
Lucilius wrote long before Horace, who imitates his manner of satire, but far excels him in the design.
The story is vulgar, that Midas, king of Phrygia, was made judge betwixt Apollo and Pan, who was the best musician: he gave the prize to Pan; and Apollo, in revenge, gave him ass's ears. He wore his hair long to hide them; but his barber discovering them, and not daring to divulge the secret, dug a hole in the ground, and whispered into it: the place was marshy; and, when the reeds grew up, they repeated the words which were spoken by the barber. By Midas, the poet meant Nero.
Eupolis and Cratinus, as also Aristophanes, mentioned afterwards, were all Athenian poets; who wrote that sort of comedy which was called the Old Comedy, where the people were named who were satirised by those authors.
The people of Rome, in the time of Persius, were apt to scorn the Grecian philosophers, particularly the Cynics and Stoics, who were the poorest of them.
Arithmetic and geometry were taught on floors, which were strewed with dust, or sand; in which the numbers and diagrams were made and drawn, which they might strike out at pleasure.
THE SECOND SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
DEDICATED TO HIS FRIEND PLOTIUS MACRINUS, ON HIS BIRTHDAY.
THE ARGUMENT.
This Satire contains a most grave and philosophical argument,
concerning prayers and wishes. Undoubtedly it gave occasion
to Juvenal's Tenth Satire; and both of them had their original
from one of Plato's dialogues, called the “Second Alcibiades.”
Our author has induced it with great mystery of
art, by taking his rise from the birthday of his friend; on
which occasions prayers were made, and sacrifices offered
by the native. Persius, commending, first, the purity of his
friend's vows, descends to the impious and immoral requests
of others. The satire is divided into three parts. The
first is the exordium to Macrinus, which the poet confines
within the compass of four verses: the second relates to the
matter of the prayers and vows, and an enumeration of
those things wherein men commonly sinned against right
reason and offended in their requests: the third part consists
in showing the repugnancies of those prayers and wishes to
those of other men, and inconsistencies with themselves. He
shows the original of these vows, and sharply inveighs against
them; and, lastly, not only corrects the false opinion of
With a white stone, distinguished from the rest,
White as thy fame, and as thy honour clear,
And let new joys attend on thy new added year.
Indulge thy genius, and o'erflow thy soul,
Till thy wit sparkle, like the cheerful bowl.
Pray; for thy prayers the test of heaven will bear,
Nor need'st thou take the gods aside to hear;
While others, even the mighty men of Rome,
Big swelled with mischief, to the temples come,
And in low murmurs, and with costly smoke,
Heaven's help to prosper their black vows, invoke:
So boldly to the gods mankind reveal
What from each other they, for shame, conceal.
“Give me good fame, ye powers, and make me just;”
Thus much the rogue to public ears will trust:
In private then,—“When wilt thou, mighty Jove,
My wealthy uncle from this world remove?”
Or, “O thou Thunderer's son, great Hercules,
That once thy bounteous deity would please
To guide my rake upon the chinking sound
Of some vast treasure, hidden under ground!
I should possess the estate if he were dead!
That one small dose would send him to the devil.
Of whom in happy time he rids his house;
But my eternal wife!—Grant, heaven, I may
Survive to see the fellow of his day!”
Thy wishes, thou art wickedly devout;
In Tiber ducking thrice, by break of day,
To wash the obscenities of night away.
But pr'ythee, tell me ('tis a small request),
With what ill thoughts of Jove art thou possest?
Wouldst thou prefer him to some man? Suppose
I dipped among the worst, and Staius chose?
Which of the two would thy wise head declare
The trustier tutor to an orphan heir?
Or, put it thus:—Unfold to Staius, straight,
What to Jove's ear thou didst impart of late:
He'll stare, and Oh, good Jupiter! will cry,
Canst thou indulge him in this villainy?
And think'st thou Jove himself with patience then
Can hear a prayer condemned by wicked men?
That, void of care, he lolls supine in state,
And leaves his business to be done by fate,
Because his thunder splits some burly tree,
And is not darted at thy house and thee;
Or that his vengeance falls not at the time,
Just at the perpetration of thy crime,
And makes thee a sad object of our eyes,
Fit for Ergenna's prayer and sacrifice?
What powerful present to procure a nod,
Hast thou in store? What bribe hast thou prepared,
To pull him, thus unpunished, by the beard?
The obscene old grandam, or the next of kin,
The new-born infant from the cradle takes,
And, first, of spittle a lustration makes;
Then in the spawl her middle-finger dips,
Anoints the temples, forehead, and the lips,
Pretending force of magic to prevent,
By virtue of her nasty excrement;
Then dandles him with many a muttered prayer,
That heaven would make him some rich miser's heir,
Lucky to ladies, and in time a king;
Which to ensure, she adds a length of navel-string.
But no fond nurse is fit to make a prayer,
And Jove, if Jove be wise, will never hear;
Not though she prays in white, with lifted hands.
A body made of brass the crone demands
For her loved nursling, strung with nerves of wire,
Tough to the last, and with no toil to tire;
Unconscionable vows, which when we use,
We teach the gods, in reason, to refuse.
Suppose they were indulgent to thy wish,
Yet the fat entrails in the spacious dish
And nauseous pomp, would hinder half the prayer.
Thou hop'st with sacrifice of oxen slain
To compass wealth, and bribe the god of gain
To give thee flocks and herds, with large increase;
Fool! to expect them from a bullock's grease!
And think'st that when the fattened flames aspire,
Thou seest the accomplishment of thy desire!
“Now, now, my bearded harvest gilds the plain,
The scanty folds can scarce my sheep contain,
And showers of gold come pouring in amain!”
Thus dreams the wretch, and vainly thus dreams on,
Till his lank purse declares his money gone.
Or gold as rich in workmanship as weight;
O how thy rising heart would throb and beat,
And thy left side, with trembling pleasure, sweat!
Thou measur'st by thyself the powers divine;
Thy gods are burnished gold, and silver is their shrine.
The puny godlings of inferior race,
Whose humble statues are content with brass,
Should some of these, in visions purged from phlegm,
Foretell events, or in a morning dream;
And, if not faces, give them beards of gold.
The priests in temples now no longer care
For Saturn's brass, or Numa's earthen ware;
Or vestal urns, in each religious rite;
This wicked gold has put them all to flight.
O souls, in whom no heavenly fire is found,
Fat minds, and ever grovelling on the ground!
We bring our manners to the blest abodes,
And think what pleases us must please the gods.
Of oil and cassia one the ingredients takes,
And, of the mixture, a rich ointment makes;
Another finds the way to dye in grain,
And makes Calabrian wool receive the Tyrian stain;
Or from the shells their orient treasure takes,
Or for their golden ore in rivers rakes,
Then melts the mass. All these are vanities,
Yet still some profit from their pains may rise:
What are the gods the better for this gold?
The wretch, that offers from his wealthy store
These presents, bribes the powers to give him more;
As maids to Venus offer baby-toys,
To bless the marriage-bed with girls and boys.
But let us for the gods a gift prepare,
Which the great man's great chargers cannot bear;
A soul, where laws, both human and divine,
In practice more than speculation shine;
A genuine virtue, of a vigorous kind,
Pure in the last recesses of the mind:
When with such offerings to the gods I come,
A cake, thus given, is worth a hecatomb.
The Romans were used to mark their fortunate days, or anything that luckily befell them, with a white stone, which they had from the island Creta, and their unfortunate with a coal.
The ancients thought themselves tainted and polluted by night itself, as well as bad dreams in the night; and therefore purified themselves by washing their heads and hands every morning, which custom the Turks observe to this day.
When any one was thunderstruck, the soothsayer (who is here called Ergenna) immediately repaired to the place, to expiate the displeasure of the gods, by sacrificing two sheep.
The poet laughs at the superstitious ceremonies which the old women made use of in their lustration, or purification days, when they named their children, which was done on the eighth day to females, and on the ninth to males.
It was the opinion both of Grecians and Romans, that the gods, in visions and dreams, often revealed to their favourites a cure for their diseases, and sometimes those of others. Thus Alexander dreamed of an herb which cured Ptolemy. These gods were principally Apollo and Esculapius; but, in aftertimes, the same virtue and goodwill was attributed to Isis and Osiris. Which brings to my remembrance an odd passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, or in his Vulgar Errors; the sense whereof is, that we are beholden, for many of our discoveries in physic, to the courteous revelation of spirits. By the expression of “visions purged from phlegm,” our author means such dreams or visions as proceed not from natural causes, or humours of the body, but such as are sent from heaven; and are, therefore, certain remedies.
Brazen vessels, in which the public treasures of the Romans were kept: it may be the poet means only old vessels, which were called Κρονια, from the Greek name of Saturn. Note also, that the Roman treasury was in the temple of Saturn.
Under Numa, the second king of Rome, and for a long time after him, the holy vessels for sacrifice were of earthenware; according to the superstitious rites which were introduced by the same Numa: though afterwards, when Memmius had taken Corinth, and Paulus Emilius had conquered Macedonia, luxury began amongst the Romans, and then their utensils of devotion were of gold and silver, etc.
The wool of Calabria was of the finest sort in Italy, as Juvenal also tells us. The Tyrian stain is the purple colour dyed at Tyrus; and I suppose, but dare not positively affirm, that the richest of that dye was nearest our crimson, and not scarlet, or that other colour more approaching to the blue. I have not room to justify my conjecture.
Those baby-toys were little babies, or poppets, as we call them; in Latin, pupæ: which the girls, when they came to the age of puberty, or child-bearing, offered to Venus; as the boys, at fifteen, offered their bullæ, or bosses.
A cake of barley, or coarse wheat-meal, with the bran in it: the meaning is, that God is pleased with the pure and spotless heart of the offerer, and not with the riches of the offering. Laberius, in the fragments of his Mimes, has a verse like this, “Puras Deus non plenas aspicit manus.”—What I had forgotten before, in its due place, I must here tell the reader, that the first half of this satire was translated by one of my sons, now in Italy; but I thought so well of it, that I let it pass without any alteration.
THE THIRD SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
THE ARGUMENT.
Our author has made two Satires concerning study, the first and the third: the first related to men; this to young students, whom he desired to be educated in the Stoic philosophy. He himself sustains the person of the master, or preceptor, in this admirable Satire, where he upbraids the youth of sloth, and negligence in learning. Yet he begins with one scholar reproaching his fellow-students with late rising to their books. After which, he takes upon him the other part of the teacher; and, addressing himself particularly to young noblemen, tells them, that, by reason of their high birth, and the great possessions of their fathers, they are careless of adorning their minds with precepts of moral philosophy: and withal inculcates to them the miseries which will attend them in the whole course of their life, if they do not apply themselves betimes to the knowledge of virtue, and the end of their creation, which he pathetically insinuates to them. The title of this satire, in some ancient manuscripts, was, “The Reproach of Idleness;” though in others of the scholiasts it is inscribed, “Against the Luxury and Vices of the Rich.” In both of which, the intention of the poet is pursued, but principally in the former.
(I remember I translated this satire when I was a king's scholar at Westminster School, for a Thursday-night's exercise; and believe that it, and many other of my exercises of this nature in English verse, are still in the hands of my learned master, the Rev. Dr. Busby.)
Breaks in at every chink; the cattle run
To shades, and noon-tide rays of summer shun;
As filled with fumes of undigested wine.
And loudly rings it in his fellow's ears.
The yawning youth, scarce half awake, essays
His lazy limbs and dozy head to raise;
Then rubs his gummy eyes, and scrubs his pate,
And cries, “I thought it had not been so late!
My clothes, make haste!”—why then, if none be near,
He mutters, first, and then begins to swear;
And brays aloud, with a more clamorous note,
Than an Arcadian ass can stretch his throat.
And parchment with the smoother side displayed,
He takes the papers; lays them down again,
And with unwilling fingers tries the pen.
Some peevish quarrel straight he strives to pick,
His quill writes double, or his ink's too thick;
Infuse more water,—now 'tis grown so thin,
It sinks, nor can the characters be seen.
Are mortals born to sleep their lives away?
Go back to what thy infancy began,
Thou, who wert never meant to be a man;
Eat pap and spoon-meat, for thy gewgaws cry;
Be sullen, and refuse the lullaby.
No more accuse thy pen; but charge the crime
On native sloth, and negligence of time.
Fool, 'tis thyself, and that's a worse deceit.
Beware the public laughter of the town;
Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown;
A flaw is in thy ill-baked vessel found;
'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound.
Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand:
Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel
The first sharp motions of the forming wheel.
By a just title; costly furniture;
A fuming pan thy Lares to appease:
What need of learning when a man's at ease?
If this be not enough to swell thy soul,
Then please thy pride, and search the herald's roll,
Where thou shalt find thy famous pedigree
Drawn from the root of some old Tuscan tree,
And thou, a thousand off, a fool of long degree;
Who, clad in purple, canst thy censor greet,
And loudly call him cousin in the street.
There boast thy horse's trappings, and thy own.
I know thee to thy bottom, from within
Thy shallow centre, to the utmost skin:
So trim, so dissolute, so loosely drest?
His soul is stupid, and his heart asleep;
Fattened in vice, so callous, and so gross,
He sins, and sees not, senseless of his loss.
Down goes the wretch at once, unskilled to swim,
Hopeless to bubble up, and reach the water's brim.
Thou send'st some heavy judgment on the times;
Some tyrant-king, the terror of his age,
The type, and true vicegerent of thy rage;
Thus punish him: set virtue in his sight,
With all her charms adorned, with all her graces bright;
But set her distant, make him pale to see
His gains outweighed by lost felicity!
Are emblems, rather than express the full
Of what he feels; yet what he fears is more:
The wretch, who, sitting at his plenteous board,
Looked up, and viewed on high the pointed sword
Hang o'er his head, and hanging by a twine,
Did with less dread, and more securely dine.
And, trembling, in his arms takes his accomplice wife;
Down, down he goes; and from his darling friend
Conceals the woes his guilty dreams portend.
Would blear my eyes with oil, to stay from school:
Averse from pains, and loth to learn the part
Of Cato, dying with a dauntless heart;
Though much my master that stern virtue praised,
Which o'er the vanquisher the vanquished raised;
And my pleased father came with pride to see
His boy defend the Roman liberty.
And dexterously to throw the lucky sice;
To shun ames-ace, that swept my stakes away,
And watch the box, for fear they should convey
False bones, and put upon me in the play;
Careful, besides, the whirling top to whip,
And drive her giddy, till she fell asleep.
What's good or ill, and both their ends discern:
Thou in the Stoic-porch, severely bred,
Hast heard the dogmas of great Zeno read;
Where on the walls, by Polygnotus' hand,
The conquered Medians in trunk-breeches stand;
Roused from their slumbers to be early wise;
Where the coarse cake, and homely husks of beans,
From pampering riot the young stomach weans;
And where the Samian Y directs thy steps to run
To Virtue's narrow steep, and broad-way Vice to shun.
And yet thou snor'st, thou draw'st thy drunken breath,
Sour with debauch, and sleep'st the sleep of death:
Thy chaps are fallen, and thy frame disjoined;
Thy body is dissolved as is thy mind.
To which thy life, thy every act, may tend?
Hast thou no mark, at which to bend thy bow?
Or, like a boy, pursuest the carrion crow
With pellets, and with stones, from tree to tree,
A fruitless toil, and livest extempore?
Watch the disease in time; for when within
The dropsy rages, and extends the skin,
In vain for hellebore the patient cries,
And fees the doctor, but too late is wise;
Too late, for cure he proffers half his wealth;
Conquest and Guibbons cannot give him health.
Learn, wretches, learn the motions of the mind,
Why you were made, for what you were designed,
And the great moral end of humankind.
Study thyself, what rank, or what degree,
The wise Creator has ordained for thee;
Perform, and with thy prudence guide thy fate.
Pray justly to be heard, nor more desire
Than what the decencies of life require.
Learn what thou owest thy country, and thy friend;
What's requisite to spare, and what to spend:
Learn this; and after, envy not the store
Of the greased advocate, that grinds the poor;
Fat fees from the defended Umbrian draws,
And only gains the wealthy client's cause;
To whom the Marsians more provision send,
Than he and all his family can spend.
Gammons, that give a relish to the taste,
And potted fowl, and fish come in so fast,
That ere the first is out, the second stinks,
And mouldy mother gathers on the brinks.
But here some captain of the land, or fleet,
Stout of his hands, but of a soldier's wit,
Cries, “I have sense to serve my turn in store,
And he's a rascal who pretends to more.
Damn me, whate'er those book-learned blockheads say,
Solon's the veriest fool in all the play.
Top-heavy drones, and always looking down,
(As over-ballasted within the crown,)
Muttering betwixt their lips some mystic thing,
Which, well examined, is flat conjuring;
Mere madmen's dreams; for what the schools have taught,
Is only this, that nothing can be brought
From nothing, and what is can ne'er be turned to nought.
And miss the pleasures of a glorious meal?
For this, in rags accoutred, are they seen,
And made the May-game of the public spleen?”
A story, which is just thy parallel:—
A spark, like thee, of the man-killing trade,
Fell sick, and thus to his physician said,—
“Methinks I am not right in every part;
I feel a kind of trembling at my heart,
My pulse unequal, and my breath is strong,
Besides a filthy fur upon my tongue.”
The doctor heard him, exercised his skill,
And after bade him for four days be still.
Three days he took good counsel, and began
To mend, and look like a recovering man;
The fourth he could not hold from drink, but sends
His boy to one of his old trusty friends,
Adjuring him, by all the powers divine,
To pity his distress, who could not dine
Without a flagon of his healing wine.
He drinks a swilling draught; and, lined within,
Will supple in the bath his outward skin:
Whom should he find but his physician there,
Who wisely bade him once again beware.
“Sir, you look wan, you hardly draw your breath;
Drinking is dangerous, and the bath is death.”
“'Tis nothing,” says the fool; “But,” says the friend,
“This nothing, sir, will bring you to your end.
Do I not see your dropsy belly swell?
Your yellow skin?”—“No more of that; I'm well.
I have already buried two or three
That stood betwixt a fair estate and me,
And, doctor, I may live to bury thee.
“I've done,” says the physician; “take your course.”
The laughing sot, like all unthinking men,
Bathes, and gets drunk; then bathes, and drinks again:
His throat half throttled with corrupted phlegm,
And breathing through his jaws a belching steam,
Amidst his cups with fainting shivering seized,
His limbs disjointed, and all o'er diseased,
His hand refuses to sustain the bowl,
And his teeth chatter, and his eye-balls roll,
Till with his meat he vomits out his soul.
Then trumpets, torches, and a tedious crew
Of hireling mourners, for his funeral due.
Our dear departed brother lies in state,
His heels stretched out, and pointing to the gate;
And slaves, now manumized, on their dead master wait.
They hoist him on the bier, and deal the dole,
And there's an end of a luxurious fool.
My body is from all diseases free;
My temperate pulse does regularly beat;
Feel, and be satisfied, my hands and feet:
These are not cold, nor those opprest with heat.
Or lay thy hand upon my naked heart,
And thou shalt find me hale in every part.”
Is in thy soul, 'tis there thou art not sound.
Say, when thou seest a heap of tempting gold,
Or a more tempting harlot dost behold;
Then try thy heart, and tell me if it dance.
Bread with the bran, perhaps, and broken meat;
Fall on, and try thy appetite to eat.
These are not dishes for thy dainty tooth:
What, hast thou got an ulcer in thy mouth?
Why stand'st thou picking? Is thy palate sore,
That beet and radishes will make thee roar?
Such is the unequal temper of thy mind,
Thy passions in extremes, and unconfined;
Thy hair so bristles with unmanly fears,
As fields of corn, that rise in bearded ears;
And when thy cheeks with flushing fury glow,
The rage of boiling caldrons is more slow,
When fed with fuel and with flames below.
With foam upon thy lips and sparkling eyes,
Thou say'st, and dost, in such outrageous wise,
That mad Orestes, if he saw the show,
Would swear thou wert the madder of the two.
The students used to write their notes on parchments; the inside, on which they wrote, was white; the other side was hairy, and commonly yellow. Quintilian reproves this custom, and advises rather table-books, lined with wax, and a style, like that we use in our vellum table-books, as more easy.
Before eating, it was customary to cut off some part of the meat, which was first put into a pan, or little dish, then into the fire, as an offering to the household gods: this they called a libation.
The Tuscans were accounted of most ancient nobility, Horace observes this in most of his compliments to Mæcenas, who was derived from the old kings of Tuscany; now the dominion of the Great Duke.
The Roman knights, attired in the robe called trabea, were summoned by the censor to appear before him, and to salute him in passing by, as their names were called over. They led their horses in their hands. See more of this in Pompey's Life, written by Plutarch.
Some of the Sicilian kings were so great tyrants, that the name is become proverbial. The brazen bull is a known story of Phalaris, one of those tyrants, who, when Perillus, a famous artist, had presented him with a bull of that metal hollowed within, which, when the condemned person was inclosed in it, would render the sound of a bull's roaring, caused the workman to make the first experiment—docuitque suum mugire juvencum.
He alludes to the story of Damocles, a flatterer of one of those Sicilian tyrants, namely Dionysius. Damocles had infinitely extolled the happiness of kings: Dionysius, to convince him of the contrary, invited him to a feast, and clothed him in purple; but caused a sword, with the point downward, to be hung over his head by a silken twine; which, when he perceived, he could eat nothing of the delicates that were set before him.
The Stoics taught their philosophy under a porticus, to secure their scholars from the weather. Zeno was the chief of that sect.
Polygnotus, a famous painter, who drew the pictures of the Medes and Persians conquered by Miltiades, Themistocles, and other Athenian captains, on the walls of the portico, in their natural habits.
Pythagoras, of Samos, made the allusion of the Y, or Greek upsilon, to Vice and Virtue. One side of the letter being broad, characters Vice, to which the ascent is wide and easy; the other side represents Virtue, to which the passage is strait and difficult; and perhaps our Saviour might also allude to this, in those noted words of the evangelist, “The way to heaven,” etc.
Casaubon here notes, that, among all the Romans who were brought up to learning, few, besides the orators or lawyers, grew rich.
Orestes was son to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, at his return from the Trojan wars, was slain by Ægysthus, the adulterer of Clytemnestra. Orestes, to revenge his father's death, slew both Ægysthus and his mother; for which he was punished with madness by the Eumenides, or Furies, who continually haunted him.
THE FOURTH SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
THE ARGUMENT.
Our author, living in the time of Nero, was contemporary and
friend to the noble poet Lucan. Both of them were sufficiently
sensible, with all good men, how unskilfully he managed the
commonwealth; and perhaps might guess at his future
tyranny by some passages during the latter part of his first
five years; though he broke not out into his great excesses,
while he was restrained by the counsels and authority of
Seneca. Lucan has not spared him in the poem of his
Pharsalia; for this very compliment looked asquint, as well
as at Nero.
Persius has been bolder, but with caution
likewise. For here, in the person of young Alcibiades, he
arraigns his ambition of meddling with state-affairs without
judgment, or experience. It is probable that he makes
Seneca, in this satire, sustain the part of Socrates, under a
borrowed name; and, withal, discovers some secret vices of
Nero, concerning his lust, his drunkenness, and his effeminacy,
which had not yet arrived to public notice. He also reprehends
the flattery of his courtiers, who endeavoured to
make all his vices pass for virtues. Covetousness was undoubtedly
none of his faults; but it is here described as a
The commentators before Casaubon were ignorant of our author's secret meaning; and thought he had only written against young noblemen in general, who were too forward in aspiring to public magistracy: but this excellent scholiast has unravelled the whole mystery, and made it apparent, that the sting of the satire was particularly aimed at Nero.
On State affairs, to guide the government;
Hear first what Socrates of old has said
To the loved youth, whom he at Athens bred.
Our second hope, my Alcibiades,
What are the grounds from whence thou dost prepare
To undertake, so young, so vast a care?
Perhaps thy wit; (a chance not often heard,
That parts and prudence should prevent the beard;)
Know when to speak, and when to hold their tongue.
Sure thou art born to some peculiar fate,
When the mad people rise against the State,
To look them into duty, and command
An awful silence with thy lifted hand;
Then to bespeak them thus:—‘Athenians, know
Against right reason all your counsels go;
This is not fair, nor profitable that,
Nor t'other question proper for debate.’
But thou, no doubt, canst set the business right,
And give each argument its proper weight;
Know'st, with an equal hand, to hold the scale;
Seest where the reasons pinch, and where they fail,
And where exceptions o'er the general rule prevail;
And, taught by inspiration, in a trice,
Canst punish crimes, and brand offending vice.
Nor be ambitious, e'er thy time, to please,
Unseasonably wise; till age and cares
Have formed thy soul to manage great affairs.
Thy face, thy shape, thy outside, are but vain;
Thou hast not strength such labours to sustain;
Drink hellebore, my boy; drink deep, and purge thy brain.
In what thy utmost good? Delicious fare;
And then, to sun thyself in open air.
A good old woman would have said as much.
But thou art nobly born: 'tis true; go boast
Thy pedigree, the thing thou valuest most:
Besides, thou art a beau; what's that, my child?
A fop, well drest, extravagant, and wild:
She that cries herbs, has less impertinence,
And in her calling more of common sense.
The secret imperfections of his mind;
But every one is eagle-eyed, to see
Another's faults, and his deformity.
Say, dost thou know Vectidius?” —“Who? the wretch
Whose lands beyond the Sabines largely stretch;
Cover the country, that a sailing kite
Can scarce o'erfly them in a day and night;
Him dost thou mean, who, spite of all his store,
Is ever craving, and will still be poor?
Who cheats for half-pence, and who doffs his coat,
To save a farthing in a ferry-boat?
Ever a glutton at another's cost,
But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost?
Who eats and drinks with his domestic slaves,
A verier hind than any of his knaves?
Born with the curse and anger of the gods,
And that indulgent genius he defrauds?
When he should thanks to Pan and Pales pay,
And better Ceres, trembling to approach
The little barrel, which he fears to broach;
He 'says the wimble, often draws it back,
And deals to thirsty servants but a smack.
To a short meal he makes a tedious grace,
Before the barley-pudding comes in place:
Then bids fall on; himself, for saving charges,
A peeled sliced onion eats, and tipples verjuice?”
Of lazy pleasures, tak'st a worse extreme.
'Tis all thy business, business how to shun;
To bask thy naked body in the sun;
Suppling thy stiffened joints with fragrant oil:
Then, in thy spacious garden walk awhile,
To suck the moisture up, and soak it in;
And this, thou think'st, but vainly think'st, unseen.
But know, thou art observed; and there are those,
Who, if they durst, would all thy secret sins expose;
The depilation of thy modest part;
Thy catamite, the darling of thy heart,
His engine-hand, and every lewder art,
When, prone to bear, and patient to receive,
Thou tak'st the pleasure which thou canst not give.
With odorous oil thy head and hair are sleek,
And then thou kemb'st the tuzzes on thy cheek;
While thy salt tail is overgrown with hair
Not all thy pincers, nor unmanly arts,
Can smooth the roughness of thy shameful parts.
Not five, the strongest that the Circus breeds,
From the rank soil can root those wicked weeds,
Though suppled first with soap, to ease thy pain;
The stubborn fern springs up, and sprouts again.
While they stab us, and so the jest goes round.
Vain are thy hopes, to 'scape censorious eyes;
Truth will appear through all the thin disguise:
Thou hast an ulcer which no leach can heal,
Though thy broad shoulder-belt the wound conceal.
Say thou art sound and hale in every part,
We know, we know thee rotten at thy heart.
We know thee sullen, impotent, and proud:
Nor canst thou cheat thy nerve, who cheat'st the crowd.”
When the pleased people take me for a god,
The loud applauses which the vulgar give?”
And greedily art gaping after gold;
If some alluring girl, in gliding by,
Shall tip the wink, with a lascivious eye,
And thou, with a consenting glance, reply;
If thou thy own solicitor become,
And bidst arise the lumpish pendulum;
If thy lewd lust provokes an empty storm,
And prompts to more than nature can perform;
If, with thy guards, thou scour'st the streets by night,
And dost in murders, rapes, and spoils delight;
Please not thyself, the flattering crowd to hear,
'Tis fulsome stuff to feed thy itching ear.
Reject the nauseous praises of the times;
Give thy base poets back their cobbled rhymes:
Survey thy soul, not what thou dost appear,
But what thou art, and find the beggar there.”
The compliment, at the opening of the Pharsalia, has been thought sarcastic. It certainly sounds so in modern ears: if Nero could only attain empire by civil war, as the gods by that of the giants, then says the poet,
Hac mercede placent —
Socrates, whom the oracle of Delphos praised as the wisest man of his age, lived in the time of the Peloponnesian war. He, finding the uncertainty of natural philosophy, applied himself wholly to the moral. He was master to Xenophon and Plato, and to many of the Athenian young noblemen; amongst the rest to Alcibiades, the most lovely youth then living; afterwards a famous captain, whose life is written by Plutarch.
Pericles was tutor, or rather overseer, of the will of Clinias, father to Alcibiades. While Pericles lived, who was a wise man, and an excellent orator, as well as a great general, the Athenians had the better of the war.
That is, by death. When the judges would condemn a malefactor, they cast their votes into an urn; as according to the modern custom, a balloting-box. If the suffrages were marked with Θ, they signified the sentence of death to the offender; as being the first letter of Θανατος, which, in English, is death.
The poet would say, that such an ignorant young man, as he here describes, is fitter to be governed himself than to govern others. He therefore advises him to drink hellebore, which purges the brain.
The name of Vectidius is here used appellatively, to signify any rich covetous man, though perhaps there might be a man of that name then living. I have translated this passage paraphrastically, and loosely; and leave it for those to look on, who are not unlike the picture.
Pan, the god of shepherds, and Pales, the goddess presiding over rural affairs; whom Virgil invocates in the beginning of his second Georgic. I give the epithet of better to Ceres, because she first taught the use of corn for bread, as the poets tell us; men, in the first rude ages, feeding only on acorns, or mast, instead of bread.
The learned Holyday (who has made us amends for his bad poetry in this and the rest of these satires, with his excellent illustrations), here tells us, from good authority, that the number five does not allude to the five fingers of one man, but to five strong men, such as were skilful in the five robust exercises then in practice at Rome, and were performed in the circus, or public place ordained for them. These five he reckons up in this manner: 1. The cæstus, or whirlbats, described by Virgil in his fifth Æneid; and this was the most dangerous of all the rest. The 2d was the foot-race. The 3d, the discus, like the throwing a weighty ball, a sport now used in Cornwall, and other parts of England; we may see it daily practised in Red-Lion Fields. The 4th was the saltus or leaping; and the 5th, wrestling naked and besmeared with oil. They who practised in these five manly exercises were called Πενταθλοι.
Persius durst not have been so bold with Nero as I dare now; and therefore there is only an intimation of that in him which I publicly speak; I mean, of Nero's walking the streets by night in disguise, and committing all sorts of outrages, for which he was sometimes well beaten.
Look into thyself, and examine thy own conscience; there thou shalt find that, how wealthy soever thou appearest to the world, yet thou art but a beggar; because thou art destitute of all virtues, which are the riches of the soul. This also was a paradox of the Stoic school.
THE FIFTH SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
THE ARGUMENT.
The judicious Casaubon, in his proem to this Satire, tells us that Aristophanes, the grammarian, being asked what poem of Archilochus' iambics he preferred before the rest, answered, the longest. His answer may justly be applied to the Fifth Satire; which, being of a greater length than any of the rest, is also by far the most instructive. For this reason I have selected it from all the others, and inscribed it to my learned master, Dr. Busby; to whom I am not only obliged myself for the best part of my own education, and that of my two sons; but have also received from him the first and truest taste of Persius. May he be pleased to find, in this translation, the gratitude, or at least some small acknowledgment, of his unworthy scholar, at the distance of forty-two years from the time when I departed from under his tuition.
This Satire consists of two distinct parts: the first contains the
praises of the Stoic philosopher, Cornutus, master and tutor
to our Persius; it also declares the love and piety of Persius
to his well-deserving master; and the mutual friendship
Of ancient use to poets it belongs,
To wish themselves an hundred mouths and tongues:
Whether to the well-lunged tragedian's rage
They recommend their labours of the stage,
Or sing the Parthian, when transfixed he lies,
Wrenching the Roman javelin from his thighs.
CORNUTUS.
And why would'st thou these mighty morsels choose,
Of words unchewed, and fit to choke the muse?
Let fustian poets with their stuff begone,
And suck the mists that hang o'er Helicon;
When Progne, or Thyestes' feast they write;
And, for the mouthing actor, verse indite.
Thou neither like a bellows swell'st thy face,
As if thou wert to blow the burning mass
Or murmur in an undistinguished note,
Like rolling thunder, till it breaks the cloud,
And rattling nonsense is discharged aloud.
Soft elocution does thy style renown,
And the sweet accents of the peaceful gown:
Gentle or sharp, according to thy choice,
To laugh at follies, or to lash at vice.
Hence draw thy theme, and to the stage permit
Raw-head and bloody-bones, and hands and feet,
Ragouts for Tereus or Thyestes drest;
'Tis task enough for thee t'expose a Roman feast.
PERSIUS.
In lofty trifles, or to swell my page
With wind and noise; but freely to impart,
As to a friend, the secrets of my heart,
And, in familiar speech, to let thee know
How much I love thee, and how much I owe
Knock on my heart; for thou hast skill to find
If it sound solid, or be filled with wind;
And, through the veil of words, thou view'st the naked mind.
To tell thee what an hundred tongues would tire,
Yet never could be worthily exprest,—
How deeply thou art seated in my breast.
When first my childish robe resigned the charge,
And left me, unconfined, to live at large;
To household gods) declared me past a boy,
And my white shield proclaimed my liberty;
When, with my wild companions, I could roll
From street to street, and sin without control;
Just at that age, when manhood set me free,
I then deposed myself, and left the reins to thee;
On thy wise bosom I reposed my head,
And by my better Socrates was bred.
Then thy straight rule set virtue in my sight,
The crooked line reforming by the right.
My reason took the bent of thy command,
Was formed and polished by thy skilful hand;
Long summer-days thy precepts I rehearse,
And winter-nights were short in our converse;
One was our labour, one was our repose,
One frugal supper did our studies close.
And, as our souls, our horoscope was one:
Whether the mounting Twins did heaven adorn,
Or with the rising Balance we were born;
Both have the same impressions from above,
And both have Saturn's rage, repelled by Jove.
Has given thee an ascendant o'er my mind.
CORNUTUS.
Nature is ever various in her frame;
Each has a different will, and few the same.
The greedy merchants, led by lucre, run
To the parched Indies, and the rising sun;
From thence hot pepper and rich drugs they bear,
Bartering for spices their Italian ware;
The lazy glutton safe at home will keep,
Indulge his sloth, and batten with his sleep:
One bribes for high preferments in the state;
A second shakes the box, and sits up late;
Another shakes the bed, dissolving there,
Till knots upon his gouty joints appear,
And chalk is in his crippled fingers found;
Rots, like a doddered oak, and piecemeal falls to ground;
Then his lewd follies he would late repent,
And his past years, that in a mist were spent.
PERSIUS.
But thou art pale in nightly studies grown,
To make the Stoic institutes thy own:
Thou long, with studious care, hast tilled our youth,
And sown our well-purged ears with wholesome truth.
The bounds of good and evil to discern.
CORNUTUS.
Unhappy he who does this work adjourn,
And to to-morrow would the search delay;
His lazy morrow will be like to-day.
PERSIUS.
But is one day of ease too much to borrow?
CORNUTUS.
That yesterday is gone, and nothing gained,
And all thy fruitless days will thus be drained;
For thou hast more to-morrows yet to ask,
And wilt be ever to begin thy task;
Who, like the hindmost chariot-wheels, art curst,
Still to be near, but ne'er to reach the first.
O freedom, first delight of humankind!
Not that which bondmen from their masters find,
The privilege of doles; nor yet to inscribe
Their names in this or t'other Roman tribe;
That false enfranchisement with ease is found,
Slaves are made citizens by turning round.
Here's Dama, once a groom of low degree,
Not worth a farthing, and a sot beside,
So true a rogue, for lying's sake he lied;
But, with a turn, a freeman he became,
Now Marcus Dama is his worship's name.
Good gods! who would refuse to lend a sum,
If wealthy Marcus surety will become!
Marcus is made a judge, and for a proof
Of certain truth, ‘He said it,’ is enough.
A will is to be proved;—put in your claim;—
'Tis clear, if Marcus has subscribed his name.
This is true liberty, as I believe;
What further can we from our caps receive,
Than as we please without control to live?
Not more to noble Brutus could belong.”
“Hold,” says the Stoic, “your assumption's wrong:
I grant true freedom you have well defined:
But, living as you list, and to your mind,
Are loosely tacked, and must be left behind.”
“What! since the prætor did my fetters loose,
And left me freely at my own dispose,
May I not live without control or awe,
Excepting still the letter of the law?”
From those fond notions of false liberty:
'Tis not the prætor's province to bestow
True freedom; nor to teach mankind to know
What to ourselves, or to our friends, we owe.
He could not set thee free from cares and strife,
Nor give the reins to a lewd vicious life:
As well he for an ass a harp might string,
Which is against the reason of the thing;
For reason still is whispering in your ear,
Where you are sure to fail, the attempt forbear.
No need of public sanctions this to bind,
Which nature has implanted in the mind,—
Not to pursue the work, to which we're not designed.
Unskilled in hellebore, if thou should'st try
To mix it, and mistake the quantity,
The rules of physic would against thee cry.
The high-shoed ploughman, should he quit the land,
To take the pilot's rudder in his hand,
Artless of stars, and of the moving sand,
The gods would leave him to the waves and wind,
And think all shame was lost in humankind.
Tell me, my friend, from whence hadst thou the skill,
So nicely to distinguish good from ill?
Or by the sound to judge of gold and brass,
What piece is tinkers' metal, what will pass?
And what thou art to follow, what to fly,
This to condemn, and that to ratify?
When to be bountiful, and when to spare,
But never craving, or oppressed with care?
The baits of gifts, and money to despise,
And look on wealth with undesiring eyes?
When thou canst truly call these virtues thine,
Be wise and free, by heaven's consent and mine.
Wert one of us, if still thou dost retain
The same ill habits, the same follies too,
Glossed over only with a saint-like show,
Then I resume the freedom which I gave;
Still thou art bound to vice, and still a slave.
Thou canst not wag thy finger, or begin
The least light motion, but it tends to sin.”
“No, friend; nor fuming gums, nor sacrifice,
Can ever make a madman free, or wise.
‘Virtue and vice are never in one soul;
A man is wholly wise, or wholly is a fool.’
A heavy bumpkin, taught with daily care,
Can never dance three steps with a becoming air.”
PERSIUS.
In spite of this, my freedom still remains.
CORNUTUS.
Canst thou no other master understand
Than him that freed thee by the prætor's wand?
Should he, who was thy lord, command thee now,
With a harsh voice, and supercilious brow,
The gallows and the whip are out of door.
But if thy passions lord it in thy breast,
Art thou not still a slave, and still opprest?
Whether alone, or in thy harlot's lap,
When thou wouldst take a lazy morning's nap,
“Up, up,” says Avarice;—thou snor'st again,
Stretchest thy limbs, and yawn'st, but all in vain;
The tyrant Lucre no denial takes;
At his command the unwilling sluggard wakes.
“What must I do?” he cries.—“What?” says his lord;
“Why rise, make ready, and go straight aboard;
With fish, from Euxine seas, thy vessel freight;
Flax, castor, Coan wines, the precious weight
Of pepper, and Sabæan incense, take,
With thy own hands, from the tired camel's back,
And with post haste thy running markets make.
Be sure to turn the penny; lie and swear,
'Tis wholesome sin.”—“But Jove,” thou say'st, “will hear.”—
“Swear, fool, or starve; for the dilemma's even:
A tradesman thou, and hope to go to heaven!”
Each saddled with his burden on his back:
Nothing retards thy voyage now, unless
Thy other lord forbids, Voluptuousness:
And he may ask this civil question,—“Friend,
What dost thou make a-shipboard? to what end?
Art thou of Bethlem's noble college free,
Stark, staring mad, that thou wouldst tempt the sea?
Cubbed in a cabin, on a mattress laid,
On a brown george with lousy swobbers fed,
From a foul jack, or greasy maple-cup?
Say, wouldst thou bear all this, to raise thy store
From six i' the hundred, to six hundred more?
Indulge, and to thy genius freely give;
For, not to live at ease, is not to live;
Death stalks behind thee, and each flying hour
Does some loose remnant of thy life devour.
Live while thou liv'st; for death will make us all
A name, a nothing but an old wife's tale.”
To be thy lord? Take one, and one refuse.
But both by turns the rule of thee will have,
And thou betwixt them both wilt be a slave.
That all thy marks of servitude are gone:
The struggling greyhound gnaws his leash in vain,
If, when 'tis broken, still he drags the chain.
To this uneasy love I'll put an end.”
“Shall I run out of all, my friends disgrace,
And be the first lewd unthrift of my race?
Shall I the neighbour's nightly rest invade
At her deaf doors, with some vile serenade?”
“Go, thank the gods, and offer sacrifice.”
“Ah,” says the youth, “if we unkindly part,
Will not the poor fond creature break her heart?”
“Weak soul! and blindly to destruction led!
She break her heart! she'll sooner break your head.
She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.”
“But shall I not return? Now, when she sues!
Shall I my own and her desires refuse?”
“Sir, take your course; but my advice is plain:
Once freed, 'tis madness to resume your chain.”
Less to the prætor owes than to himself.
But write him down a slave, who, humbly proud,
With presents begs preferments from the crowd;
That early suppliant, who salutes the tribes,
And sets the mob to scramble for his bribes,
That some old dotard, sitting in the sun,
On holidays may tell, that such a feat was done:
In future times this will be counted rare.
When flowers are strewed, and lamps in order placed,
And windows with illuminations graced,
And tunny's tails in savoury sauce are drowned,
Thou mutter'st prayers obscene; nor dost refuse
The fasts and Sabbaths of the curtailed Jews.
Then a cracked egg-shell thy sick fancy frights,
Besides the childish fear of walking sprites.
Of o'ergrown gelding priests thou art afraid;
The timbrel, and the squintifego maid
Of Isis, awe thee; lest the gods for sin,
Should with a swelling dropsy stuff thy skin:
Unless three garlic heads the curse avert,
Eaten each morn devoutly next thy heart.
“And see if they thy doctrine will allow:”
The dull, fat captain, with a hound's deep throat,
Would bellow out a laugh in a bass note,
And prize a hundred Zenos just as much
As a clipt sixpence, or a schilling Dutch.
Progne was wife to Tereus, king of Thracia. Tereus fell in love with Philomela, sister to Progne, ravished her, and cut out her tongue; in revenge of which, Progne killed Itys, her own son by Tereus, and served him up at a feast, to be eaten by his father.
Thyestes and Atreus were brothers, both kings. Atreus, to revenge himself of his unnatural brother, killed the sons of Thyestes, and invited him to eat them.
By the childish robe is meant the Prœtexta, or first gowns which the Roman children of quality wore. These were welted with purple; and on those welts were fastened the bullæ, or little bells; which, when they came to the age of puberty, were hung up, and consecrated to the Lares, or household gods.
The first shields which the Roman youths wore were white, and without any impress or device on them, to show they had yet achieved nothing in the wars.
Socrates, by the oracle, was declared to be the wisest of mankind: he instructed many of the Athenian young noblemen in morality, and amongst the rest Alcibiades.
Astrologers divide the heaven into twelve parts, according to the number of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The sign, or constellation, which rises in the east at the birth of any man, is called the Ascendant: Persius therefore judges that Cornutus and he had the same or a like nativity.
Astrologers have an axiom, that whatsoever Saturn ties is loosed by Jupiter. They account Saturn to be a planet of a malevolent nature, and Jupiter of a propitious influence.
Zeno was the great master of the Stoic philosophy; and Cleanthes was second to him in reputation. Cornutus, who was master or tutor to Persius, was of the same school.
When a slave was made free, he had the privilege of a Roman born; which was to have a share in the donatives, or doles of bread, etc., which were distributed by the magistrates among the people.
The Roman people was distributed into several tribes. He who was made free was enrolled into some one of them; and thereupon enjoyed the common privileges of a Roman citizen.
The master who intended to enfranchise a slave carried him before the city prætor, and turned him round, using these words, “I will that this man be free.”
Slaves had only one name before their freedom; after it they were admitted to a prænomen like our christened names: so Dama is now called Marcus Dama.
At the proof of a testament, the magistrates were to subscribe their names, as allowing the legality of the will.
Brutus freed the Roman people from the tyranny of the Tarquins, and changed the form of the government into a glorious commonwealth.
The text of the Roman laws was written in red letters, which was called the Rubric; translated here, in more general words, “The letter of the law.”
The Stoics held this paradox, that any one vice, or notorious folly, which they called madness, hindered a man from being virtuous; that a man was of a piece, without a mixture, either wholly vicious, or good; one virtue or vice, according to them, including all the rest.
The prætor held a wand in his hand, with which he softly struck the slave on the head, when he declared him free.
This alludes to the play of Terence, called “The Eunuch;” which was excellently imitated of late in English, by Sir Charles Sedley. In the first scene of that comedy Phædria was introduced with his man, Pamphilus, discoursing whether he should leave his mistress Thais, or return to her, now that she had invited him.
He who sued for any office amongst the Romans was called a candidate, because he wore a white gown; and sometimes chalked it, to make it appear whiter. He rose early, and went to the levees of those who headed the people; saluted also the tribes severally, when they were gathered together to choose their magistrates; and distributed a largess amongst them, to engage them for their voices; much resembling our elections of Parliament-men.
The commentators are divided what Herod this was, whom our author mentions; whether Herod the Great, whose birthday might possibly be celebrated, after his death, by the Herodians, a sect amongst the Jews, who thought him their Messiah; or Herod Agrippa, living in the author's time and after it. The latter seems the more probable opinion.
The ancients had a superstition, contrary to ours, concerning egg-shells: they thought that if an egg-shell were cracked, or a hole bored in the bottom of it, they were subject to the power of sorcery. We as vainly break the bottom of an egg-shell, and cross it when we have eaten the egg, lest some hag should make use of it in bewitching us, or sailing over the sea in it, if it were whole. The rest of the priests of Isis, and her one-eyed or squinting priestess, is more largely treated in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, where the superstitions of women are related.
THE SIXTH SATIRE OF PERSIUS.
TO CÆSIUS BASSUS, A LYRIC POET.
THE ARGUMENT.
This Sixth Satire treats an admirable common-place of moral
philosophy, of the true uses of riches. They are certainly intended
by the Power who bestows them, as instruments
and helps of living commodiously ourselves; and of administering
to the wants of others, who are oppressed by fortune. There
are two extremes in the opinions of men concerning them.
One error, though on the right hand, yet a great one, is that
they are no helps to a virtuous life; the other places all our
happiness in the acquisition and possession of them; and this
is undoubtedly the worse extreme. The mean betwixt these,
is the opinion of the Stoics, which is, that riches may be useful
to the leading a virtuous life; in case we rightly understand
how to give according to the right reason, and how to
receive what is given us by others. The virtue of giving well
is called liberality; and it is of this virtue that Persius writes
in this satire, wherein he not only shows the lawful use of
riches, but also sharply inveighs against the vices which are
opposed to it; and especially of those, which consist in the
And seek in Sabine air a warm retreat?
Say, dost thou yet the Roman harp command?
Do the strings answer to thy noble hand?
Great master of the muse, inspired to sing
The beauties of the first created spring;
The pedigree of nature to rehearse,
And sound the Maker's work, in equal verse;
Now sporting on thy lyre the loves of youth,
Now virtuous age, and venerable truth;
Expressing justly Sappho's wanton art
Of odes, and Pindar's more majestic part.
More cold, than our Ligurian winter grants;
I view the coast old Ennius once admired;
Where clifts on either side their points display,
And, after opening in an ampler way,
Afford the pleasing prospect of the bay.
“'Tis worth your while, O Romans, to regard
The port of Luna,” says our learned bard;
Who in a drunken dream beheld his soul
The fifth within the transmigrating roll;
Which first a peacock, then Euphorbus was,
Then Homer next, and next Pythagoras;
And, last of all the line, did into Ennius pass.
And more secure of what the vulgar prate,
Here I enjoy my private thoughts, nor care
What rots for sheep the southern winds prepare;
Survey the neighbouring fields, and not repine,
When I behold a larger crop than mine:
To see a beggar's brat in riches flow,
Adds not a wrinkle to my even brow;
Nor, envious at the sight, will I forbear
My plenteous bowl, nor bate my bounteous cheer;
Nor yet unseal the dregs of wine that stink
Of cask, nor in a nasty flagon drink.
For men of different inclinations are,
Though born perhaps beneath one common star.
In minds and manners twins opposed we see
In the same sign, almost the same degree:
One, frugal, on his birthday fears to dine,
Does at a penny's cost in herbs repine,
And hardly dares to dip his fingers in the brine;
Prepared as priest of his own rites to stand,
He sprinkles pepper with a sparing hand.
His jolly brother, opposite in sense,
Laughs at his thrift; and lavish of expense,
Quaffs, crams, and guttles, in his own defence.
Yet will not turbots for my slaves prepare;
Nor be so nice in taste myself to know
If what I swallow be a thrush, or no.
Live on thy annual income, spend thy store,
And freely grind from thy full threshing floor;
Next harvest promises as much, or more.
And offices of kindness, hold my hand:
My friend is shipwrecked on the Bruttian strand,
His riches in the Ionian main are lost,
And he himself stands shivering on the coast;
He wearies the deaf gods with fruitless prayer.
Their images, the relics of the wreck,
Torn from the naked poop, are tided back
By the wild waves, and, rudely thrown ashore,
Lie impotent, nor can themselves restore;
The vessel sticks, and shows her opened side,
And on her shattered mast the mews in triumph ride.
From thy new hope, and from thy growing store,
Now lend assistance, and relieve the poor;
Come, do a noble act of charity,
A pittance of thy land will set him free.
Let him not bear the badges of a wreck,
Nor beg with a blue table on his back;
Nor tell me, that thy frowning heir will say,
“'Tis mine that wealth thou squander'st thus away:”
Or without spices lets thy body burn?
If odours to thy ashes he refuse,
Or buys corrupted cassia from the Jews?
“All these,” the wiser Bestius will reply,
“Are empty pomp, and dead-men's luxury:”
We never knew this vain expense before
The effeminated Grecians brought it o'er:
Now toys and trifles from their Athens come,
And dates and pepper have unsinewed Rome.
Our sweating hinds their salads now defile,
Infecting homely herbs with fragrant oil.
But to thy fortune be not thou a slave;
For what hast thou to fear beyond the grave?
And thou, who gap'st for my estate, draw near;
For I would whisper somewhat in thy ear.
Hear'st thou the news, my friend? the express is come,
With laurelled letters, from the camp to Rome:
Cæsar salutes the queen and senate thus:—
“My arms are on the Rhine victorious.
Cease fasting, and proclaim a fat thanksgiving-day.”
The goodly empress, jollily inclined,
Is to the welcome bearer wondrous kind;
And, setting her good housewifery aside,
Prepares for all the pageantry of pride.
The captive Germans, of gigantic size,
Are ranked in order, and are clad in frize:
The spoils of kings, and conquered camps we boast,
Their arms in trophies hang on the triumphal post.
In foreign parts, and mighty battles won;
For peace at home, and for the public wealth,
I mean to crown a bowl to Cæsar's health.
Besides, in gratitude for such high matters,
Know I have vowed two hundred gladiators.
Say, wouldst thou hinder me from this expense?
I disinherit thee, if thou dar'st take offence.
Yet more, a public largess I design
Of oil and pies, to make the people dine;
“You give as if you were the Persian king;
Your land does not so large revenues bring.”
Well, on my terms thou wilt not be my heir?
If thou car'st little, less shall be my care.
Were none of all my father's sisters left;
Nay, were I of my mother's kin bereft;
None by an uncle's or a grandame's side,
Yet I could some adopted heir provide.
I need but take my journey half a day
From haughty Rome, and at Aricia stay,
Where fortune throws poor Manius in my way.
Him will I choose:—“What? him of humble birth,
Obscure, a foundling, and a son of earth?”
Obscure! Why, pr'ythee, what am I? I know
My father, grandsire, and great-grandsire too:
If further I derive my pedigree,
I can but guess beyond the fourth degree.
The rest of my forgotten ancestors
Were sons of earth, like him, or sons of whores.
To be my heir, who mightst have been my sire?
In nature's race, shouldst thou demand of me
My torch, when I in course run after thee?
Think I approach thee, like the god of gain,
With wings on head and heels, as poets feign:
Thy moderate fortune from my gift receive;
Now fairly take it, or as fairly leave.
“What, when thou hast embezzled all thy store?
Where's all thy father left?”—'Tis true, I grant,
Some I have mortgaged to supply my want:
The legacies of Tadius too are flown,
All spent, and on the selfsame errand gone.
“How little then to my poor share will fall!”
Little indeed; but yet that little's all.
Nor tell me, in a dying father's tone,—
“Be careful still of the main chance, my son;
Put out thy principal in trusty hands,
Live on the use, and never dip thy lands.”
“But yet what's left for me?”—What's left, my friend!
Ask that again, and all the rest I spend.
Is not my fortune at my own command?
Pour oil, and pour it with a plenteous hand
Upon my salads, boy: shall I be fed
With sodden nettles, and a singed sow's head?
'Tis holiday, provide me better cheer;
'Tis holiday, and shall be round the year.
Shall I my household gods and genius cheat,
To make him rich who grudges me my meat,
That he may loll at ease, and, pampered high,
When I am laid, may feed on giblet-pie,
And, when his throbbing lust extends the vein,
Have wherewithal his whores to entertain?
Shall I in homespun cloth be clad, that he
His paunch in triumph may before him see?
Truck wares for wares, and trudge from pole to pole,
That men may say, when thou art dead and gone,
“See what a vast estate he left his son!”
Well fed, and fat as Cappadocian slaves!
Increase thy wealth, and double all thy store;
'Tis done; now double that, and swell the score;
To every thousand add ten thousand more.
Then say, Chrysippus, thou who wouldst confine
Thy heap, where I shall put an end to mine.
All the studious, and particularly the poets, about the end of August, began to set themselves on work, refraining from writing during the heats of the summer. They wrote by night, and sat up the greatest part of it; for which reason the product of their studies was called their elucubrations, or nightly labours. They who had country-seats retired to them while they studied, as Persius did to his, which was near the port of the Moon in Etruria; and Bassus to his, which was in the country of the Sabines, nearer Rome.
This proves Cæsius Bassus to have been a lyric poet. It is said of him, that by an eruption of the flaming mountain Vesuvius, near which the greatest part of his fortune lay, he was burnt himself, together with all his writings.
I call it a drunken dream of Ennius; not that my author in this place gives me any encouragement for the epithet, but because Horace, and all who mention Ennius, say he was an excessive drinker of wine. In a dream, or vision, call you it which you please, he thought it was revealed to him, that the soul of Pythagoras was transmigrated into him; as Pythagoras before him believed that himself had been Euphorbus in the wars of Troy. Commentators differ in placing the order of this soul, and who had it first. I have here given it to the peacock; because it looks more according to the order of nature, that it should lodge in a creature of an inferior species, and so by gradation rise to the informing of a man. And Persius favours me, by saying, that Ennius was the fifth from the Pythagorean peacock.
Perhaps this is only a fine transition of the poet, to introduce the business of the satire; and not that any such accident had happened to one of the friends of Persius. But, however, this is the most poetical description of any in our author; and since he and Lucan were so great friends, I know not but Lucan might help him in two or three of these verses, which seem to be written in his style; certain it is, that besides this description of a shipwreck, and two lines more which are at the end of the second satire, our poet has written nothing elegantly. I will, therefore, transcribe both the passages, to justify my opinion. The following are the last verses, saving one, of the second satire—
Mentis, et incoctum generoso pectus honesto.
The others are those in this present satire, which are sub joined—
Prendit amicus inops: remque omnem, surdaque vota
Condidit Ionio, jacet ipse in littore, et una
Ingentes de puppe Dei, jamque obvia mergis
Costa ratis laceræ.
The Latin is, Nunc et de cespite vivo, frange aliquid. Casaubon only opposes the cespes vivus, which, word for word, is the living turf, to the harvest, or annual income; I suppose the poet rather means, sell a piece of land already sown, and give the money of it to my friend, who has lost all by shipwreck; that is, do not stay till thou hast reaped, but help him immediately, as his wants require.
Holyday translates it a green table: the sense is the same; for the table was painted of the sea-colour, which the shipwrecked person carried on his back, expressing his losses, thereby to excite the charity of the spectators.
The bodies of the rich, before they were burnt, were embalmed with spices; or rather spices were put into the urn with the relics of the ashes. Our author here names cinnamum and cassia, which cassia was sophisticated with cherry-gum, and probably enough by the Jews, who adulterate all things which they sell. But whether the ancients were acquainted with the spices of the Molucca Islands, Ceylon, and other parts of the Indies, or whether their pepper and cinnamon, etc., were the same with ours, is another question. As for nutmegs and mace, it is plain that the Latin names for them are modern.
The Cæsar here mentioned is Caius Caligula, who affected to triumph over the Germans, whom he never conquered, as he did over the Britons; and accordingly sent letters, wrapt about with laurels, to the senate and the Empress Cæsonia, whom I here call queen; though I know that name was not used amongst the Romans; but the word empress would not stand in that verse, for which reason I adjourned it to another. The dust, which was to be swept away from the altars, was either the ashes which were left there after the last sacrifice for victory, or might perhaps mean the dust or ashes which were left on the altars since some former defeat of the Romans by the Germans; after which overthrow, the altars had been neglected.
Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, who afterwards, in the reign of Claudius, was proposed, but ineffectually, to be married to him, after he had executed Messalina for adultery.
He means only such as were to pass for Germans in the triumph, large-bodied men, as they are still, whom the empress clothed new with coarse garments, for the greater ostentation of the victory.
A hundred pair of gladiators were beyond the purse of a private man to give; therefore this is only a threatening to his heir, that he could do what he pleased with his estate.
Why shouldst thou, who art an old fellow, hope to outlive me, and be my heir, who am much younger? He who was first in the course or race, delivered the torch, which he carried, to him who was second.
Who were famous for their lustiness, and being, as we call it, in good liking. They were set on a stall when they were exposed to sale, to show the good habit of their body; and made to play tricks before the buyers, to show their activity and strength.
Chrysippus, the Stoic, invented a kind of argument, consisting of more than three propositions, which is called sorites, or a heap. But as Chrysippus could never bring his propositions to a certain stint, so neither can a covetous man bring his craving desires to any certain measure of riches, beyond which he could not wish for any more.
THE WORKS OF VIRGIL,
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE.
RECOMMENDATORY POEMS.
TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS EXCELLENT TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.
The pompous scene charms my admiring eye.
There different beauties in perfection meet;
The thoughts as proper, as the numbers sweet;
And, when wild Fancy mounts a daring height,
Judgment steps in, and moderates her flight.
Wisely he manages his wealthy store,
Still says enough, and yet implies still more:
For, though the weighty sense be closely wrought,
The reader's left to improve the pleasing thought.
Should e'er his nervous energy express;
For who could that in fettered rhyme inclose,
Which, without loss, can scarce be told in prose?
And make your copy share an equal praise.
Oh! how I see thee, in soft scenes of love,
Renew those passions he alone could move!
Here Cupid's charms are with new art exprest.
And pale Eliza leaves her peaceful rest—
To love, and wish, to sigh, despair, and grieve,
And die again for him that would again deceive.
Nor does the mighty Trojan less appear
Than Mars himself, amidst the storms of war.
Now his fierce eyes with double fury glow,
And a new dread attends the impending blow:
The Daunian chiefs their eager rage abate,
And, though unwounded, seem to feel their fate.
With barbarous spite, profaned his sacred page.
The heavy Dutchmen, with laborious toil,
Wrested his sense, and cramped his vigorous style.
No time, no pains, the drudging pedants spare,
But still his shoulders must the burden bear;
While, through the mazes of their comments led,
We learn, not what he writes, but what they read.
Yet, through these shades of undistinguished night,
Appeared some glimmering intervals of light;
Till mangled by a vile translating sect,
Like babes by witches in effigie rackt:
Till Ogleby, mature in dulness, rose,
And Holbourn doggrel, and low chiming prose,
His strength and beauty did at once depose.
But now the magic spell is at an end,
Since even the dead, in you, have found a friend.
You free the bard from rude oppressors' power,
And grace his verse with charms unknown before.
He, doubly thus obliged, must doubting stand,
Which chiefly should his gratitude command—
Whether should claim the tribute of his heart,
The patron's bounty, or the poet's art.
The Roman genius in thy verse renewed:
We saw thee raise soft Ovid's amorous fre,
And fit the tuneful Horace to thy lyre:
We saw new gall embitter Juvenal's pen,
And crabbed Persius made politely plain.
Virgil alone was thought too great a task—
What you could scarce perform, or we durst ask;
A task, which Waller's Muse could ne'er engage;
A task, too hard for Denham's stronger rage.
Sure of success, they some slight sallies tried;
But the fenced coast their bold attempts defied:
With fear, their o'ermatched forces back they drew,
Quitting the province Fate reserved for you.
A work his son was destined to perform.
And sing loud pæans through the crowded way,
When you in Roman majesty appear,
Which none know better, and none come so near;
The happy author would with wonder see,
His rules were only prophecies of thee:
And, were he now to give translators light,
He'd bid them only read thy work, and write.
We own old favours, but must press for new:
Th'expecting world demands one labour more;
And thy loved Homer does thy aid implore,
To right his injured works, and set them free
From the lewd rhymes of grovelling Ogleby.
Then shall his verse in graceful pomp appear,
Nor will his birth renew the ancient jar:
On those Greek cities we shall look with scorn,
And in our Britain think the poet born.
TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.
I
We read, how dreams and visions heretoforeThe prophet and the poet could inspire,
And make them in unusual rapture soar,
With rage divine, and with poetic fire.
II
O could I find it now!—Would Virgil's shadeBut for a while vouchsafe to bear the light,
To grace my numbers, and that Muse to aid,
Who sings the poet that has done him right.
III
It long has been this sacred author's fate,To lie at every dull translators will:
Long, long his Muse has groaned beneath the weight
Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill.
IV
Dryden, at last, in his defence arose:The father now is righted by the son;
And, while his Muse endeavours to disclose
That poet's beauties, she declares her own.
V
In your smooth pompous numbers drest, each line,Each thought, betrays such a majestic touch,
He could not, had he finished his design,
Have wished it better, or have done so much.
VI
You, like his hero, though yourself were free,And disentangled from the war of wit—
You, who secure might others' danger see,
And safe from all malicious censure sit—
VII
Yet, because sacred Virgil's noble Muse,O'erlaid by fools, was ready to expire,
To risk your fame again, you boldly choose,
Or to redeem, or perish with your sire.
VIII
Even first and last, we owe him half to you:For, that his Æneids missed their threatened fate,
Was—that his friends by some prediction knew,
Hereafter, who, correcting, should translate.
IX
But hold, my Muse! thy needless flight restrain,Unless, like him, thou couldst a verse indite:
To think his fancy to describe, is vain,
Since nothing can discover light, but light.
X
'Tis want of genius that does more deny;'Tis fear my praise should make your glory less;
And, therefore, like the modest painter, I
Must draw the veil, where I cannot express.
TO MR. DRYDEN.
No undisputed monarch governed yet,With universal sway, the realms of wit:
Nature could never such expense afford;
Each several province owned a several lord.
A poet then had his poetic wife,
One Muse embraced, and married for his life.
By the stale thing his appetite was cloyed,
His fancy lessened, and his fire destroyed.
But Nature, grown extravagantly kind,
With all her treasures did adorn your mind;
The different powers were then united found,
And you wit's universal monarch crowned.
Your mighty sway your great desert secures;
And every Muse and every Grace is yours.
To none confined, by turns you all enjoy:
Sated with this, you to another fly,
So, sultan-like, in your seraglio stand,
While wishing Muses wait for your command;
Thus no decay, no want of vigour, find:
Sublime your fancy, boundless is your mind.
Not all the blasts of Time can do you wrong—
Young, spite of age—in spite of weakness, strong.
Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground;
You, like Antæus, from each fall rebound.
TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS VIRGIL.
To the carved image of a beauteous face,
That the cold marble might even seem to be
The life—and the true life, the imagery.
Making the best of Roman poets ours,
With such effect, we know not which to call
The imitation, which the original.
The charming beauty of the coin no less;
And such the majesty of your impress,
You seem the very author you translate.
And did revolving destiny constrain
To dress his thoughts in English o'er again,
Himself could write no otherwise than thus.
So true as now: “Romans and Greeks, submit!
Something of late is in our language writ,
More nobly great than the famed Iliads were.”
TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS TRANSLATIONS.
But hardly bear, or in the raising die,
Missing their native sun,—at best retain
But a faint odour, and but live with pain;
So Roman poetry, by moderns taught,
Wanting the warmth with which its author wrote,
Is a dead image, and a worthless draught.
While we transfuse, the nimble spirit flies,
Escapes unseen, evaporates, and dies.
Must copy with the genius that they writ:
Whence we conclude from thy translated song,
So just, so warm, so smooth, and yet so strong,
Thou heavenly charmer! soul of harmony!
That all their geniuses revived in thee.
New-born they rise, and take to heaven their flight;
Deck'd in thy verse, as clad with rays, they shine,
All glorified, immortal, and divine.
Furnished for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on every shore,
For foreign wealth, insatiate still of more;
To her own wool, the silks of Asia joins,
And to her plenteous harvests, Indian mines;
So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name—
The noblest seeds of foreign wit to choose.
Feasting our sense so many various ways,
Say, is't thy bounty, or thy thirst of praise,
That, by comparing others, all might see,
Who most excelled, are yet excelled by thee?
PASTORALS.
PASTORAL I.
OR, TITYRUS AND MELIBŒUS.
ARGUMENT.
The occasion of the First Pastoral was this: When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman Empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua; turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest, who afterwards recovered his estate by Mæcenas' intercession; and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the following Pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbours in the character of Melibœus.
Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your sylvan muse.
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forced from our pleasing fields and native home;
While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.
TITYRUS.
These blessings, friend, a deity bestowed;
For never can I deem him less than God.
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.
He gave my kine to graze the flowery plain,
And to my pipe renewed the rural strain.
MELIBŒUS.
I envy not your fortune, but admire,
That, while the raging sword and wasteful fire
Destroy the wretched neighbourhood around,
No hostile arms approach your happy ground.
Far different is my fate; my feeble goats
With pains I drive from their forsaken cotes:
And this, you see, I scarcely drag along,
Who, yeaning, on the rocks has left her young,
The hope and promise of my failing fold.
My loss, by dire portents, the gods foretold;
For, had I not been blind, I might have seen:—
Yon riven oak, the fairest of the green,
And the hoarse raven, on the blasted bough,
With frequent croaks, presaged the coming blow.
But tell me, Tityrus, what heavenly power
Preserved your fortunes in that fatal hour?
TITYRUS.
Fool that I was, I thought imperial Rome
Like Mantua, where on market days we come,
And thither drive our tender lambs from home.
So kids and whelps their sires and dams express,
And so the great I measured by the less.
But country towns, compared with her, appear
Like shrubs, when lofty cypresses are near.
MELIBŒUS.
What great occasion called you hence to Rome?
Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come.
Nor did my search of liberty begin,
Till my black hairs were changed upon my chin;
Nor Amaryllis would vouchsafe a look,
Till Galatea's meaner bonds I broke.
Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain,
I sought not freedom, nor aspired to gain:
Though many a victim from my folds was bought,
And many a cheese to country markets brought,
Yet all the little that I got, I spent,
And still returned as empty as I went.
MELIBŒUS.
We stood amazed to see your mistress mourn,
Unknowing that she pined for your return;
We wondered why she kept her fruit so long,
For whom so late the ungathered apples hung.
But now the wonder ceases, since I see
She kept them only, Tityrus, for thee;
For thee the bubbling springs appeared to mourn,
And whispering pines made vows for thy return.
TITYRUS.
What should I do?—While here I was enchained,
No glimpse of godlike liberty remained;
Nor could I hope, in any place but there,
To find a god so present to my prayer.
There first the youth of heavenly birth I viewed,
For whom our monthly victims are renewed.
My grounds to be restored, my former flocks to feed.
MELIBŒUS.
O fortunate old man! whose farm remains—
For you sufficient—and requites your pains;
Though rushes overspread the neighbouring plains,
Though here the marshy grounds approach your fields,
And there the soil a stony harvest yields.
Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try,
Nor fear a rot from tainted company.
Behold! yon bordering fence of sallow trees
Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught with bees;
The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain,
Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain.
While, from the neighbouring rock, with rural songs,
The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs,
Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain,
And, from the lofty elms, of love complain.
TITYRUS.
The inhabitants of seas and skies shall change,
And fish on shore, and stags in air, shall range,
The banished Parthian dwell on Arar's brink,
And the blue German shall the Tigris drink,
Ere I, forsaking gratitude and truth,
Forget the figure of that godlike youth.
MELIBŒUS.
But we must beg our bread in climes unknown,
Beneath the scorching or the freezing zone;
Or try the Libyan heat, or Scythian cold;
The rest among the Britons be confined,
A race of men from all the world disjoined.
O! must the wretched exiles ever mourn,
Nor, after length of rolling years, return?
Are we condemned by fate's unjust decree,
No more our houses and our homes to see?
Or shall we mount again the rural throne,
And rule the country kingdoms, once our own?
Did we for these barbarians plant and sow?
On these, on these, our happy fields bestow?
Good heaven! what dire effects from civil discord flow!
Now let me graff my pears, and prune the vine;
The fruit is theirs, the labour only mine.
Farewell, my pastures, my paternal stock,
My fruitful fields, and my more fruitful flock!
No more, my goats, shall I behold you climb
The steepy cliffs, or crop the flowery thyme!
No more, extended in the grot below,
Shall see you browsing on the mountain's brow
The prickly shrubs; and after on the bare,
Lean down the deep abyss, and hang in air.
No more my sheep shall sip the morning dew;
No more my song shall please the rural crew:
Adieu, my tuneful pipe! and all the world, adieu!
TITYRUS.
This night, at least, with me forget your care;
Chestnuts, and curds and cream, shall be your fare:
The carpet-ground shall be with leaves o'erspread,
And boughs shall weave a covering for your head.
For see yon sunny hill the shade extends,
And curling smoke from cottages ascends.
PASTORAL II.
OR, ALEXIS.
ARGUMENT.
The commentators can by no means agree on the person of Alexis, but are all of opinion that some beautiful youth is meant by him, to whom Virgil here makes love, in Corydon's language and simplicity. His way of courtship is wholly pastoral: he complains of the boy's coyness; recommends himself for his beauty and skill in piping; invites the youth into the country, where he promises him the diversions of the place, with a suitable present of nuts and apples. But when he finds nothing will prevail, he resolves to quit his troublesome amour, and betake himself again to his former business.
The fair Alexis loved, but loved in vain;
And underneath the beechen shade, alone,
Thus to the woods and mountains made his moan:—
Is this, unkind Alexis, my reward?
And must I die unpitied, and unheard?
Now the green lizard in the grove is laid,
The sheep enjoy the coolness of the shade,
For harvest hinds, o'erspent with toil and heats;
While in the scorching sun I trace in vain
Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain.
The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.
How much more easy was it to sustain
Proud Amaryllis, and her haughty reign,
The scorns of young Menalcas, once my care,
Though he was black, and thou art heavenly fair.
Trust not too much to that enchanting face;
Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.
White lilies lie neglected on the plain,
While dusky hyacinths for use remain.
My passion is thy scorn; nor wilt thou know
What wealth I have, what gifts I can bestow;
What stores my dairies and my folds contain—
A thousand lambs, that wander on the plain;
New milk, that all the winter never fails,
And all the summer overflows the pails.
Amphion sung not sweeter to his herd,
When summoned stones the Theban turrets reared.
Nor am I so deformed; for late I stood
Upon the margin of the briny flood:
The winds were still; and, if the glass be true,
With Daphnis I may vie, though judged by you.
O leave the noisy town! O come and see
Our country cots, and live content with me!
To wound the flying deer, and from their cotes
With me to drive a-field the browsing goats;
To pipe and sing, and, in our country strain,
To copy, or perhaps contend with Pan.
Pan taught to join with wax unequal reeds;
Pan loves the shepherds, and their flocks he feeds.
With all his kisses would my skill have bought.
Of seven smooth joints a mellow pipe I have,
Which with his dying breath Damœtas gave,
And said,—“This, Corydon, I leave to thee;
For only thou deserv'st it after me.”
His eyes Amyntas durst not upward lift;
For much he grudged the praise, but more the gift.
Besides, two kids, that in the valley strayed,
I found by chance, and to my fold conveyed:
They drain two bagging udders every day;
And these shall be companions of thy play;
Both flecked with white, the true Arcadian strain,
Which Thestylis had often begged in vain:
And she shall have them, if again she sues,
Since you the giver and the gift refuse.
Come to my longing arms, my lovely care!
And take the presents which the nymphs prepare.
White lilies in full canisters they bring,
With all the glories of the purple spring.
The daughters of the flood have searched the mead
For violets pale, and cropped the poppy's head,
The short narcissus and fair daffodil,
Pansies to please the sight, and cassia sweet to smell;
And set soft hyacinths with iron blue,
To shade marsh marigolds of shining hue;
Some bound in order, others loosely strowed,
To dress thy bower, and trim thy new abode.
Myself will search our planted grounds at home,
For downy peaches and the glossy plum;
Such as my Amaryllis used to love.
The laurel and the myrtle sweets agree,
And both in nosegays shall be bound for thee.
Ah, Corydon! ah, poor unhappy swain!
Alexis will thy homely gifts disdain:
Nor, should'st thou offer all thy little store,
Will rich Iollas yield, but offer more.
What have I done, to name that wealthy swain?
So powerful are his presents, mine so mean!
The boar, amidst my crystal streams, I bring;
And southern winds to blast my flowery spring.
Ah, cruel creature! whom dost thou despise?
The gods, to live in woods, have left the skies;
And godlike Paris, in the Idæan grove,
To Priam's wealth preferred Œnone's love.
In cities, which she built, let Pallas reign;
Towers are for gods, but forests for the swain.
The greedy lioness the wolf pursues,
The wolf the kid, the wanton kid the browse;
Alexis, thou art chased by Corydon:
All follow several games, and each his own.
See, from afar, the fields no longer smoke;
The sweating steers, unharnessed from the yoke,
Bring, as in triumph, back the crooked plough;
The shadows lengthen as the sun goes low;
Cool breezes now the raging heats remove:
Ah, cruel heaven, that made no cure for love!
I wish for balmy sleep, but wish in vain;
Love has no bounds in pleasure, or in pain.
What frenzy, shepherd, has thy soul possessed?
Thy vineyard lies half pruned, and half undressed.
Quench, Corydon, thy long unanswered fire!
Mind what the common wants of life require;
On willow twigs employ thy weaving care,
And find an easier love, though not so fair.
PASTORAL III.
OR, PALÆMON.
MENALCAS, DAMŒTAS, PALÆMON.ARGUMENT.
Damœtas and Menalcas, after some smart strokes of country raillery, resolve to try who has the most skill at song; and accordingly make their neighbour, Palæmon, judge of their performances; who, after a full hearing of both parties, declares himself unfit for the decision of so weighty a controversy, and leaves the victory undetermined.
Ho, swain! what shepherd owns those ragged sheep?
DAMŒTAS.
Ægon's they are: he gave them me to keep.
MENALCAS.
While he Neæra courts, but courts in vain,
And fears that I the damsel shall obtain.
Thou milk'st his ewes, and often twice an hour;
Of grass and fodder thou defraud'st the dams,
And of their mothers' dugs the starving lambs.
DAMŒTAS.
We know who did your business, how, and when;
And in what chapel too you played your prize,
And what the goats observed with leering eyes:
The nymphs were kind, and laughed; and there your safety lies.
MENALCAS.
Cut Micon's tender vines, and stole the stays!
DAMŒTAS.
The bow of Daphnis, and the shafts, you broke,
When the fair boy received the gift of right;
And, but for mischief, you had died for spite.
MENALCAS.
When thou, his knave, canst talk at such a rate!
Did I not see you, rascal, did I not,
When you lay snug to snap young Damon's goat?
His mongrel barked; I ran to his relief,
And cried,—“There, there he goes! stop, stop the thief!”
Discovered, and defeated of your prey,
You skulked behind the fence, and sneaked away.
The goat was mine, by singing fairly won.
A solemn match was made; he lost the prize.
Ask Damon, ask, if he the debt denies.
I think he dares not; if he does, he lies.
MENALCAS.
Was so profaned to touch that blubbered lip.
Dunce at the best! in streets but scarce allowed
To tickle, on thy straw, the stupid crowd.
DAMŒTAS.
Our pipes, our skill, our voices, to compare?
My brinded heifer to the stake I lay;
Two thriving calves she suckles twice a day,
And twice besides her beestings never fail
To store the dairy with a brimming pail.
Now back your singing with an equal stake.
MENALCAS.
You know too well, I feed my father's flock;
What can I wager from the common stock?
A stepdame too I have, a cursed she,
Who rules my hen-peck'd sire, and orders me.
Both number twice a day the milky dams;
And once she takes the tale of all the lambs.
But, since you will be mad, and since you may
Suspect my courage, if I should not lay,
The pawn I proffer shall be full as good:
Two bowls I have, well turned, of beechen wood;
Both by divine Alcimedon were made;
To neither of them yet the lip is laid.
Beneath the carving of the curious work.
Two figures on the sides embossed appear—
Conon, and what's his name who made the sphere,
And showed the seasons of the sliding year,
Instructed in his trade the labouring swain,
And when to reap, and when to sow the grain?
DAMŒTAS.
The wood the same; from the same hand they come,
(The kimbo handles seem with bear's foot carved),
And never yet to table have been served;
Where Orpheus on his lyre laments his love,
With beasts encompassed, and a dancing grove.
But these, nor all the proffers you can make,
Are worth the heifer which I set to stake.
MENALCAS.
I prophesy beforehand, I shall win.
Palæmon shall be judge how ill you rhyme:
I'll teach you how to brag another time.
DAMŒTAS.
I fear not you, nor yet a better man.
With silence, neighbour, and attention, wait;
For 'tis a business of a high debate.
PALÆMON.
The trees are clothed with leaves, the fields with grass,
And Nature has accomplished all the spring.
The challenge to Damœtas shall belong;
Menalcas shall sustain his under-song;
Each in his turn your tuneful numbers bring,
By turns the tuneful Muses love to sing.
DAMŒTAS.
My Muse begins; for all is full of Jove:
To Jove the care of heaven and earth belongs;
My flocks he blesses, and he loves my songs.
MENALCAS.
And in her songs the warmth he gave requires.
For him, the god of shepherds and their sheep,
My blushing hyacinths and my bays I keep.
DAMŒTAS.
Then tripping to the woods the wanton hies,
And wishes to be seen before she flies.
MENALCAS.
And offers love, and sits upon my knee.
Not Delia to my dogs is known so well as he.
Her swain a pretty present has designed:
I saw two stock-doves billing, and ere long
Will take the nest, and hers shall be the young.
MENALCAS.
And stood on tip-toes, reaching from the ground:
I sent Amyntas all my present store;
And will, to-morrow, send as many more.
DAMŒTAS.
And all she said and did was full of charms.
Winds! on your wings to heaven her accents bear;
Such words as heaven alone is fit to hear.
MENALCAS.
To call you mine, when absent from my sight?
I hold the nets, while you pursue the prey,
And must not share the dangers of the day.
DAMŒTAS.
At shearing-time, Iollas, you may come.
MENALCAS.
Her sorrow did my parting steps pursue:
“Adieu, my dear,” she said, “a long adieu!”
DAMŒTAS.
Storms to the wheat, to buds the bitter cold;
Than from the wolves, and storms, and winterwind.
MENALCAS.
The showers are grateful to the swelling grain;
To teeming ewes the sallow's tender tree;
But, more than all the world, my love to me.
DAMŒTAS.
A heifer, Muses, for your patron breed.
MENALCAS.
With spurning heels, and with a butting head.
DAMŒTAS.
Let Pollio's fortune crown his full desires.
Let myrrh instead of thorn his fences fill,
And showers of honey from his oaks distil.
MENALCAS.
(Dead Mævius!) damn'd to love thy works and thee!
The same ill taste of sense would serve to join
Dog-foxes in the yoke, and shear the swine.
DAMŒTAS.
Beware the secret snake that shoots a sting.
The ground is false, the running streams are deep:
See, they have caught the father of the flock,
Who dries his fleece upon the neighbouring rock.
DAMŒTAS.
Anon I'll wash them in the shallow brook.
MENALCAS.
In vain the milkmaid tugs an empty teat.
DAMŒTAS.
But love, that drains the herd, destroys the groom.
MENALCAS.
Their bones are barely covered with their skin.
What magic has bewitched the woolly dams,
And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs?
DAMŒTAS.
To three short ells on earth our sight restrains:
Tell that, and rise a Phœbus for thy pains.
MENALCAS.
A flower, that bears inscribed the names of kings;
And thou shalt gain a present as divine
As Phœbus' self; for Phyllis shall be thine.
That both have won, or both deserved the prize.
Rest equal happy both; and all who prove
The bitter sweets, and pleasing pains, of love.
Now dam the ditches, and the floods restrain;
Their moisture has already drenched the plain.
Phœbus, not Pan, is here called the god of shepherds. The poet alludes to the same story which he touches in the beginning of the Second Georgic, where he calls Phœbus the Amphrysian shepherd, because he fed the sheep and oxen of Admetus, with whom he was in love, on the hill Amphyrsus.
PASTORAL IV.
OR, POLLIO.
ARGUMENT.
The Poet celebrates the birthday of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Salona, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth.
Though lowly shrubs, and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all; Sicilian Muse, prepare
To make the vocal woods deserve a consul's care.
The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Renews its finished course: Saturnian times
Roll round again; and mighty years, begun
From their first orb, in radiant circles run.
The base degenerate iron offspring ends;
A golden progeny from heaven descends.
O chaste Lucina! speed the mother's pains;
And haste the glorious birth! thy own Apollo reigns!
Shall Pollio's consulship and triumph grace;
Majestic months set out with him to their appointed race.
The father banished virtue shall restore,
And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.
The son shall lead the life of gods, and be
By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.
The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal virtues rule mankind.
Unbidden earth shall wreathing ivy bring,
And fragrant herbs (the promises of spring),
As her first offerings to her infant king.
The goats with strutting dugs shall homeward speed,
And lowing herds secure from lions feed.
His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned:
The serpent's brood shall die; the sacred ground
Shall weeds and poisonous plants refuse to bear;
Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear.
But when heroic verse his youth shall raise,
And form it to hereditary praise,
Unlaboured harvests shall the fields adorn,
And clustered grapes shall blush on every thorn;
The knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep;
And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep.
Yet, of old fraud some footsteps shall remain;
The merchant still shall plough the deep for gain,
Great cities shall with walls be compassed round,
And sharpened shares shall vex the fruitful ground;
Another Tiphys shall new seas explore;
Another Argo land the chiefs upon the Iberian shore;
Another Helen other wars create,
And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate.
The greedy sailor shall the seas forego;
No keel shall cut the waves for foreign ware,
For every soil shall every product bear.
The labouring hind his oxen shall disjoin;
No plough shall hurt the glebe, no pruning-hook the vine;
Nor wool shall in dissembled colours shine;
But the luxurious father of the fold,
With native purple, or unborrowed gold,
Beneath his pompous fleece shall proudly sweat;
And under Tyrian robes the lamb shall bleat.
The Fates, when they this happy web have spun,
Shall bless the sacred clew, and bid it smoothly run.
Mature in years, to ready honours move,
O of celestial seed! O foster-son of Jove!
See, labouring Nature calls thee to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main!
See to their base restored, earth, seas, and air;
And joyful ages, from behind, in crowding ranks appear.
To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong,
Infusing spirits worthy such a song,
Not Thracian Orpheus should transcend my lays,
Nor Linus crowned with never-fading bays;
Though each his heavenly parent should inspire;
The Muse instruct the voice, and Phœbus tune the lyre.
Should Pan contend in verse, and thou my theme,
Arcadian judges should their god condemn.
Thy infant eyes, and, with a smile, thy mother single out.
The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail to requite.
Then smile! the frowning infant's doom is read;
No god shall crown the board, nor goddess bless the bed.
In Latin thus—
Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem, etc.I have translated the passage to this sense—that the infant, smiling on his mother, singles her out from the rest of the company about him. Erythræus, Bembus, and Joseph Scaliger are of this opinion. Yet they and I may be mistaken; for, immediately after, we find these words, cui non risere parentes, which imply another sense, as if the parents smiled on the new-born infant; and that the babe on whom they vouchsafed not to smile was born to ill-fortune: for they tell a story that, when Vulcan, the only son of Jupiter and Juno, came into the world, he was so hard-favoured that both his parents frowned on him, and Jupiter threw him out of heaven: he fell on the island Lemnos, and was lame ever afterwards. The last line of the Pastoral seems to justify this sense—
Nec Deus hunc mensâ, Dea nec dignata cubili est.For, though he married Venus, yet his mother Juno was not present at the nuptials to bless them; as appears by his wife's incontinence. They say also, that he was banished from the banquets of the gods. If so, that punishment could be of no long continuance; for Homer makes him present at their feasts, and composing a quarrel betwixt his parents with a bowl of nectar. The matter is of no great consequence; and therefore I adhere to my translation, for these two reasons: first, Virgil has his following line—
Matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses,as if the infant's smiling on his mother was a reward to her for bearing him ten months in her body, four weeks longer than the usual time. Secondly, Catullus is cited by Joseph Scaliger as favouring this opinion, in his Epithalamium of Manlius Torquatus—
Matris e gremio suæ
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat ad patrem, etc.
What if I should steer betwixt the two extremes, and conclude that the infant, who was to be happy, must not only smile on his parents, but also they on him? For Scaliger notes, that the infants who smiled not at their birth, were observed to be αγελαστοι, or sullen (as I have translated it) during all their life; and Servius, and almost all the modern commentators, affirm that no child was thought fortunate on whom his parents smiled not at his birth. I observe, further, that the ancients thought the infant who came into the world at the end of the tenth month was born to some extraordinary fortune, good or bad. Such was the birth of the late Prince of Condé's father, of whom his mother was not brought to bed till almost eleven months were expired after his father's death; yet the College of Physicians at Paris concluded he was lawfully begotten. My ingenious friend, Anthony Henley, Esq., desired me to make a note on this passage of Virgil; adding (what I had not read) that the Jews have been so superstitious as to observe not only the first look or action of an infant, but also the first word which the parent or any of the assistants spoke after the birth; and from thence they gave a name to the child, alluding to it.
PASTORAL V.
OR, DAPHNIS.
ARGUMENT.
Mopsus and Menalcas, two very expert shepherds at a song, begin one by consent to the memory of Daphnis, who is supposed by the best critics to represent Julius Cæsar. Mopsus laments his death; Menalcas proclaims his divinity; the whole eclogue consisting of an elegy and an apotheosis.
Since on the downs our flocks together feed,
And since my voice can match your tuneful reed,
Why sit we not beneath the grateful shade,
Which hazels, intermixed with elms, have made?
MOPSUS.
Whether you please that sylvan scene scent to take,
Where whistling winds uncertain shadows make;
Or will you to the cooler cave succeed,
Whose mouth the curling vines have overspread?
Your merit and your years command the choice;
Amyntas only rivals you in voice.
MOPSUS.
What will not that presuming shepherd dare,
Who thinks his voice with Phœbus may compare?
MENALCAS.
Begin your first; if either Alcon's praise,
Or dying Phyllis, have inspired your lays;
If her you mourn, or Codrus you commend,
Begin, and Tityrus your flock shall tend.
MOPSUS.
Or shall I rather the sad verse repeat,
Which on the beech's bark I lately writ?
I writ, and sung betwixt. Now bring the swain,
Whose voice you boast, and let him try the strain.
MENALCAS.
Such as the shrub to the tall olive shows,
Or the pale sallow to the blushing rose;
Such is his voice, if I can judge aright,
Compared to thine, in sweetness and in height.
MOPSUS.
No more, but sit and hear the promised lay;
The gloomy grotto makes a doubtful day.
The nymphs about the breathless body wait
Of Daphnis, and lament his cruel fate.
The trees and floods were witness to their tears;
At length the rumour reached his mother's ears.
The wretched parent, with a pious haste,
Came running, and his lifeless limbs embraced.
She rent her garments, and she tore her hair,
Accusing all the gods, and every star.
The swains forgot their sheep, nor near the brink
Of running waters brought their herds to drink.
The thirsty cattle, of themselves, abstained
From water, and their grassy fare disdained.
The death of Daphnis woods and hills deplore;
They cast the sound to Libya's desert shore;
The Libyan lions hear, and hearing roar.
Fierce tigers Daphnis taught the yoke to bear,
And first with curling ivy dressed the spear.
Daphnis did rites to Bacchus first ordain,
And holy revels for his reeling train.
As vines the trees, as grapes the vines adorn,
As bulls the herds, and fields the yellow corn;
So bright a splendour, so divine a grace,
The glorious Daphnis cast on his illustrious race.
When envious Fate the godlike Daphnis took,
Our guardian gods the fields and plains forsook;
Pales no longer swelled the teeming grain,
Nor Phœbus fed his oxen on the plain;
No fruitful crop the sickly fields return,
But oats and darnel choke the rising corn;
And where the vales with violets once were crowned,
Now knotty burs and thorns disgrace the ground.
Come, shepherds, come, and strew with leaves the plain;
Such funeral rites your Daphnis did ordain.
With cypress-boughs the crystal fountains hide,
And softly let the running waters glide.
With this inscription to record his praise:—
“Daphnis, the fields' delight, the shepherds' love,
Renowned on earth, and deified above;
Whose flock excelled the fairest on the plains,
But less than he himself surpassed the swains.”
MENALCAS.
O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears,
So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears,
As to the weary swain, with cares opprest,
Beneath the sylvan shade, refreshing rest;
As to the feverish traveller, when first
He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst.
In singing, as in piping, you excel;
And scarce your master could perform so well.
O fortunate young man! at least your lays
Are next to his, and claim the second praise.
Such as they are, my rural songs I join,
To raise our Daphnis to the powers divine;
For Daphnis was so good, to love whate'er was mine.
MOPSUS.
How is my soul with such a promise raised!
For both the boy was worthy to be praised,
And Stimicon has often made me long
To hear, like him, so soft, so sweet a song.
MENALCAS.
Daphnis, the guest of heaven, with wondering eyes,
Views, in the milky way, the starry skies,
And far beneath him, from the shining sphere,
Beholds the moving clouds, and rolling year.
The purple spring arrays the various ground,
The nymphs and shepherds dance, and Pan himself is crowned.
The wolf no longer prowls for nightly spoils,
Nor birds the springes fear, nor stags the toils;
For Daphnis reigns above, and deals from thence
His mother's milder beams, and peaceful influence.
The mountain-tops unshorn, the rocks, rejoice;
The lowly shrubs partake of human voice.
Assenting Nature, with a gracious nod,
Proclaims him, and salutes the new-admitted god.
Be still propitious, ever good to thine!
Behold! four hallowed altars we design;
And two to thee, and two to Phœbus rise;
On both is offered annual sacrifice.
The holy priests, at each returning year,
Two bowls of milk, and two of oil, shall bear;
And I myself the guests with friendly bowls will cheer.
Two goblets will I crown with sparkling wine,
The generous vintage of the Chian vine;
These will I pour to thee, and make the nectar thine.
In winter shall the genial feast be made
Before the fire; by summer, in the shade.
Damœtas shall perform the rites divine,
And Lyctian Ægon in the song shall join.
Alphesibœus, tripping, shall advance,
And mimic Satyrs in his antic dance.
When to the nymphs our annual rites we pay,
And when our fields with victims we survey;
While savage boars delight in shady woods,
And finny fish inhabit in the floods;
Thy grateful swains these honours shall renew.
Such honours as we pay to powers divine,
To Bacchus and to Ceres, shall be thine.
Such annual honours shall be given; and thou
Shalt hear, and shalt condemn thy suppliants to their vow.
MOPSUS.
What present, worth thy verse, can Mopsus find?
Not the soft whispers of the southern wind,
That play through trembling trees, delight me more;
Nor murmuring billows on the sounding shore;
Nor winding streams, that through the valley glide,
And the scarce-covered pebbles gently chide.
MENALCAS.
Receive you first this tuneful pipe, the same
That played my Corydon's unhappy flame;
The same that sung Neæra's conquering eyes,
And, had the judge been just, had won the prize.
MOPSUS.
Accept from me this sheep-hook in exchange;
The handle brass, the knobs in equal range.
Antigenes, with kisses, often tried
To beg this present, in his beauty's pride,
When youth and love are hard to be denied.
But what I could refuse to his request,
Is yours unasked, for you deserve it best.
PASTORAL VI.
OR, SILENUS.
ARGUMENT.
Two young shepherds, Chromis and Mnasylus, having been often promised a song by Silenus, chance to catch him asleep in this Pastoral; where they bind him hand and foot, and then claim his promise. Silenus, finding they would be put off no longer, begins his song, in which he describes the formation of the universe, and the original of animals, according to the Epicurean philosophy; and then runs through the most surprising transformations which have happened in Nature since her birth. This Pastoral was designed as a compliment to Syron the Epicurean, who instructed Virgil and Varus in the principles of that philosophy. Silenus acts as tutor, Chromis and Mnasylus as the two pupils.
Nor blushed the Doric Muse to dwell on Mantuan plains.
But when I tried her tender voice, too young,
And fighting kings and bloody battles sung,
My fattening flocks, nor dare beyond the reed.
Admonished thus, while every pen prepares
To write thy praises, Varus, and thy wars,
My pastoral Muse her humble tribute brings,
And yet not wholly uninspired she sings;
For all who read, and, reading, not disdain
These rural poems, and their lowly strain,
The name of Varus oft inscribed shall see
In every grove, and every vocal tree,
And all the sylvan reign shall sing of thee:
Thy name, to Phœbus and the Muses known,
Shall in the front of every page be shown;
For he, who sings thy praise, secures his own.
Proceed, my Muse!—Two Satyrs, on the ground,
Stretched at his ease, their sire Silenus found.
Dozed with his fumes, and heavy with his load,
They found him snoring in his dark abode,
And seized with youthful arms the drunken god.
His rosy wreath was dropt not long before,
Borne by the tide of wine, and floating on the floor.
His empty can, with ears half worn away,
Was hung on high, to boast the triumph of the day.
Invaded thus, for want of better bands,
His garland they unstring, and bind his hands;
For, by the fraudful god deluded long,
They now resolve to have their promised song.
Ægle came in, to make their party good—
The fairest Naïs of the neighbouring flood—
And, while he stares around with stupid eyes,
His brows with berries, and his temples, dyes.
He finds the fraud, and, with a smile, demands,
On what design the boys had bound his hands.
“Loose me,” he cried, “'twas impudence to find
A sleeping god; 'tis sacrilege to bind.
The nymph shall be rewarded in her way.”
He raised his voice; and soon a numerous throng
Of tripping Satyrs crowded to the song;
And sylvan Fauns, and savage beasts, advanced;
And nodding forests to the numbers danced.
Not by Hæmonian hills the Thracian bard,
Nor awful Phœbus was on Pindus heard
With deeper silence, or with more regard.
He sung the secret seeds of Nature's frame;
How seas, and earth, and air, and active flame,
Fell through the mighty void, and, in their fall,
Were blindly gathered in this goodly ball.
The tender soil then, stiffening by degrees,
Shut from the bounded earth the bounding seas.
Then earth and ocean various forms disclose,
And a new sun to the new world arose;
And mists, condensed to clouds, obscure the sky;
And clouds, dissolved, the thirsty ground supply.
The rising trees the lofty mountains grace;
The lofty mountains feed the savage race,
Yet few, and strangers, in the unpeopled place.
From thence the birth of man the song pursued,
And how the world was lost, and how renewed;
The reign of Saturn, and the golden age;
Prometheus' theft, and Jove's avenging rage;
The cries of Argonauts for Hylas drowned,
With whose repeated name the shores resound;
Then mourns the madness of the Cretan queen,—
Happy for her if herds had never been.
What fury, wretched woman, seized thy breast?
The maids of Argos (though, with rage possessed,
Their imitated lowings filled the grove),
Yet shunned the guilt of thy preposterous love,
Nor sought the youthful husband of the herd,
Though tender and untried the yoke he feared,
And scarce his budding horns had adorned his brow.
Ah, wretched queen! you range the pathless wood,
While on a flowery bank he chews the cud,
Or sleeps in shades, or through the forest roves,
And roars with anguish for his absent loves.
“Ye nymphs, with toils his forest-walk surround,
And trace his wandering footsteps on the ground.
But, ah! perhaps my passion he disdains,
And courts the milky mothers of the plains.
We search the ungrateful fugitive abroad,
While they at home sustain his happy load.”
He sung the lover's fraud; the longing maid,
With golden fruit, like all the sex, betrayed;
The sisters mourning for their brother's loss;
Their bodies hid in barks, and furred with moss;
How each a rising alder now appears,
And o'er the Po distils her gummy tears:
Then sung, how Gallus, by a Muse's hand,
Was led and welcomed to the sacred strand;
The senate rising to salute their guest;
And Linus thus their gratitude expressed:—
“Receive this present, by the Muses made,
The pipe on which the Ascræan pastor played;
With which of old he charmed the savage train,
And called the mountain-ashes to the plain.
Sing thou, on this, thy Phœbus; and the wood
Where once his fane of Parian marble stood:
On this his ancient oracles rehearse,
And with new numbers grace the god of verse.”
The first by love transformed, the last by hate—
A beauteous maid above; but magic arts
With barking dogs deformed her nether parts:
What vengeance on the passing fleet she poured,
The master frighted, and the mates devoured.
Then ravished Philomel the song exprest:
The crime revealed; the sisters' cruel feast;
And how in fields the lapwing Tereus reigns,
The warbling nightingale in woods complains;
While Procne makes on chimney-tops her moan,
And hovers o'er the palace once her own.
Whatever songs besides the Delphian god
Had taught the laurels, and the Spartan flood,
Silenus sung: the vales his voice rebound,
And carry to the skies the sacred sound.
And now the setting sun had warned the swain
To call his counted cattle from the plain:
Yet still the unwearied sire pursues the tuneful strain,
Till, unperceived, the heavens with stars were hung,
And sudden night surprised the yet unfinished song.
My Lord Roscommon's notes on this Pastoral are equal to his excellent translation of it; and thither I refer the reader.
The Eighth and Tenth Pastorals are already translated, to all manner of advantage, by my excellent friend Mr Stafford. So is the episode of Camilla, in the Eleventh Æneïd.
PASTORAL VII.
OR, MELIBŒUS.
ARGUMENT.
Melibœus here gives us the relation of a sharp poetical contest between Thyrsis and Corydon, at which he himself and Daphnis were present; who both declared for Corydon.
(Their sheep and goats together graze the plains),
Both young Arcadians, both alike inspired
To sing, and answer as the song required.
Daphnis, as umpire, took the middle seat,
And fortune thither led my weary feet;
For, while I fenced my myrtles from the cold,
The father of my flock had wandered from the fold.
Of Daphnis I inquired: he, smiling, said,
“Dismiss your fear;” and pointed where he fed:
“And, if no greater cares disturb your mind,
Sit here with us, in covert of the wind.
Your lowing heifers, of their own accord,
At watering time will seek the neighbouring ford.
And shades his happy banks with bending reeds.
And see, from yon old oak that mates the skies,
How black the clouds of swarming bees arise.”
What should I do? nor was Alcippe nigh,
Nor absent Phyllis could my care supply,
To house, and feed by hand my weaning lambs,
And drain the strutting udders of their dams.
Great was the strife betwixt the singing swains;
And I preferred my pleasure to my gains.
Alternate rhyme the ready champions chose:
These Corydon rehearsed, and Thyrsis those.
Ye Muses, ever fair, and ever young,
Assist my numbers, and inspire my song.
With all my Codrus, O! inspire my breast;
For Codrus, after Phœbus, sings the best.
Or, if my wishes have presumed too high,
And stretched their bounds beyond mortality,
The praise of artful numbers I resign,
And hang my pipe upon the sacred pine.
THYRSIS.
Arcadian swains, your youthful poet crown
With ivy-wreaths; though surly Codrus frown:
Or, if he blast my Muse with envious praise,
Then fence my brows with amulets of bays,
Lest his ill arts, or his malicious tongue,
Should poison, or bewitch my growing song.
CORYDON.
These branches of a stag, this tusky boar
(The first essay of arms untried before)
Young Micon offers, Delia, to thy shrine:
But, speed his hunting with thy power divine;
Thy legs in buskins with a purple band.
THYRSIS.
This bowl of milk, these cakes (our country fare),
For thee, Priapus, yearly we prepare,
Because a little garden is thy care;
But, if the falling lambs increase my fold,
Thy marble statue shall be turned to gold.
CORYDON.
Fair Galatea, with thy silver feet,
O, whiter than the swan, and more than Hybla sweet!
Tall as a poplar, taper as the bole!
Come, charm thy shepherd, and restore my soul!
Come, when my lated sheep at night return,
And crown the silent hours, and stop the rosy morn!
THYRSIS.
May I become as abject in thy sight,
As sea-weed on the shore, and black as night;
Rough as a bur; deformed like him who chaws
Sardinian herbage to contract his jaws;
Such and so monstrous let thy swain appear,
If one day's absence looks not like a year.
Hence from the field, for shame! the flock deserves
No better feeding while the shepherd starves.
CORYDON.
Ye mossy springs, inviting easy sleep,
Ye trees, whose leafy shades those mossy fountains keep,
Defend my flock! The summer heats are near,
And blossoms on the swelling vines appear.
With heapy fires our cheerful hearth is crowned;
And firs for torches in the woods abound:
We fear not more the winds, and wintry cold,
Than streams the banks, or wolves the bleating fold.
CORYDON.
Our woods, with juniper and chestnuts crowned,
With falling fruits and berries paint the ground;
And lavish Nature laughs, and strews her stores around:
But, if Alexis from our mountains fly,
Even running rivers leave their channels dry.
THYRSIS.
Parched are the plains, and frying is the field,
Nor withering vines their juicy vintage yield:
But, if returning Phyllis bless the plain,
The grass revives, the woods are green again,
And Jove descends in showers of kindly rain.
CORYDON.
The poplar is by great Alcides worn;
The brows of Phœbus his own bays adorn;
The branching vine the jolly Bacchus loves;
The Cyprian queen delights in myrtle groves;
With hazel Phyllis crowns her flowing hair;
And, while she loves that common wreath to wear,
Nor bays, nor myrtle boughs, with hazel shall compare.
THYRSIS.
The towering ash is fairest in the woods;
In garden pines, and poplars by the floods:
And often visit our forsaken plains,
To him the towering ash shall yield in woods,
In gardens pines, and poplars by the floods.
MELIBŒUS.
I've heard; and, Thyrsis, you contend in vain,
For Corydon, young Corydon, shall reign
The Prince of Poets on the Mantuan plain.
PASTORAL VIII.
OR, PHARMACEUTRIA.
ARGUMENT.
This Pastoral contains the Songs of Damon and Alphesibœus. The first of them bewails the loss of his mistress, and repines at the success of his rival Mopsus. The other repeats the charms of some enchantress, who endeavoured, by her spells and magic, to make Daphnis in love with her.
The love rejected, and the lovers' pains;
To which the savage lynxes listening stood,
The rivers stood on heaps, and stopped the running flood;
Of two despairing swains, I sing the mournful muse.
The ready triumph of thy finished wars,
Whether Timavus or the Illyrian coast,
Whatever land or sea thy presence boast;
Is there an hour in fate reserved for me,
To sing thy deeds in numbers worthy thee?
In numbers like to thine, could I rehearse
Thy lofty tragic scenes, thy laboured verse,
The world another Sophocles in thee,
Another Homer should behold in me.
Amidst thy laurels let this ivy twine:
Thine was my earliest muse; my latest shall be thine.
Scarce were the flocks refreshed with morning dew,
When Damon, stretched beneath an olive shade,
And, wildly staring upwards, thus inveighed
Against the conscious gods, and cursed the cruel maid:
Come, Lucifer, drive on the lagging day,
While I my Nisa's perjured faith deplore,—
Witness, ye powers, by whom she falsely swore!
The gods, alas! are witnesses in vain;
Yet shall my dying breath to heaven complain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
Are ever full of verse, and full of love:
They hear the hinds, they hear their god complain,
Who suffered not the reeds to rise in vain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
When such is Nisa's choice, what lover can despair?
Now griffons join with mares; another age
Shall see the hound and hind their thirst assuage,
Promiscuous at the spring. Prepare the lights,
O Mopsus! and perform the bridal rites.
Scatter thy nuts among the scrambling boys:
Thine is the night, and thine the nuptial joys.
For thee the sun declines: O happy swain!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
Whom hast thou taken, whom hast thou contemned?
For him, thou hast refused my browsing herd,
Scorned my thick eyebrows, and my shaggy beard.
Unhappy Damon sighs and sings in vain,
While Nisa thinks no god regards a lover's pain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
And led thee where the ruddy wildings grew,
High on the planted hedge, and wet with morning dew.
Then scarce the bending branches I could win;
The callow down began to clothe my chin.
I saw; I perished; yet indulged my pain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
And at the dugs of savage tigers fed;
Alien of birth, usurper of the plains!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strains.
The blood of her unhappy babes to shed:
Love lent the sword; the mother struck the blow;
Inhuman she; but more inhuman thou:
Alien of birth, usurper of the plains!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strains.
And let the trembling lamb the wolf pursue;
Let oaks now glitter with Hesperian fruit,
And purple daffodils from alder shoot;
Fat amber let the tamarisk distil,
And hooting owls contend with swans in skill;
Hoarse Tityrus strive with Orpheus in the woods,
And challenge famed Arion on the floods.
Or, oh! let Nature cease, and Chaos reign!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
The lifeless limbs of luckless Damon hide:
Farewell, ye secret woods, and shady groves,
Haunts of my youth, and conscious of my loves!
From yon high cliff I plunge into the main;
Take the last present of thy dying swain;
And cease, my silent flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.”
His friend's complaints, and mighty magic verse:
With fillets, and with vervain strew the ground:
To re-inflame my Daphnis with desires.
'Tis done: we want but verse.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
And Circe changed with charms Ulysses' friends.
Verse breaks the ground, and penetrates the brake,
And in the winding cavern splits the snake:
Verse fires the frozen veins.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
Three woollen fillets, of three colours joined;
Thrice bind about his thrice-devoted head,
Which round the sacred altar thrice is led.
Unequal numbers please the gods.—My charms,
Restore my Daphnis to my longing arms.
Then say, ‘These knots to love I consecrate.’
Haste, Amaryllis, haste!—Restore, my charms,
My lovely Daphnis to my longing arms.
And this of wax with fire consumes away;
Such let the soul of cruel Daphnis be—
Hard to the rest of women, soft to me.
Crumble the sacred mole of salt and corn:
Next in the fire the bays with brimstone burn;
And, while it crackles in the sulphur, say,
‘This I for Daphnis burn; thus Daphnis burn away!
My lovely Daphnis to my longing arms.
Stung with desire, pursues her wandering love;
Faint at the last, she seeks the weedy pools,
To quench her thirst, and on the rushes rolls,
Careless of night, unmindful to return;
Such fruitless fires perfidious Daphnis burn,
While I so scorn his love!—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
The pledges of his promised loyalty,
Which underneath my threshold I bestow:
These pawns, O sacred earth! to me my Daphnis owe.
As these were his, so mine is he.—My charms,
Restore their lingering lord to my deluded arms.
(The noblest and the best of all the baneful kind),
Old Mœris brought me from the Pontic strand,
And culled the mischief of a bounteous land.
Smeared with these powerful juices, on the plain,
He howls a wolf among the hungry train;
And oft the mighty necromancer boasts,
With these, to call from tombs the stalking ghosts,
And from the roots to tear the standing corn,
Which, whirled aloft, to distant fields is borne:
Such is the strength of spells.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
Cast backwards o'er your head; nor turn your look:
Break out, ye smothered fires, and kindle smothered love.
Exert your utmost power, my lingering charms;
And force my Daphnis to my longing arms.
The walking ashes rise, and round our altars play!
Run to the threshold, Amaryllis—hark!
Our Hylax opens, and begins to bark.
Good heaven! may lovers what they wish believe?
Or dream their wishes, and those dreams deceive?
No more! my Daphnis comes! no more, my charms!
He comes, he runs, he leaps, to my desiring arms.”
This Eighth Pastoral is copied by our author from two Bucolics of Theocritus. Spenser has followed both Virgil and Theocritus in the charms which he employs for curing Britomartis of her love. But he had also our poet's Ceiris in his eye; for there not only the enchantments are to be found, but also the very name of Britomartis.
PASTORAL IX.
OR, LYCIDAS AND MŒRIS.
ARGUMENT.
When Virgil, by the favour of Augustus, had recovered his patrimony near Mantua, and went in hope to take possession, he was in danger to be slain by Arius the centurion, to whom those lands were assigned by the Emperor, in reward of his service against Brutus and Cassius. This Pastoral therefore is filled with complaints of his hard usage; and the persons introduced are the bailiff of Virgil, Mœris, and his friend Lycidas.
Ho, Mœris! whither on thy way so fast?
This leads to town.
MŒRIS.
O Lycidas! at last
The time is come, I never thought to see,
(Strange revolution for my farm and me!)
When the grim captain in a surly tone
Cries out, “Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone.”
And these two kids, t'appease his angry mood,
I bear,—of which the Furies give him good!
LYCIDAS.
Your country friends were told another tale,—
That, from the sloping mountain to the vale,
And doddered oak, and all the banks along,
Menalcas saved his fortune with a song.
MŒRIS.
Such was the news, indeed; but songs and rhymes
Prevail as much in these hard iron times,
As would a plump of trembling fowl, that rise
Against an eagle sousing from the skies.
And, had not Phœbus warned me, by the croak
Of an old raven from a hollow oak,
To shun debate, Menalcas had been slain,
And Mœris not survived him, to complain.
LYCIDAS.
Now heaven defend! could barbarous rage induce
The brutal son of Mars t'insult the sacred Muse?
Who then should sing the nymphs? or who rehearse
The waters gliding in a smoother verse?
Or Amaryllis praise that heavenly lay,
That shortened, as we went, our tedious way,—
“O Tityrus, tend my herd, and see them fed;
To morning pastures, evening waters, led;
And 'ware the Libyan ridgil's butting head.”
MŒRIS.
Or what unfinished he to Varus read:—
Preserve our plains, and shield the Mantuan towers,
Obnoxious by Cremona's neighbouring crime),
The wings of swans, and stronger-pinioned rhyme,
Shall raise aloft, and soaring bear above—
The immortal gift of gratitude to Jove.”
LYCIDAS.
Sing on, sing on; for I can ne'er be cloyed.
So may thy swarms the baleful yew avoid;
So may thy cows their burdened bags distend,
And trees to goats their willing branches bend.
Mean as I am, yet have the Muses made
Me free, a member of the tuneful trade:
At least the shepherds seem to like my lays;
But I discern their flattery from their praise:
I nor to Cinna's ears, nor Varus', dare aspire,
But gabble, like a goose, amidst the swan-like choir.
MŒRIS.
'Tis what I have been conning in my mind;
Nor are they verses of a vulgar kind.
“Come, Galatea! come! the seas forsake!
What pleasures can the tides with their hoarse murmurs make?
See, on the shore inhabits purple spring,
Where nightingales their love-sick ditty sing:
See, meads with purling streams, with flowers the ground,
The grottoes cool, with shady poplars crowned,
And creeping vines on arbours weaved around.
Come then, and leave the waves' tumultuous roar;
Let the wild surges vainly beat the shore.”
Or that sweet song I heard with such delight;
The same you sung alone one starry night.
The tune I still retain, but not the words.
MŒRIS.
“Why, Daphnis, dost thou search in old records,
To know the seasons when the stars arise?
See, Cæsar's lamp is lighted in the skies,—
The star, whose rays the blushing grapes adorn,
And swell the kindly ripening ears of corn.
Under this influence, graft the tender shoot;
Thy children's children shall enjoy the fruit.”
The rest I have forgot; for cares and time
Change all things, and untune my soul to rhyme.
I could have once sung down a summer's sun;
But now the chime of poetry is done:
My voice grows hoarse; I feel the notes decay,
As if the wolves had seen me first to-day.
But these, and more than I to mind can bring,
Menalcas has not yet forgot to sing.
LYCIDAS.
Thy faint excuses but inflame me more:
And now the waves roll silent to the shore;
Husht winds the topmost branches scarcely bend,
As if thy tuneful song they did attend:
Already we have half our way o'ercome;
Far off I can discern Bianor's tomb.
Here, where the labourer's hands have formed a bower
Of wreathing trees, in singing waste an hour.
Rest here thy weary limbs; thy kids lay down:
We've day before us yet to reach the town;
A song will help the beating storm to bear.
And, that thou may'st not be too late abroad,
Sing, and I'll ease thy shoulders of thy load.
MŒRIS.
Cease to request me; let us mind our way:
Another song requires another day.
When good Menalcas comes, if he rejoice,
And find a friend at court, I'll find a voice.
In the Ninth Pastoral, Virgil has made a collection of many scattering passages, which he had translated from Theocritus; and here he has bound them into a nosegay.
PASTORAL X.
OR, GALLUS.
ARGUMENT.
Gallus, a great patron of Virgil, and an excellent poet, was very deeply in love with one Cytheris, whom he calls Lycoris, and who had forsaken him for the company of a soldier. The poet therefore supposes his friend Gallus retired, in his height of melancholy, into the solitudes of Arcadia (the celebrated scene of pastorals), where he represents him in a very languishing condition, with all the rural deities about him, pitying his hard usage, and condoling his misfortune.
To crown my labour ('tis the last I sing),
Which proud Lycoris may with pity view:—
The Muse is mournful, though the numbers few.
Refuse me not a verse, to grief and Gallus due.
So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,
Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.
Sing then my Gallus, and his hopeless vows;
Sing, while my cattle crop the tender browse.
The vocal grove shall answer to the sound,
And echo, from the vales, the tuneful voice rebound.
Ye nymphs, when Gallus was to love betrayed,
To love, unpitied by the cruel maid?
Not steepy Pindus could retard your course,
Nor cleft Parnassus, nor the Aonian source:
Nothing, that owns the Muses, could suspend
Your aid to Gallus:—Gallus is their friend.
For him the lofty laurel stands in tears,
And hung with humid pearls the lowly shrub appears.
Mænalian pines the godlike swain bemoan,
When, spread beneath a rock, he sighed alone;
And cold Lycæus wept from every dropping stone.
The sheep surround their shepherd, as he lies:
Blush not, sweet poet, nor the name despise.
Along the streams, his flock Adonis fed;
And yet the queen of beauty blest his bed.
The swains and tardy neat-herds came, and last
Menalcas, wet with beating winter mast.
Wondering, they asked from whence arose thy flame.
Yet more amazed, thy own Apollo came.
Flushed were his cheeks, and glowing were his eyes:
“Is she thy care? is she thy care?” he cries.
“Thy false Lycoris flies thy love and thee,
And, for thy rival, tempts the raging sea,
The forms of horrid war, and heaven's inclemency.”
Silvanus came: his brows a country crown
Of fennel, and of nodding lilies, drown.
Great Pan arrived; and we beheld him too,
His cheeks and temples of vermilion hue.
“Why, Gallus, this immoderate grief?” he cried.
“Think'st thou that love with tears is satisfied?
The bees with flowery shrubs, the goats with browse.”
Unmoved, and with dejected eyes, he mourned:
He paused, and then these broken words returned:—
“'Tis past; and pity gives me no relief:
But you, Arcadian swains, shall sing my grief,
And on your hills my last complaints renew:
So sad a song is only worthy you.
How light would lie the turf upon my breast,
If you my sufferings in your songs exprest!
Ah! that your birth and business had been mine—
To pen the sheep, and press the swelling vine!
Had Phyllis or Amyntas caused my pain,
Or any nymph or shepherd on the plain,
(Though Phyllis brown, though black Amyntas were,
Are violets not sweet, because not fair?)
Beneath the sallows and the shady vine,
My loves had mixed their pliant limbs with mine:
Phyllis with myrtle wreaths had crowned my hair,
And soft Amyntas sung away my care.
Come, see what pleasures in our plains abound;
The woods, the fountains, and the flowery ground.
As you are beauteous, were you half so true,
Here could I live, and love, and die with only you.
Now I to fighting fields am sent afar,
And strive in winter camps with toils of war;
While you, (alas, that I should find it so!)
To shun my sight, your native soil forego,
And climb the frozen Alps, and tread the eternal snow.
Ye frosts and snows, her tender body spare!
Those are not limbs for icicles to tear.
The Muses, once my care; my once harmonious voice.
There will I sing, forsaken, and alone:
The rocks and hollow caves shall echo to my moan.
The rind of every plant her name shall know;
And, as the rind extends, the love shall grow.
Then on Arcadian mountains will I chase
(Mixed with the woodland nymphs) the savage race;
Nor cold shall hinder me, with horns and hounds
To thrid the thickets, or to leap the mounds.
And now methinks o'er steepy rocks I go,
And rush through sounding woods, and bend the Parthian bow;
As if with sports my sufferings I could ease,
Or by my pains the god of love appease.
My frenzy changes: I delight no more
On mountain tops to chase the tusky boar:
No game but hopeless love my thoughts pursue:
Once more, ye nymphs, and songs, and sounding woods, adieu!
Love alters not for us his hard decrees,
Not though beneath the Thracian clime we freeze,
Or Italy's indulgent heaven forego,
And in mid-winter tread Sithonian snow;
Or, when the barks of elms are scorched, we keep
On Meroë's burning plains the Libyan sheep.
In hell, and earth, and seas, and heaven above,
Love conquers all; and we must yield to Love.”
The verse was what I owed my suffering friend.
This while I sung, my sorrows I deceived,
And bending osiers into baskets weaved.
And Gallus will approve, because 'tis mine—
Gallus, for whom my holy flames renew,
Each hour, and every moment rise in view;
As alders, in the spring, their boles extend,
And heave so fiercely, that the bark they rend.
The singer's voice, who sings beneath the shades.
From juniper unwholesome dews distil,
That blast the sooty corn, the withering herbage kill.
Away, my goats, away! for you have browsed your fill.
| The works of John Dryden | |