this work, and the thankful acknowledgments,
prayers, and perpetual good wishes, of,
my lord,

your lordship's

most obliged, most humble,
and most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.

arrived at his pedantic end, which was to make
a literal translation: his verses have nothing of
verse in them, but only the worst part of it, the
rhyme; and that, into the bargain, is far from
good. But, which is more intolerable, by cramming
his ill-chosen, and worse sounding monosyllables
so close together, the very sense which he en- Aug. 18, 1692,
deavours to explain, is become more obscure than
that of his author. So that Holiday himself can-
not be understood, without as large a commentary,
as that which he makes on his two authors. For
my own part, I can make a shift to find the mean.
ing of Juvenal without his notes: but his transla-
tion is more difficult than his author. And I find
beauties in the Latin to recompense my pains;
but in Holiday and Stapylton, my ears, in the
first place, are mortally offended; and then their
sense is so perplexed, that I return to the original,
as the more pleasing task, as well as the more
easy.

This must be said for our translation, that if we give not the whole sense of Juvenal, yet we give the most considerable part of it, we give it, in general, so clearly, that few notes are sufficient to make us intelligible. We make our author at least appear in a poetic dress. We have actually made him more sounding, and more elegant, than he was before in English: and have endeavoured to make him speak that kind of English, which he would have spoken had he lived in England, and had written to this age. If sometimes any of us (and it is but seldom) make him express the customs and manners of our native country, rather than of Rome, it is, either when there was some kind of analogy, betwixt their customs and ours; or when, to make him more easy to vulgar understandings, we give him those manners which are familiar to us. But I defend not this innovation, it is enough if I can excuse it. For, to speak sincerely, the manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded: we should either make them English, or leave them Roman. If this can neither be defended, nor excused, let it be pardoned, at least, because it is acknowledged: and so much the more easily, as being a fault which is never committed without some pleasure to the reader.

Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious visit, the best manners will be shown in the least ceremony. I will slip away while your back is turned, and while you are otherwise employed: with great confusion, for having enter tained you so long with this discourse; and for having no other recompense to make you, than the worthy labours of my fellow-undertakers in VOL. XIX.

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 thein, 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 give us a summary and general view of the vices and follies reigning in

I

his time. So that this first satire is the natural ground-work 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, but not daring to attempt it by an overt-act of naming living persous, 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.

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 they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much obscurity, that too much room is left for guessing.

STILL shall I hear, and never quit the score,
Stunn'd with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er ?

Kk

bread at Rome: that none but flatterers make | Knaves, who in full assemblies have the knack
their fortunes there: that Grecians and other | Of turning truth to lies, and white to black;
foreigners raise themselves by those sordid arts Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
which he describes, and against which he bit- By farm'd excise; can cleanse the common shore;
terly inveighs. He reckons up the several in- And rent the fishery; can bear the dead;
Conveniencies which arise from a city-life; and And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed,
the many dangers which attend it. Upbraids All this for gain; for gain they sell their very head.
the noblemen with covetousness, for not reward- These fellows (see what for "ne's power can do)
ing good poets; and arraigns the government Were once the minstrels of a country show:
for starving them. The great art of this satire Follow'd the prizes through each paltry town,
is particularly shown, in common-places; and By trumpet-cheeks and bloated faces known.
a drawing in as many vices, as could naturally But now, grown rich, on drunken holidays,
fall into the compass of it.
At their own costs exhibit public plays:
Where, influenc'd by the rabble's bloody will,
With thumbs bnt back, they popularly kill.
From thence return'd, 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;
Unskill'd 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 in the entrails of a toad have pry'd,
Nor carry'd bawdy presents to a bride:
For want of these town-virtues thus, alone,
I go conducted on my way by none;
Like a dead member from the body rent;
Maim'd, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is lov'd, but he who loves the 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 Done 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,

GRIEV'D though I am an ancient friend to lose,
I like the solitary seat he chose:
In quiet Cuma fixing his repose:
Where far from noisy Rome secure he lives,
And one more citizen to Sibyl gives:
The road to Baja, and that soft recess
Which all the gods with all their bounty bless.
Though I in Prochyta with greater ease
Could live, than in a street of palaces.
What scenes 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.
Now while my friend, just ready to depart,
Was packing all his goods in one poor cart;
He stopp'd a little at the Conduit-gate,
Where Numa model'd once the Roman state,
In mighty councils with his nymph retir'd,
Though now the sacred shades and founts are hir'd
By banish'd Jews, who their whole wealth can lay
In a small basket, on a whisp of hay;
Yet such our avarice is, that every tree
Pays for his head; nor sleep itself is free:
Nor place, nor persons, now are sacred held,.
From their own grove the Muses are expell'd.
Into this lonely vale our steps we bend,
I and my sullen discontented friend:
The marble cave, and aqueducts, we view;
But how adulterate now, and different from the
true;

How much more beauteous had the fountain been
Fmbellish'd with her first created green,
Where crystal streams through living turf had run,
Contented with an urn of native stone!

Then thus Umbritius (with an angry frown,
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 th' ungrateful stage,
My poverty increasing with my age,
'Tis time to give my just disdain a vent,
And, eursing, leave so base a government.
Where Dædalus his borrow'd wings laid by,
To that obscure retreat I choose to fly:
While yet few furrows on my face are seen,
While I walk upright, and old age is green,
And Lachesis has somewhat left to spin.
Now, now, '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.

Be bribe sufficient to corrupt the breast;
Or violate with dreams thy peaceful rest.
Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold,
Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold.

I haste to tell thee, nor shall shame oppose
What confidence our wealthy Romans chose:
And whom I most abhor: to speak my mind,
I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find:
To see the scum of Greece, transplanted here,
Receiv'd like gods, is what I cannot bear.
Nor Greeks alone, but Syrians here abound,
Obscene Orontes, diving under ground,
Conveys his wealth to Tyber's hungry shores,
And fattens Italy with foreign whores:
Hither their crooked harps and customs come:
All find receipt in hospitable Rome.

The barbarous harlots crowd the public place:
Go, fools, and purchase an unclean embrace:
The painted mitre court, and the more painted

face.

Old Romulus, and father Mars, look down,
Your herdsman primitive, your homely clown,
Is turn'd a beau in a loose tawdry gown.
His once unkemm'd and horrid locks behold
Stilling sweet oil: his neck enchain'd with gold:

Aping the foreigners in every dress;
Which, bought at greater cost, becomes him less.
Meantime they wisely leave their native laud,
From Sycion, Samos, and from Alaband,
And Amydon, to Rome they swarm in shoals:
So sweet and easy is the gain from fools.
Poor refugees at first, they purchase here:
And, soon as denizen'd, they domineer.
Grow to the great, a flattering servile rout:
Work themselves inward, and their patrons out.
Quick-witted, brazen fac'd, with fluent tongues,
Patient of labours, and dissembling wrongs.
Riddle me this, and guess him if you can,
Who bears a nation in a single man?
A cook, a 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.
In short, no Scythian, Moor, or Thracian born,
But in that town which arms and arts adorn,
Shat he be plac'd above me at the board,
In purple cloth'd, and lolling like a lord?
Shall he before me sign, whom t' other day
A smallcraft vessel hither did convey;

Where stow'd with prones, 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 blobber-lip 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:

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 worship'd there, and fear'd for what they know.
And, now we talk of Grecians, cast a view
On what, in schools, their men of morals do;
A rigid stoic his own pupil slew :

A friend, against a friend of his own cloth,
Turn'd evidence, and murder'd on his oath.
What room is left for Romans in a town
Where Grecians rule, and clokes control the gown?
Some Diphilus, or some Protogenes,
Look sharply out, our senators to scize:
Engross them wholly, by their native art,
And fear'd no rivals in their bubble's heart:
One drop of poison in my patron's ear,
One slight suggestion of a senseless fear,
Infus'd with cunning, serves to ruin me;
Disgrac'd, and banish'd from the family.
In vain forgotten services I boast;

My long dependance 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 the levees run;
My lord himself is up, before, and gone:
The pretor bids his lictors mend their pace,
Lest his colleague outstrip him in the race:
The childish matrons are, long since, awake:
And, for affronts, the tardy visits take.

'Tis frequent, here, to see a free-born son
On the left band 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 band, and help her from the chair.
Produce a witness of unblemish'd life,

The wife, the whore, the shepherdess, they play, Holy as Numa, or as Numa's wife,

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 ravish'd eyes can only please:
The nation is compos'd of such as these.
All Greece is one comedian: laugh, and they
Return it louder than an ass can bray :
Grieve, and they grieve; if you weep silently,
There seems a silent echo in their eye:
They cannot mourn like you, but they can cry.
Call for a fire, their winter clothes they take:
Begin but you to shiver, and they shake:
In frost and snow, if you complain of heat,
They rub th' unsweating brow, and swear they

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,
Prepar'd for some new piece of flattery.
Ev'n 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 letchery.
Through the whole family their labours run;
The daughter is debauch'd, the wife is won:
Nor 'scapes the bridegroom, or the blooming son.

Or bim who bid th' unhallow'd flames retire,
And snatch'd the trembling goddess from the fire!
The question is not put, how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends :
Quick to the 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?
Th' 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 ev'n the gods, that other means deny,"
In conscience must absolve them, when they lye.
Add, that the rich have still a gibe in store;
And will be monstrous witty on the poor:
For the torn surtout and the tatter'd vest,
The wretch and all his wardrobe are a jest:
The greasy gown, sully'd with often turning,
Gives a good hint, to say, "The man's in mourn-
Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put,

[ing:"

He's wounded! see the plaister on his foot." Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool;

And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.

"Pack hence, and from the cover'd 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 :