That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this
O'er night was bowfy, and goes out to pifs:
So many rubs appear, the time is gone

For hearing, and the tedious fuit goes on:
But buff and belt-men 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.

Another branch of their revenue ftill
Remains, beyond their boundless right to kill,
Their father yet alive, impow'r'd to make a will.
For, what their prowess gain'd, the law declares
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs:
No share of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the fon fights well, and plunders better,
Like ftout Coranus, his old fhaking fire
Does a remembrance in his will defire:
Inquifitive of fights, and longs in vain
To find him in the number of the flain:
But still he lives, and rifing by the war,
Enjoys his gains, and has enough to spare:
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part

To cherish valour, and reward defert:

Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore; Sometimes be lousy, but be never poor.

THE

FIRST SATIRE

OF

I U U S.

PERS I

Argument of the PROLOGUE to the First Satire.

The defign 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 moft of his fatires. For which reafon, 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 fatire; which is chiefly to decry the poetry then in fashion, and the impudence of those who were endeavouring to pass their fuff upon the world.

PROLOGUE

I

TO THE

FIRST SATIRE.

Never did on cleft Parnaffus dream,

Nor tafte the facred Heliconian stream;

Nor can remember when my brain inspir'd,
Was, by the Muses, into madness fir'd.
My share in pale Pyrene I refign;

And claim no part in all the mighty Nine.
Statues, with winding ivy crown'd, belong
To nobler poets, for a nobler fong:
Heedlefs of verfe, 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 endu'd the chatt'ring 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 fay they squeak; but they will fwear they fing.