T

THE

FIRST SATIRE

OF

PERSIUS.

Argument of the PROLOGUE to the First Satire. The defign of the author was to conceal-bis 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 stuff upon the world.

PROLOGUE

I

TO THE

FIRST SATIR E.

Never did on cleft Parnaffus dream,

;

Nor taste the facred Heliconian stream
Nor can remember when my brain infpir'd,
Was, by the Mufes, 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 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 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 say they squeak; but they will fwear they fing

Argument of the First Satire.

I need not repeat, that the chief aim of the author is against bad poets in this fatire. But I must add, that be includes alfo 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 worfe applied. Amongst the poets, Perfius covertly ftrikes at Nero; fome of whofe verfes be recites with scorn and indignation. He alfo takes notice of the noblemen and their abominable poetry, who in the luxury of their fortunes, fet up for wits and judges. The fatire is in dialogue, betwixt the author and his friend or monitor; who diffuades bim from this dangerous attempt of exposing great men. But Perfius, who is of a free fpirit, and has not forgotten that Rome was once a commonwealth, breaks through all thofe difficulties, and boldly arraigns the falfe judgment of the age in which he lives. The reader may obferve that our poet was a ftoick philofopher; and that all his moral fentences, both here and in all the rest of his fatires, are drawn from the dogmas of that fect.