thankful acknowledgments, prayers, and perpetual good wishes, of, MY LORD, Your Lordship's Moft obliged, moft humble, And moft obedient fervant, JOHN DRYDEN. August 18, 1692. THE FIRST SATIRE OF JUVENAL. THE ARGUMENT. The poet gives us firft a kind of humourous reason for his writing: That being provoked by hearing fo many ill poets rehearse their works, he does himfelf justice on them, by giving them as bad as they bring. But fince no man will rank himself with ill writers, 'tis eafy to conclude, that if fuch wretches could draw an audience, he thought it no hard matter to excel them, and gain a greater efteem 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 difcovers that it is not fo 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 fatire is the natural ground-work of all the reft. Herein he confines himfelf to no one fubject, but ftrikes indifferently at all men in his way: in every following fatire he has chofen fome particular moral which he would inculcate; and lafhes fome particular cice or folly, (an art with which our lampooners are not much acquainted.) But our poet being defirous to reform his own age, and not daring to attempt it by an overt act of naming living perfons, 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 hiftorians, but also with a finer ftroke of his pen, brands even the living, and perfonates them under dead men's names. I have avoided as much as I could poffibly the bor rowed learning of marginal notes and illustrations, and for that reafon hace tranflated this fatire fomewhat largely. And freely own (if it be a fault) that I have likewife 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 deferted all the commentators, it is because they firft deferted my author, or at least have left him in fo much obfcurity, that too much room is left for guessing. STILL fhall I hear, and never quit the score, Stunn'd with hoarfe Codrus' Thefeid, o'er and o'er? Ver. 1. Still fhall I hear,] It is not without caution, and a fear of reprehenfion, that I venture to mention what may appear too perfonal, that when I first had the honour of prefiding at Winchefter fchool, I found the youths of the upper clafs were in the habit of frequently repeating, without book, the Satires of Juvenal. I foon perceived, that from the multiplicity of al 5 Shall this man's Elegies and t'other's Play And shakes the statues on their pedestals. 15 lufions to Roman hiftory, manners, cuftoms, and opinions, they unavoidably could not understand half they repeated. And I alfo perceived that their compofitions were unnaturally and improperly tinctured with a mixture of Juvenal's harsh, far-fetched, metaphorical, and tumid expreffions, and of the purity of Virgil and Horace. I therefore laid afide the practice, and adhered clofely and folely to the two laft mentioned authors. After our author himself has fo clearly and copiously, in his dedication, marked the characteristical differences betwixt Horace and Juvenal, it would be vain and fuperfluous to attempt to add any thing on a fubject fo exhausted. Dr. J. WARTON. Ver. 2. Codrus] Or it may be Cordus, a bad poet who wrote the life and actions of Thefeus. Ver. 5. Ver. 6. Ver. 11. - Telephus,] The name of a tragedy. Mars his grove,] 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 grott, or cave, and the reft of the places and names here mentioned, are only meant for the common places of Homer, in his Iliads and Odyflies. The best and worst on the fame theme employs His mufe, and plagues us with an equal noise. Provok'd by these incorrigible fools, 20 I left declaiming in pedantic schools; But, fince the world with writing is poffeft, To make as much wafte paper as the reft. 25 And tread the path which fam'd Lucilius trod, Attend the caufes which my Mufe have led: When fapless eunuchs mount the marriage-bed, When mannish Mevia, that two-handed whore, Aftride on horfeback hunts the Tufcan boar, 31 When all our lords are by his wealth outvy'd, Whofe razor on my callow beard was try'd ; When I behold the spawn of conquer'd Nile, Crifpinus, both in birth and manners vile, 35 Ver. 17. The best and worst] That is, the best and the worst poets. Ver. 20. I left declaiming] But he did not forfake his declamatory ftyle. Dr. J. WARTON. Ver. 22. Advifing Sylla &c.] This was one of the themes given in the schools of rhetoricians, in the deliberative kind; Whether Sylla fhould lay down the fupreme power of dictatorship, or ftill keep it. Ver. 27. Lucilius] The first satirist of the Romans, who wrote long before Horace. Ver. 30. nish woman. Mevia,] A name put for any impudent or man Ver. 33. Whofe razor &c.] Juvenal's barber now grown wealthy. Ver. 35. Crifpinus,] An Egyptian flave; now by his riches transform'd into a nobleman. |