86

For, what their prowefs gain'd, the law declares,
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs :
No fhare of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the fon fights well, and plunders better,
Like ftout Coranus, his old shaking 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 fpare:
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part

To cherish valour, and reward defert:

90

Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore ;

Sometimes be loufy, but be never poor.

95

had power of excluding their own parents, and giving the estate fo gotten to whom they pleafed. Therefore, fays the poet, Coranus, (a foldier 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.

Ð તે o

THE

FIRST SATIRE

OF

PERSIUS.

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 bufinefs 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 fluff upon the world.

PROLOGUE

TO THE

FIRST SATIRE.

I Never did on cleft Parnaffus dream,
Nor tafte the facred Heliconian stream;
Nor can remember when my brain infpir'd,
Was, by the Mufes, into madness fir'd.
My fhare 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,

10

Before the fhrine I lay my rugged numbers down.

5

Ver. 1. Parnaffus and Helicon, were hills confecrated to the Mufes; and the fuppofed place of their abode. Parnaffus was forked on the top; and from Helicou ran a ftream, the spring of which was called the Mufes' well.

Ver. 5.

Pyrene] A fountain in Corinth; confe

crated alfo to the Mufes.

Ver. 7. Statues, &c.] The ftatues of the poets were crowned with ivy about their brows.

Ver. 11. Before the fhrine] That is, before the fhrine of Apollo, in his temple at Rome, called the Palatine,