Our dear departed brother lies in ftate, gate: And flaves, now manumiz'd, on their dead mafter wait. 210 They hoift him on the bier, and deal the dole; And there's an end of a luxurious fool. But what's thy fulfom parable to me? My body is from all difeafes free: My temperate pulfe does regularly beat; 215 Feel, and be fatisfy'd, my hands and feet: These are not cold, nor those oppreft with heat. Or lay thy hand upon my naked heart, I grant this true: but, ftill, the deadly wound 220 Is in thy foul; 'tis there thou art not found. Say, when thou seeft a heap of tempting gold, Or a more tempting harlot doft behold; Then, when the cafts on thee a fide-long glance, Then try thy heart, and tell me if it dance. 225 Some coarfe cold fallad is before thee fet; Bread, with the bran perhaps, and broken meat; Fall on, and try thy appetite to eat. Ver. 209. His heels ftretch'd out, &c.] The Romans were buried without the city; for which reafon the poet says, that the dead man's heels were ftretched out towards the gate. These are not dishes for thy dainty tooth: What, haft thou got an ulcer in thy mouth? 230 Why ftand'st thou picking? Is thy pallat fore? 235 That bete and radishes will make thee roar? The rage of boiling caldrons is more flow; With foam upon thy lips, and fparkling eyes, 240 wife : That mad Oreftes, if he saw the show, Would swear thou wert the madder of the two*. Ver. 242. That mad Oreftes,] Oreftes was fon to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, at his return from the Trojan wars, was flain by Egyfthus, the adulterer of Clytemnestra. Oreftes, to revenge his father's death, flew both Ægyfthus and his mother; for which he was punifhed with madnefs, by the Eumenides, or furies, who continually haunted him. * Æfchylus calls fmoke the brother of fire, and dust he calls the brother of mud. The firft paffage is in Septem contra Thebas, v. 500. The latter in Agamemnon, v. 503. Yet there are commentators who admire thefe affected expreffions, and compare it with the Sylva filia nobilis of Horace. Perfius abounds in the moft harsh and conceited expreffions, and in far-fought and almoft unintelligible metaphors. Æfchines called fome expreffions in Demofthenes himself Oavμala not gnala. But, fays Quintilian, Pervafit jam multos ifta perfuafio, ut id jam demum eleganter, atque exquifitè dictum putent, quod interpretandum fit. It would be too invidious to name one or two late writers, who might have profited by attending to this paffage of Quintilian. Dr. J. WARTON. THE FOURTH SATIRE OF PERSIUS. Our author, living in the time of Nero, was contemporary and friend to the noble poet Lucan; both of them were fufficiently fenfible, with all good men, how unskilfully he managed the commonwealth: and perhaps might guess at his future tyranny, by fome passages, during the latter part of his firft five years; though he broke not out into his great exceffes, while he was reftrained by the counfels and authority of Seneca. Lucan has not Spared him in the poem of his Pharfalia: for his very compliment looked afquint, as well as Nero. Perfius has been bolder, but with caution likewife. For here, in the perfon of young Alcibiades, he arraigns his ambition of meddling with state-affairs, without judgment or experience. It is probable that he makes Seneca, in this fatire, fuftain the part of Socrates, under a borrowed name. And, withal, difcovers fome fecret vices of Nero, |