Meantime his lordship lolls within at ease, Pampering his paunch with foreign rarities; Both sea and land are ransacked for the feast, And his own gut the sole invited guest. Such plate, such tables, dishes dressed so well, That whole estates are swallowed at a meal. Even parasites are banished from his board; (At once a sordid and luxurious lord ;) Prodigious throat, for which whole boars are drest ; (A creature formed to furnish out a feast.) But present punishment pursues his maw, When, surfeited and swelled, the peacock raw He bears into the bath; whence want of breath, Repletions, apoplex, intestate death.
His fate makes table-talk, divulged with scorn, And he, a jest, into his grave is borne.
No age can go beyond us; future times Can add no farther to the present crimes. Our sons but the same things can wish and do ; Vice is at stand, and at the highest flow.
Then, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds can blow!
Some may, perhaps, demand what muse can yield Sufficient strength for such a spacious field? From whence can be derived so large a vein, Bold truths to speak, and spoken to maintain, When godlike freedom is so far bereft The noble mind, that scarce the name is left? Ere scandalum magnatum was begot, No matter if the great forgave or not; But if that honest licence now you take, If into rogues omnipotent you rake, Death is your doom, impaled upon a stake; Smeared o'er with wax, and set on fire, to light The streets, and make a dreadful blaze by night. Shall they, who drenched three uncles in a draught Of poisonous juice, be then in triumph brought,
Make lanes among the people where they go, And, mounted high on downy chariots, throw Disdainful glances on the crowd below? Be silent, and beware, if such you see; "Tis defamation but to say, That's he! Against bold Turnus the great Trojan arm, Amidst their strokes the poet gets no harm: Achilles may in epic verse be slain, And none of all his myrmidons complain : Hylas may drop his pitcher, none will cry, Not if he drown himself for company; But when Lucilius brandishes his pen, And flashes in the face of guilty men, A cold sweat stands in drops on every part, And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart. Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time, When entered once the dangerous lists of rhime; Since none the living villains dare implead, Arraign them in the persons of the dead.
*A poet may safely write an heroic poem, such as that of Virgil, who describes the duel of Turnus and Æneas; or of Homer, who writes of Achilles and Hector; or the death of Hylas, the catamite of Hercules, who, stooping for water, dropt his pitcher, and fell into the well after it: but it is dangerous to write satire, like Lucilius.
The story of this satire speaks itself. Umbritius, the supposed friend of Juvenal, and himself a poet, is leaving Rome, and retiring to Cuma. Our author accompanies him out of town. Before they take leave of each other, Umbritius tells his friend the reasons which oblige him to lead a private life, in an obscure place. He complains, that an honest man cannot get his bread at Rome; that none but flatterers make their fortunes there; that Grecians, and other foreigners, raise themselves by those sordid arts which he describes, and against which he bitterly inveighs. He reckons up the several inconveniences which arise from a city life, and the many dangers which attend it; upbraids the noblemen with covetousness, for not rewarding good poets; and arraigns the government for starving them. The great art of this satire is particularly shown in common-places; and drawing in as many vices, as could naturally fall into the compass of it.
GRIEVED though I am an ancient friend to lose, I like the solitary seat he chose,
In quiet Cumæ* fixing his repose:
* Cumæ, a small city in Campania, near Puteoli, or Puzzolo, as it is called. The habitation of the Cumæan Sybil.
Where, far from noisy Rome, secure he lives, And one more citizen to Sybil gives; The road to Baiæ, * and that soft recess Which all the gods with all their bounty bless; Though I in Prochyta† with greater ease Could live, than in a street of palaces. What scene so desert, or so full of fright, As towering houses, tumbling in the night, And Rome on fire beheld by its own blazing light? But worse than all the clattering tiles, and worse Than thousand padders, is the poet's curse; Rogues, that in dog-days cannot rhyme forbear, But without mercy read, and make you hear. Now while my friend, just ready to depart, Was packing all his goods in one poor cart, He stopt a little at the Conduit-gate,
Where Numa modelled once the Roman state, § In mighty councils with his nymph retired; ¶ Though now the sacred shades and founts are hired By banished Jews, who their whole wealth can lay In a small basket, on a wisp of hay ;||
* Baiæ, another little town in Campania, near the sea: a pleasant place.
+ Prochyta, a small barren island belonging to the kingdom of Naples.
The poets in Juvenal's time used to rehearse their poetry in August.
§ Numa, the second king of Rome, who made their laws, and instituted their religion.
¶ Egeria, a nymph, or goddess, with whom Numa feigned to converse by night; and to be instructed by her, in modelling his superstitions.
We have a similar account of the accommodation of these vagabond Israelites, in the Sixth Satire, where the prophetic Jewess plies her customers:
——cophino, fænoque relicto.
Her goods a basket, and old hay her bed;
She strolls, and telling fortunes, gains her bread.-EDITOR.
Yet such our avarice is, that every tree Pays for his head, nor sleep itself is free; Nor place, nor persons, now are sacred held, From their own grove the muses are expelled. Into this lonely vale our steps we bend, I and my sullen discontented friend;
The marble caves and aqueducts we view;
But how adulterate now, and different from the true!
How much more beauteous had the fountain been Embellished with her first created green,
Where crystal streams through living turf had run, Contented with an urn of native stone!
Then thus Umbritius, with an angry frown, And looking back on this degenerate town:- Since noble arts in Rome have no support, And ragged virtue not a friend at court, No profit rises from the ungrateful stage, My poverty encreasing with my age; 'Tis time to give my just disdain a vent, And, cursing, leave so base a government. Where Dædalus his borrowed wings laid by,* To that obscure retreat I chuse to fly : While yet few furrows on my face are seen, While I walk upright, and old age is green, And Lachesis has somewhat left to spin. † Now, now 'tis time to quit this cursed place, And hide from villains my too honest face:
* Dædalus, in his flight from Crete, alighted at Cumæ. + Lachesis is one of the three destinies, whose office was to spin the life of every man; as it was of Clotho to hold the distaff, and Atropos to cut the thread.
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