THE

SIXTH SATIRE

OF

JUVENA L.

THE ARGUMENT.

This Satire, of almost double length to any of the rest, is a bitter invective against the fuir sex. It is, indeed, a common-place, from whence all the moderns have notoriously stolen their sharpest railleries. In his other satires, the poet has only glanced on some particular women, and generally scourged the men; but this he reserved wholly for the ladies. How they had offended him, I know not; but, upon the whole matter, he is not to be excused for imputing to all, the vices of some few amongst them. Neither was it generously done of him, to attack the weakest, as well as the fairest, part of the creation; neither do I know what moral he could reasonably draw from it. It could not be to avoid the whole sex, if all had been true which he alleges against them; for that had been to put an end to human kind. And to bid us beware of their artifices, is a kind of silent acknowledgment, that they have more wit than men; which turns the satire upon us, and particularly upon the poet, who thereby makes a compliment, where he meant a libel. If he intended only to exercise his wit, he has forfeited his judgment, by making the one half of his readers his mortal enemies; and amongst the men, all the happy lovers, by their own experience, will disprove his accusations. The whole world must allow this to be the wittiest of his satires; and truly he had need of all his parts, to maintain, with so much violence, so unjust a charge. I am satisfied he will bring but few over to his opinion; and on that consideration chiefly I ventured to trans

late him. Though there wanted not another reason, which was, that no one else would undertake it; at least, Sir C. S., who could have done more right to the author, after a long delay, at length absolutely refused so ungrateful an employment; and every one will grant, that the work must have been imperfect and lame, if it had appeared without one of the principal members belonging to it. Let the poet, therefore, bear the blame of his own invention; and let me satisfy the world, that I am not of his opinion. Whatever his Roman ladies were, the English are free from all his imputations. They will read with wonder and abhorrence the vices of an age, which was the most infamous of any on record. They will bless themselves when they behold those examples, related of Domitian's time; they will give back to antiquity those monsters it produced, and believe, with reason, that the species of those women is extinguished, or, at least, that they were never here propagated. I may safely, therefore, proceed to the argument of a satire, which is no way relating to them; and first observe, that my author makes their lust the most heroic of their vices; the rest are in a manner but digression. He skims them over, but he dwells on this; when he seems to have taken his last leave of it, on the sudden he returns to it: It is one branch of it in Hippia, another in Messalina, but lust is the main body of the tree. He begins with this text in the first line, and takes it up, with intermissions, to the end of the chapter. Every vice is a loader, but that is a ten. The fillers, or intermediate parts, are- - their revenge; their contrivances of secret crimes; their arts to hide them; their wit to excuse them; and their impudence to own them, when they can no longer be kept secret. Then the persons to whom they are most addicted, and on whom they commonly bestow the last favours, as stageplayers, fiddlers, singing-boys, and fencers. Those who pass for chaste amongst them, are not really so; but only, for their vast doweries, are rather suffered, than loved, by their own husbands. That they are imperious, domineering, scolding wives; set up for learn ing, and criticism in poetry; but are false judges: Love to speak Greek, (which was then the fashionable tongue, as French is now with us). That they plead causes at the bar, and play prizes at the bear-garden: That they are gossips and newsmongers; wrangle with their neighbours abroad, and beat their servants at home: That they lie-in for new faces once a month; are sluttish with their husbands in private, and paint and dress in public for their lovers: That they deal with Jews, diviners, and fortune-tellers; learn the arts of miscarrying and barrenness; buy children, and produce them for their own; murder their husbands' sons, if they stand in their way to his estate, and make their adulterers his heirs. From hence the poet proceeds to show the occasions of all these vices, their original, and how they were introduced in Rome by peace, wealth, and luxury. In

conclusion, if we will take the word of our malicious author, bad women are the general standing rule; and the good, but some few exceptions to it.

IN Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth,
There was that thing called Chastity on earth;
When in a narrow cave, their common shade,

The sheep, the shepherds, and their gods were laid;
When reeds, and leaves, and hides of beasts, were

spread,

By mountain-housewives, for their homely bed, And mossy pillows raised, for the rude husband's

head.

Unlike the niceness of our modern dames,
(Affected nymphs, with new-affected names,)
The Cynthias, and the Lesbias of our years,
Who for a sparrow's death dissolve in tears,
Those first unpolished matrons, big and bold,
Gave suck to infants of gigantic mould;

Rough as their savage lords, who ranged the wood,
And, fat with acorns, belched their windy food.
For when the world was buxom, fresh, and young,
Her sons were undebauched, and therefore strong;
And whether born in kindly beds of earth,
Or struggling from the teeming oaks to birth,
Or from what other atoms they begun,
No sires they had, or, if a sire, the sun.
Some thin remains of chastity appeared
Even under Jove, * but Jove without a beard;
Before the servile Greeks had learnt to swear
By heads of kings; while yet the bounteous year
Her common fruits in open plains exposed;
Ere thieves were feared, or gardens were inclosed.

* When Jove had driven his father into banishment, the Silver Age began, according to the poets.

At length uneasy Justice upwards flew,
And both the sisters to the stars withdrew; †
From that old æra whoring did begin,

So venerably ancient is the sin.

Adulterers next invade the nuptial state,

And marriage-beds creaked with a foreign weight;
All other ills did iron times adorn,

But whores and silver in one age were born.
Yet thou, they say, for marriage dost provide;
Is this an age to buckle with a bride?
They say thy hair the curling art is taught,
The wedding-ring perhaps already bought;
A sober man like thee to change his life!
What fury would possess thee with a wife?
Art thou of every other death bereft,
No knife, no ratsbane, no kind halter left?
(For every noose compared to her's is cheap.)
Is there no city-bridge from whence to leap?
Would'st thou become her drudge, who dost enjoy
A better sort of bedfellow, thy boy?

He keeps thee not awake with nightly brawls,
Nor, with a begged reward, thy pleasure palls;
Nor, with insatiate heavings, calls for more,
When all thy spirits were drained out before.
But still Ursidius courts the marriage-bait,
Longs for a son to settle his estate,

And takes no gifts, though every gaping heir
Would gladly grease the rich old bachelor.
What revolution can appear so strange,
As such a lecher such a life to change?
A rank, notorious whoremaster, to choose
To thrust his neck into the marriage-noose?

The poet makes Justice and Chastity sisters; and says, that they fled to heaven together, and left earth for ever.

He who so often. in a dreadful fright,

Had, in a coffer, 'scaped the jealous cuckold's sight;
That he, to wedlock dotingly betrayed,

Should hope, in this lewd town, to find a maid!—
The man's grown mad! to ease his frantic pain,
Run for the surgeon, breathe the middle vein;
But let a heifer, with gilt horns, be led
To Juno, regent of the marriage-bed;
And let him every deity adore,

If his new bride prove not an arrant whore,
In head, and tail, and every other pore.

On Ceres' feast, restrained from their delight,
Few matrons there, but curse the tedious night;
Few whom their fathers dare salute, such lust
Their kisses have, and come with such a gust.
With ivy now adorn thy doors, and wed;
Such is thy bride, and such thy genial bed.
Think'st thou one man is for one woman meant?
She sooner with one eye would be content.

}

And yet, 'tis noised, a maid did once appear In some small village, though fame says not where. 'Tis possible; but sure no man she found; "Twas desart all about her father's ground. And yet some lustful God might there make bold; Are Jove and Mars grown impotent and old? Many a fair nymph has in a cave been spread, And much good love without a feather-bed. Whither would'st thou, to chuse a wife, resort, The park, the mall, the playhouse, or the court? Which way soever thy adventures fall, Secure alike of chastity in all.

One sees a dancing-master capering high, And raves, and pisses, with pure extacy;

When the Roman women were forbidden to bed with their husbands.