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, Ümbritius 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 inconveniencies 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 Prochytat 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 modell'd once the Roman state, S
In mighty councils with his nymph retired;¶
Though now the sacred shades and founts are hired
By banish'd 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 expell'd.
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 Embellish'd 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 increasing 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. t
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.
Here let Arturius live,* and such as he;
Such manners will with such a town agree.
Knaves, who in full assemblies have the knack
Of turning truth to lies, and white to black,
Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
By farm'd excise; can cleanse the common-shore,
And rent the fishery; can bear the dead,
And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed; All this for gain; for gain they sell their very head.
These fellows (see what fortune's power can do!)
Were once the minstrels of a country show;
Follow'd the prizes through each paltry town,
By trumpet cheeks and bloated faces known.
But now, grown rich, on drunken holidays,
At their own cost exhibit public plays;
Where, influenced by the rabble's bloody will,
With thumbs bent back, they popularly kill.t
From thence return'd, their sordid avarice rakes
In excrements again, and hires the jakes.
Why hire they not the town, not every thing,
Since such as they have fortune in a string,
Who, for her pleasure, can her fools advance,
And toss them topmost on the wheel of chance?
What's Rome to me, what business have I there?
I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear?
Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes,
Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times?
Unskill'd in schemes by planets to foreshow,
Like canting rascals, how the wars will
* Arturius means any debauched wicked fellow, who gains by the times.
In a prize of sword-players, when one of the fencers had the other at his mercy, the vanquished party implored the clemency of the spectators. If they thought he deserved it not, they held up their thumbs, and bent them backwards in sign of death.
I neither will, nor can prognosticate
To the young gaping heir, his father's fate
Nor in the entrails of a toad have pry'd,
Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride:
For want of these town-virtues, thus alone
I go, conducted on my way by none;
Like a dead member from the body rent,
Maim'd, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is loved, but he who loves the times,
Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes,
Labouring with secrets which his bosom burn,
Yet never must to public light return?
They get reward alone, who can betray;
For keeping honest counsels none will pay,
He who can Verres when he will accuse,
The purse of Verres may at pleasure use:
But let not all the gold which Tagus hides,
And pays the sea in tributary tides,+
Be bribe sufficient to corrupt thy breast,
Or violate with dreams thy peaceful rest.
Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold,
Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold.
I haste to tell thee,-nor shall shame oppose,What confidants our wealthy Romans chose And whom I must abhor: to speak my mind, I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find; To see the scum of Greece transplanted here, Received like gods, is what I cannot bear.
* Verres, prætor in Sicily, contemporary with Cicero, by whom accused of oppressing the province, he was condemned: his name is used here for any rich vicious man.
+ Tagus, a famous river in Spain, which discharges itself into the ocean near Lisbon, in Portugal. It was held of old to be full of golden sands.
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