At harvest-home, and on the shearing-day,
When he should thanks to Pan and Pales pay, 65
And better Ceres,* trembling to approach
The little barrel, which he fears to broach;
He 'says the wimble, often draws it back,
And deals to thirsty servants but a smack.
To a short meal he makes a tedious grace,
Before the barley-pudding comes in place:
Then bids fall on; himself, for saving charges,
A peeled sliced onion eats, and tipples verjuice ?"+
"Thus fares the drudge: but thou, whose
life's a dream

Of lazy pleasures, tak'st a worse extreme.
'Tis all thy business, business how to shun;
To bask thy naked body in the sun;
Suppling thy stiffened joints with fragrant oil:
Then, in thy spacious garden walk awhile,
To suck the moisture up, and soak it in;
And this, thou think'st, but vainly think'st, unseen.
But know, thou art observed; and there are those,
Who, if they durst, would all thy secret sins
expose;

The depilation of thy modest part;

Thy catamite, the darling of thy heart,

His engine-hand, and every lewder art,

When, prone to bear, and patient to receive, Thou tak'st the pleasure which thou canst not

give.

70

75

80

85

With odorous oil thy head and hair are sleek,
And then thou kemb'st the tuzzes on thy cheek; 90

*Pan, the god of shepherds, and Pales, the goddess presiding over rural affairs; whom Virgil invocates in the beginning of his second Georgic. I give the epithet of better to Ceres, because she first taught the use of corn for bread, as the poets tell us; men, in the first rude ages, feeding only on acorns, or mast, instead of bread.-D.

[Note the rhyme.—ED.]

95

Of these thy barbers take a costly care,
While thy salt tail is overgrown with hair
Not all thy pincers, nor unmanly arts,
Can smooth the roughness of thy shameful parts.
Not five, the strongest that the Circus breeds,*
From the rank soil can root those wicked weeds,
Though suppled first with soap, to ease thy pain;
The stubborn fern springs up, and sprouts again.
"Thus others we with defamations wound,
While they stab us, and so the jest goes round. 100
Vain are thy hopes, to 'scape censorious eyes;
Truth will appear through all the thin disguise:
Thou hast an ulcer which no leach can heal,
Though thy broad shoulder-belt the wound
conceal.

Say thou art sound and hale in every part,
We know, we know thee rotten at thy heart.
We know thee sullen, impotent, and proud:
Nor canst thou cheat thy nerve, who cheat'st
the crowd."

"But when they praise me in the neighbour-
hood,

When the pleased people take me for a god,

* The learned Holyday (who has made us amends for his bad poetry in this and the rest of these satires, with his excellent illustrations), here tells us, from good authority, that the number five does not allude to the five fingers of one man, but to five strong men, such as were skilful in the five robust exercises then in practice at Rome, and were performed in the circus, or public place ordained for them. These five he reckons up in this manner: 1. The cæstus, or whirlbats, described by Virgil in his fifth Æneid; and this was the most dangerous of all the rest. The 2d was the foot-race. The 3d, the discus, like the throwing a weighty ball, a sport now used in Cornwall, and other parts of England; we may see it daily practised in Red-Lion Fields. The 4th was the saltus or leaping; and the 5th, wrestling naked and besmeared with oil. They who practised in these five manly exercises were called Πένταθλοι.-D.

105

110

Shall I refuse their incense? Not receive

The loud applauses which the vulgar give?"
"If thou dost wealth with longing eyes behold,
And greedily art gaping after gold;

If some alluring girl, in gliding by,

Shall tip the wink, with a lascivious eye,

And thou, with a consenting glance, reply;
If thou thy own solicitor become,
And bidst arise the lumpish pendulum;
If thy lewd lust provokes an empty storm,
And prompts to more than nature can perform;
If, with thy guards, thou scour'st the streets by
night,

And dost in murders, rapes, and spoils delight;*
Please not thyself, the flattering crowd to hear,
"Tis fulsome stuff to feed thy itching ear.
Reject the nauseous praises of the times;
Give thy base poets back their cobbled rhymes:
Survey thy soul, not what thou dost appear,
But what thou art, and find the beggar there." +

*Persius durst not have been so bold with Nero as I dare now; and therefore there is only an intimation of that in him which I publicly speak; I mean, of Nero's walking the streets by night in disguise, and committing all sorts of outrages, for which he was sometimes well beaten.-D.

Look into thyself, and examine thy own conscience; there thou shalt find that, how wealthy soever thou appearest to the world, yet thou art but a beggar; because thou art destitute of all virtues, which are the riches of the soul. This also was a paradox of the Stoic school.-D.

115

120

125

THE FIFTH SATIRE

OF

PERSIUS.

INSCRIBED TO

THE REV. DR. BUSBY.

THE SPEAKERS

PERSIUS AND CORNUTUS.

THE ARGUMENT.

The judicious Casaubon, in his proem to this Satire, tells us that Aristophanes, the grammarian, being asked what poem of Archilochus' iambics he preferred before the rest, answered, the longest. His answer may justly be applied to the Fifth Satire; which, being of a greater length than any of the rest, is also by far the most instructive. For this reason I have selected it from all the others, and inscribed it to my learned master, Dr. Busby; to whom I am not only obliged myself for the best part of my own education, and that of my two sons; but have also received from him the first and truest taste of Persius. May he be pleased to find, in this translation, the gratitude, or at least some small acknowledgment, of his unworthy scholar, at the distance of forty-two years from the time when I departed from under his tuition. This Satire consists of two distinct parts: the first contains the praises of the Stoic philosopher, Cornutus, master and tutor to our Persius; it also declares the love and piety of Persius to his well-deserving master; and the mutual friendship

which continued betwixt them, after Persius was now grown a man; as also his exhortation to young noblemen, that they would enter themselves into his institution. From hence he makes an artful transition into the second part of his subject; wherein he first complains of the sloth of scholars, and afterwards persuades them to the pursuit of their true liberty. Here our author excellently treats that paradox of the Stoics which affirms that the wise or virtuous man is only free, and that all vicious men are naturally slaves; and, in the illustration of this dogma, he takes up the remaining part of this inimitable Satire.

PERSIUS.

OF ancient use to poets it belongs,

To wish themselves an hundred mouths and

tongues :

Whether to the well-lunged tragedian's rage
They recommend their labours of the stage,
Or sing the Parthian, when transfixed he lies,
Wrenching the Roman javelin from his thighs.

CORNUTUS.

And why would'st thou these mighty morsels choose,

Of words unchewed, and fit to choke the muse?
Let fustian poets with their stuff begone,
And suck the mists that hang o'er Helicon;
When Progne,* or Thyestes' + feast they write ;
And, for the mouthing actor, verse indite.
Thou neither like a bellows swell'st thy face,
As if thou wert to blow the burning mass

Tereus fell

* Progne was wife to Tereus, king of Thracia. in love with Philomela, sister to Progne, ravished her, and cut out her tongue; in revenge of which, Progne killed Itys, her own son by Tereus, and served him up at a feast, to be eaten by his father.-D.

†Thyestes and Atreus were brothers, both kings. Atreus, to revenge himself of his unnatural brother, killed the sons of Thyestes, and invited him to eat them.-D.

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