Be mindful of your friend; and fend me word, And add new venom when you write of Rome. THE SIXTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL. THE ARGUMENT. This fatire, of almost double length to any of the reft, is a bitter invective against the fair fex. 'Tis indeed, a common-place, from whence all the moderns have notoriously folen their sharpest railleries. In his other fatires, the poet has only glanced on fome particular women, and generally fccurged the men. But this he referved wholly for the ladies. How they had offended him I know not: but upon the whole matter he is not to be excufed for imputing to all, the vices of fome few amongst them. Neither was it generously done of bim, 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 fex, if all had been true which he alledges against them: for that had been to put an end to human kind. And to bid us be ware of their artifices, is a kind of filent acknowledgment, that they have more wit than men: which turns the fatire upon us,, and particularly upon the poet; who thereby makes a compliment, where he meant a libel. If he intended only to exercife his wit, he has forfeited bis 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 bis accufations. The whole world must allow this to be the wittiest of his fatires; and truly he had need of all his parts, to maintain with so much violence, fo unjust a charge. I am satisfied ke will bring but few over to his opinion: and on that confideration chiefly I ventured to translate bim. Tho there wanted not another reason, which was, that no one elfe would undertake it: at least, Sir C. S. who could have done more right to the author, after a long delay, at length abfolutely refused fo 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 fatisfy 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 abber which was the most in rence the vices of an age, They will befs them famous of any on record. felves when they behold those examples, related of Domitian's time: they will give back to antiquity those monsters it produced: and believe with reafon, that the fpecies of those women is extinguifked ; or at least, that they were never bere propagated. I may fafely therefore proceed to the argument of a fatire, which is no way relating to them: and first obferve, that my author makes their luft the most heroic of their vices: the rest are in a manner but digreffion. He fkims them over; but he dwells. on this: when he seems to have taken his last leave of it, on the fudden he returns to it: 'tis one branch of it in Hippia, another in Messalina, but luft is the main body of the tree. He begins with this text in the first line, and takes it up with intermifons to the end of the chapter. Every vice is a loader, but that's a ten. The fillers, or intermediate parts, are their revenge; their contrivances of fecret crimes; their arts to hide them their wit to excufe them; and their impudence to own them, when they can no longer be kept fecret. Then the perfons to whom they are most addicted; ; and on whom they commonly bestow the laft favours: as ftage-players, fiders, finging-boys, and fencers. Those who pass for chaste amongst them, are not really fo; but only for their vaft dowries, are rather fuffered, than loved by their own bufbands. That they are impericus, domineering, Scolding wives: fet up for learning and criticism in poetry; but are falfe judges. Love to speak Greek (which was then the fashionable tongue, as French is now with us.) That they plead caufes at the bar, and play prizes at the bear-garden. That they are goffips and news-mongers: wrangle with their neighbours abroad, and beat their fervants at kome. That they lie-in for new faces once a month, are fluttish with their kufbands in private; and paint and dress in public for their lovers. That they deal with Jew, diviners, and fortune-tellers: learn the arts of mifcarrying, and barrenness. Buy children, and produce them for their own. Murder their husbands fons, if they ftand in their way to his eftate; and make their adulterers bis beirs. From hence the poet proceeds to shew the occafions of all thefe vices, their original, and how they were introduced in Rome, by peace, wealth, and luxury. In conclufion, if we will take the word of cur malicious author, bad women are the ge |