That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this O'er night was bowfy, and goes cut to pifs:

So many rubs appear, the time is gone

For hearing, and the tedious fuit goes on:
But buff and belt-men never know these cares,
No time, nor trick of law, their action bars:
Their cause they to an easier iffue put:
They will be heard, or they lug out, and cut.
Another branch of their revenue ftill
Remains, beyond their boundless right to kill,
Their father yet alive, impow'r'd to make a will.
For, what their prowefs gain'd, the law declares
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs:
No fhare of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the fon fights well, and plunders better,
Like ftout Coranus, his old fhaking fire
Does a remembrance in his will defire:
Inquifitive of fights, and longs in vain
To find him in the number of the flain:
But ftill he lives, and rifing by the war,
Enjoys his gains, and has enough to fpare:
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part

To cherish valour, and reward defert:

Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore; Sometimes be loufy, but be never poor.

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

PERSIU S.

VOL. IV.

Ν

THE

FIRST SATIRË

OF

PERSIUS.

Argument of the PROLOGUE to the First Satire. The defign of the author was to conceal his name and quality. He lived in the dangerous times of the tyrant Nero; and aims particularly at him in moft of his fatires. For which reason, though he was a Roman knight, and of a plentiful fortune, be would appear in this prologue but a beggarly poet, who writes for bread. After this, he breaks into the bufinefs of the first fatire; which is chiefly to decry the poetry then in fashion, and the impudence of those who were endeavouring to pass their stuff upon the world.

PROLOGUE

TO THE

FIRST SA T I R E.

Never did on cleft Parnaffus dream,

Nor tafte the facred Heliconian stream;
Nor can remember when my brain infpir'd,
Was, by the Mufes, into madness fir'd.
My share in pale Pyrene I refign;

And claim no part in all the mighty Nine.
Statues, with winding ivy crown'd, belong
To nobler poets, for a nobler fong:
Heedlefs of verfe, and hopeless of the crown,
Scarce half a wit, and more than half a clown,
Before the shrine I lay my rugged numbers down.
Who taught the parrot human notes to try,
Or with a voice endu'd the chatt'ring pye?
'Twas witty want, fierce hunger to appeafe:
Want taught their masters, and their masters these.
Let gain, that gilded bait, be hung on high,
The hungry witlings have it in their eye;
Pyes, crows, and daws, poetic prefents bring:
You fay they squeak; but they will fwear they fing.