ipsa dierum festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro maiestas tandemque redit ad pulpita notum exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum in gremio matris formidat rusticus infans, aequales habitus illic similesque videbis orchestram et populum, clari velamen honoris sufficiunt tunicae summis aedilibus albae (iii. 172).
Some distant parts of Italy are known,
Where none but only dead men wear a gown,
On theatres of turf, in homely state,
Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate;
* * * * *
The mimic yearly gives the same delights;
And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights.
Their habits (undistinguished by degrees)
Are plain alike; the same simplicity
Both on the stage and in the pit you see.
In his white cloak the magistrate appears;
The country bumpkin the same livery wears.
DRYDEN.
There is the poor gentleman's garret high on the topmost story of some tottering insula, close beneath the tiles, where the doves nest:
lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex ornamentum abaci nec non et parvulus infra cantharus, et recubans sub eodem marmore Chiro iamque vetus graecos servabat cista libellos, et divina opici rodebant carmina mures (iii. 203).
Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot,
That his short wife's short legs go dangling out
His cupboard's head six earthen pitchers graced,
Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed;
And to support this noble plate, there lay
A bending Chiron cast from honest clay;
His few Greek books a rotten chest contained,
Whose covers much of mouldiness complained;
Where mice and rats devoured poetic bread,
And on heroic verse luxuriously were fed.
DRYDEN.
There is the hurrying throng of the streets of Rome with all its dangers and discomforts:
nobis properantibus opstat unda prior, magno populus premit agmine lumbos qui sequitur; ferit hic cubito, ferit assere duro alter, at hic tignum capiti incutit, ille metretam. pinguia crura luto, planta mox undique magna calcor et in digito clavus mihi militis haeret. nonne vides quanto celebretur sportula fumo? centum convivae, sequitur sua quemque culina. Corbulo vix ferret tot vasa ingentia, tot res inpositas capiti, quas recto vertice portat servulus infelix et cursu ventilat ignem. scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum plaustra vehunt, nutant alte populoque minantur (iii. 243).
The press before him stops the client's pace;
The crowd that follows crush his panting sides,
And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides.
One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal,
A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole;
Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes,
And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes
Indents his legs behind in bloody rows.
See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate!
A hundred guests invited walk in state;
A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait:
Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear,
Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear;
Yet they must walk upright beneath the load,
Nay run, and running blow the sparkling flames abroad,
Their coats from botching newly brought are torn.
Unwieldy timber-trees in waggons borne,
Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie,
That nod and threaten ruin from on high.
DRYDEN.
Even in the later satires, where with the advance of age this pictorial gift begins to fail him and he tends to rely rather on brilliant rhetorical treatment of philosophical commonplaces, there are still flashes of the old power. The well-known description of the fall of Sejanus in the tenth satire is in his best manner, while even the humbler picture of the rustic family of primitive Rome in the fourteenth satire shows the same firmness of touch, the same eye for vivid and direct representation:
saturabat glaebula talis patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus vernula, tres domini, sed magnis fratribus horum a scrobe vel sulco redeuntibus altera cena amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae (166).