For then the little glebe, improved with care,
Largely supplied with vegetable fare,
The good old man, the wife in childbed laid,
And four hale boys, that round the cottage played,
Three free-born, one a slave: while, on the board,
Huge porringers, with wholesome pottage stored,
Smoked for their elder brothers, who were now,
Hungry and tired, expected from the plough.
GIFFORD.
His handling of the essential weapons of satire, scathing epigram, and impetuous rhetoric, contribute equally to his success. He has the capacity of branding a character with eternal shame in a few terse trenchant lines. Who can forget the Greek adventurer of the third satire?—
grammaticus rhetor geometres pictor aliptes augur schoenobates medicus magus, omnia novit Graeculus esuriens; in caelum miseris, ibit (iii. 76);
A cook, a conjurer, a rhetorician,
A painter, pedant, a geometrician,
A dancer on the ropes and a physician;
All things the hungry Greek exactly knows,
And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes.
DRYDEN.
or the summary of Domitian's reign with which he dates the story of the gigantic turbot?—
cum iam semianimum laceraret Flavius orbem
ultimus et calvo serviret Roma Neroni (iv. 37);
When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore
The prostrate world, which bled at every pore,
And Rome beheld, in body as in mind,
A bald-pate Nero rise to curse mankind.
GIFFORD.
or the curse upon the legacy-hunter Pacuvius?—
vivat Pacuvius quaeso vel Nestora totum, possideat quantum rapuit Nero, montibus aurum exaequet, nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo (xii. 128).
Health to the man! and may he thus get more
Than Nero plundered! pile his shining store
High, mountain high: in years a Nestor prove,
And, loving none, ne'er know another's love!
GIFFORD.