[31] Persius died in his 30th year, in the 8th year of Nero's reign. Lucan died before he was twenty-seven.
[32] Casaubon's edition is accompanied, "Cum Persiana Horatii imitatione."
[33] A Stoic philosopher to whom Persius addresses his 5th Satire.
[34] The famous Gilbert Burnet, the Buzzard of our author's "Hind and Panther," but for whom he seems now disposed to entertain some respect.
[35] Dryden alludes to the beautiful description which Horace has given of his father's paternal and watchful affection in the 6th Satire of the 1st Book. Wycherley, the friend for whom he wishes a father of equal tenderness, after having been gayest of the gay, applauded by theatres, and the object of a monarch's jealousy, was finally thrown into jail for debt, and lay there seven long years, his father refusing him any assistance. And, although in 1697, he was probably at liberty, for King James had interposed in his favour and paid a great part of his debts, he continued to labour under pecuniary embarrassments untill his father's death and even after he had succeeded to his entailed property.
[36] The abuse of personal satires, or lampoons, as they were called, was carried to a prodigious extent in the days of Dryden, when every man of fashion was obliged to write verses; and those who had neither poetry nor wit, had recourse to ribaldry and libelling. Some observations on these lampoons may be found prefixed to the Epistle to Julian, among the pieces ascribed to Dryden.
[37] Wycherley, author of the witty comedy so called.
[38] The precise dates of Juvenal's birth and death are disputed; but it is certain he flourished under Domitian, famous for his cruelty against men and insects. Juvenal was banished by the tyrant, in consequence of reflecting upon the actor Paris. He is generally said to have died of grief; but Lepsius contends, that he survived even the accession of Hadrian.
[39] The learned Barten Holyday was born at Oxford, in the end of the 16th century. Wood says, he was second to none for his poetry and sublime fancy, and brings in witness his "smooth translation of rough Persius," made before he was twenty years of age. He wrote a play called "Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts," which was acted at Christ Church College, before James I., and, though extremely dull and pedantic, was ill received by his Majesty. Holyday's version of Juvenal was not published till after his death, when, in 1673, it was inscribed to the dean and canons of Christ Church. As he had adopted the desperate resolution of comprising every Latin line within an English one, the modern reader has often reason to complain, with the embarrassed gentleman in the "Critic," that the interpreter is the harder to be understood of the two.
[40] Sir Robert Stapylton, a gentleman of an ancient family in Yorkshire, who followed the fortune of Charles I. in the civil war, besides several plays and poems, published a version of Juvenal, under the title of "The manners of Men described in sixteen Satires by Juvenal." There are two editions, the first published in 1647, and the last and most perfect in 1660. Sir Robert Stapylton died in 1669. His verse is as harsh and uncouth as that of Holyday, who indeed charged him with plagiary; though one would have thought the nature of the commodity would have set theft at defiance.