I have avoided, as much as I could possibly, the borrowed learning of marginal notes and illustrations, and for that reason have translated this satire somewhat largely; and freely own, (if it be a fault,) that I have likewise omitted most of the proper names, because I thought they would not much edify the reader. To conclude, if in two or three places I have deserted all the commentators, it is because I thought they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much obscurity, that too much room is left for guessing.
Still shall I hear, and never quit the score,
Stunned with hoarse Codrus'[51] Theseid, o'er and o'er?
Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play
Unpunished murder a long summer's day?
Huge Telephus,[52] a formidable page,
Cries vengeance; and Orestes'[53] bulky rage,
Unsatisfied with margins closely writ,
Foams o'er the covers, and not finished yet.
No man can take a more familiar note
Of his own home, than I of Vulcan's grott,
Or Mars his grove,[54] or hollow winds that blow
From Ætna's top, or tortured ghosts below.
I know by rote the famed exploits of Greece,
The Centaurs' fury, and the Golden Fleece;
Through the thick shades the eternal scribbler bawls,
And shakes the statues on their pedestals.
The best and worst[55] on the same theme employs
His muse, and plagues us with an equal noise.
Provoked by these incorrigible fools,
I left declaiming in pedantic schools;
Where, with men-boys, I strove to get renown,
Advising Sylla to a private gown.[56]
But, since the world with writing is possest, }
I'll versify in spite; and do my best, }
To make as much waste paper as the rest. }
But why I lift aloft the satire's rod,
And tread the path which famed Lucilius[57] trod,
Attend the causes which my muse have led:—
When sapless eunuchs mount the marriage-bed;
When mannish Mævia,[58] that two-handed whore,
Astride on horseback hunts the Tuscan boar;
When all our lords are by his wealth outvied,
Whose razor on my callow beard was tried;[59]
When I behold the spawn of conquered Nile,
Crispinus, both in birth and manners vile,[60]
Pacing in pomp, with cloak of Tyrian dye,
Changed oft a-day for needless luxury;
And finding oft occasion to be fanned,
Ambitious to produce his lady-hand;
Charged with light summer-rings his fingers sweat,[61]
Unable to support a gem of weight:
Such fulsome objects meeting every where,
'Tis hard to write, but harder to forbear.
To view so lewd a town, and to refrain,
What hoops of iron could my spleen contain!
When pleading Matho, borne abroad for air,[62]
With his fat paunch fills his new-fashioned chair,
And after him the wretch in pomp conveyed,
Whose evidence his lord and friend betrayed,
And but the wished occasion does attend }
From the poor nobles the last spoils to rend, }
Whom even spies dread as their superior fiend, }
And bribe with presents; or, when presents fail,
They send their prostituted wives for bail:
When night-performance holds the place of merit,
And brawn and back the next of kin disherit;
(For such good parts are in preferment's way,)
The rich old madam never fails to pay
Her legacies, by nature's standard given,
One gains an ounce, another gains eleven:
A dear-bought bargain, all things duly weighed,
For which their thrice concocted blood is paid.
With looks as wan, as he who in the brake
At unawares has trod upon a snake;
Or played at Lyons a declaiming prize,
For which the vanquished rhetorician dies.[63]
What indignation boils within my veins, }
When perjured guardians, proud with impious gains, }
Choke up the streets, too narrow for their trains! }
Whose wards, by want betrayed, to crimes are led
Too foul to name, too fulsome to be read!
When he who pilled his province 'scapes the laws,
And keeps his money, though he lost his cause;
His fine begged off, contemns his infamy,
Can rise at twelve, and get him drunk ere three;
Enjoys his exile, and, condemned in vain,
Leaves thee, prevailing province, to complain.[64]
Such villanies roused Horace into wrath;
And tis more noble to pursue his path,[65]
Than an old tale of Diomede to repeat, }
Or labouring after Hercules to sweat, }
Or wandering in the winding maze of Crete; }
Or with the winged smith aloft to fly,
Or fluttering perish with his foolish boy.
With what impatience must the muse behold
The wife, by her procuring husband sold?
For though the law makes null the adulterer's deed
Of lands to her, the cuckold may succeed,
Who his taught eyes up to the ceiling throws,
And sleeps all over but his wakeful nose.
When he dares hope a colonel's command,
Whose coursers kept, ran out his father's land;
Who yet a stripling, Nero's chariot drove, }
Whirled o'er the streets, while his vain master strove }
With boasted art to please his eunuch love[66] }
Would it not make a modest author dare
To draw his table-book within the square,
And fill with notes, when, lolling at his ease,
Mecænas-like,[67] the happy rogue he sees
Borne by six wearied slaves in open view,
Who cancelled an old will, and forged a new;
Made wealthy at the small expence of signing
With a wet seal, and a fresh interlining?
The lady, next, requires a lashing line,
Who squeezed a toad into her husband's wine:
So well the fashionable medicine thrives,
That now 'tis practised even by country wives;
Poisoning, without regard of fame or fear,
And spotted corpse are frequent on the bier.
Wouldst thou to honours and preferments climb?
Be bold in mischief, dare some mighty crime,
Which dungeons, death, or banishment deserves;
For virtue is but dryly praised, and starves.
Great men to great crimes owe their plate embost,}
Fair palaces, and furniture of cost, }
And high commands; a sneaking sin is lost. }
Who can behold that rank old letcher keep
His son's corrupted wife, and hope to sleep?[68]
Or that male-harlot, or that unfledged boy,
Eager to sin, before he can enjoy?
If nature could not, anger would indite
Such woful stuff as I or Sh——ll[69] write.
Count from the time, since old Deucalion's boat,
Raised by the flood, did on Parnassus float,[70]
And, scarcely mooring on the cliff, implored
An oracle how man might be restored;
When softened stones and vital breath ensued,
And virgins naked were by lovers viewed;
What ever since that golden age was done,
What human kind desires, and what they shun;
Rage, passions, pleasures, impotence of will,
Shall this satirical collection fill.
What age so large a crop of vices bore,
Or when was avarice extended more?
When were the dice with more profusion thrown?
The well-filled fob not emptied now alone,
But gamesters for whole patrimonies play;
The steward brings the deeds which must convey
The lost estate: what more than madness reigns,
When one short sitting many hundreds drains,
And not enough is left him to supply }
Board-wages, or a footman's livery? }
What age so many summer-seats did see? }
Or which of our forefathers fared so well,
As on seven dishes at a private meal?
Clients of old were feasted; now, a poor
Divided dole is dealt at the outward door;
Which by the hungry rout is soon dispatched:
The paltry largess, too, severely watched,
Ere given; and every face observed with care,
That no intruding guest usurp a share.
Known, you receive; the crier calls aloud }
Our old nobility of Trojan blood, }
Who gape among the crowd for their precarious food. }
The prætor's and the tribune's voice is heard;
The freedman jostles, and will be preferred;
First come, first served, he cries; and I, in spite
Of your great lordships, will maintain my right;
Though born a slave, though my torn ears are bored,[71]
'Tis not the birth, 'tis money makes the lord.
The rents of five fair houses I receive;
What greater honours can the purple give?
The poor patrician is reduced to keep,
In melancholy walks, a grazier's sheep:
Not Pallus nor Licinius[72] had my treasure;
Then let the sacred tribunes wait my leisure.
Once a poor rogue, 'tis true, I trod the street,
And trudged to Rome upon my naked feet:
Gold is the greatest God; though yet we see
No temples raised to money's majesty;
No altars fuming to her power divine,
Such as to valour, peace, and virtue shine,
And faith, and concord; where the stork on high[73]}
Seems to salute her infant progeny, }
Presaging pious love with her auspicious cry.— }
But since our knights and senators account,
To what their sordid begging vails amount,
Judge what a wretched share the poor attends,
Whose whole subsistence on those alms depends!
Their household fire, their raiment, and their food,
Prevented by those harpies;[74] when a wood
Of litters thick besiege the donor's gate,
And begging lords and teeming ladies wait
The promised dole; nay, some have learned the trick
To beg for absent persons; feign them sick,
Close mewed in their sedans, for fear of air; }
And for their wives produce an empty chair. }
This is my spouse; dispatch her with her share; }
'Tis Galla.—Let her ladyship but peep.—
No, sir, 'tis pity to disturb her sleep.[75]
Such fine employments our whole days divide:
The salutations of the morning tide
Call up the sun; those ended, to the hall
We wait the patron, hear the lawyers bawl;
Then to the statues; where amidst the race }
Of conquering Rome, some Arab shows his face, }
Inscribed with titles, and profanes the place;[76]}
Fit to be pissed against, and somewhat more.
The great man, home conducted, shuts his door.
Old clients, wearied out with fruitless care,
Dismiss their hopes of eating, and despair;
Though much against the grain, forced to retire,
Buy roots for supper, and provide a fire.
Meantime his lordship lolls within at ease,
Pampering his paunch with foreign rarities;
Both sea and land are ransacked for the feast,
And his own gut the sole invited guest.
Such plate, such tables, dishes dressed so well,
That whole estates are swallowed at a meal.
Even parasites are banished from his board;
(At once a sordid and luxurious lord;)
Prodigious throat, for which whole boars are drest;
(A creature formed to furnish out a feast.)
But present punishment pursues his maw,
When, surfeited and swelled, the peacock raw
He bears into the bath; whence want of breath,
Repletions, apoplex, intestate death.
His fate makes table-talk, divulged with scorn,
And he, a jest, into his grave is borne.
No age can go beyond us; future times
Can add no farther to the present crimes.
Our sons but the same things can wish and do; }
Vice is at stand, and at the highest flow. }
Then, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds can blow! }
Some may, perhaps, demand what muse can yield
Sufficient strength for such a spacious field?
From whence can be derived so large a vein,
Bold truths to speak, and spoken to maintain,
When godlike freedom is so far bereft
The noble mind, that scarce the name is left?
Ere scandalum magnatum was begot,
No matter if the great forgave or not;
But if that honest licence now you take, }
If into rogues omnipotent you rake, }
Death is your doom, impaled upon a stake; }
Smeared o'er with wax, and set on fire, to light
The streets, and make a dreadful blaze by night.
Shall they, who drenched three uncles in a draught
Of poisonous juice, be then in triumph brought,
Make lanes among the people where they go, }
And, mounted high on downy chariots, throw }
Disdainful glances on the crowd below? }
Be silent, and beware, if such you see;
'Tis defamation but to say, That's he!
Against bold Turnus the great Trojan arm,
Amidst their strokes the poet gets no harm:
Achilles may in epic verse be slain,
And none of all his myrmidons complain:
Hylas may drop his pitcher, none will cry,
Not if he drown himself for company;
But when Lucilius brandishes his pen,
And flashes in the face of guilty men,
A cold sweat stands in drops on every part,
And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.[77]
Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time,
When entered once the dangerous lists of rhime;
Since none the living villains dare implead,
Arraign them in the persons of the dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Codrus, or it may be Cordus, a bad poet, who wrote the life and actions of Theseus.—[This and almost all the following notes are taken from Dryden's first edition. Those which are supplied by the present Editor, are distinguished by the letter E.]
[52] The name of a tragedy.
[53] Another tragedy.
[54] Some commentators take this grove to be a place where poets were used to repeat their works to the people; but more probably, both this and Vulcan's grott, or cave, and the rest of the places and names here mentioned, are only meant for the common places of Homer in his Iliads and Odyssies.
[55] That is, the best and the worst poets.
[56] This was one of the themes given in the schools of rhetoricians, in the deliberative kind; whether Sylla should lay down the supreme power of dictatorship, or still keep it?
[57] Lucilius, the first satirist of the Romans, who wrote long before Horace.