Speak how your tickling rhymes, like amorous spells, "Oh, spare my blushes! oh, in mercy spare!" "Wit's a wild fig-tree that takes root in vain, 40 50 Intrant, et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu. ¶ Quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum, et quæ semel intus Innata est, rupto jecore exierit caprificus? En pallor seniumque! O mores! usque adeone At pulchrum est digito monstrari, et dicier, Hic est ! Ten' cirratorum centum dictata fuisse 25 "See, on soft couches Rome's great sons reclined, Or some such tale by whimpering poets sung, Shall not, the turf lie lighter on his breast? Say, shall not violets spring and roses bloom? Nay, but you trespass now on common sense, "And merry-make, methinks, at truth's expense," 60 70 Pro nihilo pendas? Ecce, inter pocula quærunt 30 ¶ Hic aliquis, cui circum hunieros hyacinthina lana est, Rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus, Phyllidas, Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile si quid, Eliquat, et tenero supplantat verba palato, 35 Assensere viri :-Nunc non cinis ille poëtæ Nascentur violæ ? ¶ Rides (ait) et nimis uncis 40 The modern poet's advocate replies: "For is there that man breathing, who denies Know, brother disputant! (whoe'er thou art Should be the end and aim of all we do,- 80 90 Naribus indulges. An erit qui velle recuset ¶ Quisquis es, o modo quem ex adverso dicere feci! Non ego, cum scribo, si forte quid aptius exit- 45 50 "Auriculas asini Mida rex habet *, King Midas has a pair of ass's ears," Cornutus, apprehensive lest the Emperor should perceive it to be pointed against himself, softened into " Auriculas asini quis non habet, Who has not now a pair of ass's ears?" * Casaubon, upon the authority of this anecdote, reinstates the words supposed to have been rejected, and Koenig follows him. For my own part, I think the anonymous biographer very insufficient authority for altering any passage of Persius. Koenig thinks the story was made up to account for a variety of the text, and it seems very likely to be so. But I still think quis non habet the original reading. The evident allusion of Persius to the words which Ovid puts into the gossip Barber's mouth, probably induced some one to interline his copy of Persius with those words, and thus by degrees they were foisted into the text. But quis non habet could never arise from a gloss on the words Mida rex habet. The old Scholiast says that the four verses in Sat. 1, beginning Torva Mimalloneis are Nero's. But Cornutus would surely not have thought it worth his pains to turn off an oblique stroke at the Emperor, contained in the story of Midas's Barber, and at the same time have left Persius to fling Nero's own verses in his face. Both accounts are improbable in themselves, and inconsistent with each other. THE SATIRES OF A. PERSIUS FLACCUS. PROLOGUE. I NE'ER remember to have quaff'd Whose busts, by learned critics crown'd, The clasping ivy twines around. My rustic rhimes I bring myself To deck the Poet's sacred shelf. PROLOGUS. NEC fonte labra prolui Caballino, Nec in bicipiti somniâsse Parnasso Memini, ut repente sic Poëta prodirem. Heliconidasque pallidamque Pirenen Illis remitto, quorum imagines lambunt Hederæ sequaces: Ipse semipaganus Ad sacra vatum carmen affero nostrum. B 10 5 |