which words are evidently a continuation of the former, be applied to Nero? In what imaginable sense can a Roman Emperor be the same with an Edile of a petty borough? I will not be confident-but when I consider these two lines, Non hic qui in crepidas Graiorum ludere gestit, Sordidus; et lusco qui poscit dicere, Lusce! the latter appears to me to be merely an illustration or amplification of the former; and the poet seems to intimate that to ridicule the crepidas Graiorum, the peculiarities of a foreigner's dress, was as mean and void of feeling as to insult a man for his natural and personal deformities. 130. Arretî Ædilis. A petty bailiff or mayor of the municipal towns, who superintended weights and measures, the provisions of the markets, the roads, the theatres, &c. Horace in his journey to Brundusium met with a similar little great · man, puff'd with a little brief authority;' and Juvenal is perpetually ridiculing them. In the Italian villages (says Mr. Gifford, Juv. p. 334.) they still exist under the name of Podestas, and are as ragged and consequential as ever. 131. Abacus-a numerical board. The nature of this tangible arithmetic of the antients is described in Holiday's note, to which I must refer the reader. With respect to the secto in pulvere metas, meta (say the commentators) is a boundary; and a line is the boundary of a surface; therefore Meta may signify a line. This appears to me a most lame and impotent conclusion.' Meta in its original and strict acceptation is any thing in the shape of an upright cone, a figure which occurs more frequently than any other in the diagrams of the antient mathematicians. But Meta also signifies the goal in a race-ground, because it was set up in the shape above-described. Consequently nothing was more natural than for a person who wished to speak contemptuously of mathematicians, to call the cones which they described in the sand Meta, fetching his ideas from the most obvious object to which they bore a resemblance. A bold translator might render the word by Pot-hooks and Ladles ; Nobis non licet esse tam disertis. 134. Notwithstanding what has been urged to prove that the Placart or Bill affixed in public to announce the evening's entertainment is here meant, I cannot without stronger proofs, believe that the word Edictum, standing thus by itself, would convey any other idea to Roman ears than the Prætor's edict, which indeed appears to form a very proper line of reading for the self-complacent gentlemen alluded to in v. 129, 130. Calliroe I suppose to be the title of some paltry love-tale or tragedy of the times. Others take it to be the name of some noted courtezan. But the mention of another lady of the same description in the line immediately preceding, makes this interpretation the less probable. Besides, the general tenor of the concluding part of this satire makes against it. Persius is here telling us whom he would have for his readers, and whom not. Let not him be my reader (he cries) who can find a pleasure in laughing at the slipper of the Greek philosopher (which being a national peculiarity of dress is as little the object of just ridicule as personal deformity), thinking highly of himself, because forsooth as bailiff of some petty borough he has the privilege of breaking false measures ;-nor him (the poet goes on to say) who with conceited flippancy ridicules the mathematician's calculations and diagrams, and thinks it an excellent joke if some pert street-walker pulls the Cynic by the beard. To such fools, thus consequentially frivolous, and full of their own petty importance, I should recommend, in preference to my satires, the Prætor's edict for their morning study, and for their after-dinner's task the pages of Calliroe. There is an old Greek romance, intituled the Loves of Choreas and Calliroe, said to be written by one Chariton, of whom nothing is known. The work itself is supposed to have been produced toward the end of the fourth century, and is (according to the account of those who have read it) very wretched stuff. Who knows but this was borrowed, in part at least, or translated into Greek, from some older work of the same kind in Latin, to which Persius al ludes ?-Those who wish to know more of this old novel, may find a translation of the work reviewed in one of the early volumes of the Critical Review. NOTES ON SAT. II. 1. Meliore lapillo: literally, record this day with a lucky stone, that is, a white one. So Martial, assuring a friend that his birthday was as dear to him as his own, says: Felix utraque lux, diesque nobis Signandi melioribus lapillis. In another epigram, written on the return of a friend, he says: -hanc lucem lactea gemma notet. In another, wishing to express his opinion that his happy days. had exceeded in number his gloomy ones, he proceeds thus: -Si calculus omnis huc et illuc Diversus bicolorque digeratur, The phrase was proverbial among the Romans, and alluded to a custom of the Thracians or Scythians, or (which is very probable) of both. That the Romans ever actually reckoned their happy or unhappy days in this manner, can by no means be inferred. Though I am decidedly averse from that lax principle of translation which some have laid down, viz. that every allusion, not exactly congenial with modern ideas, may be discarded or changed for another more obvious, yet in the present instance the quaintness arising from verbal fidelity would have impaired the effect of what in the original is not an ungraceful introduction of the subject. The third and fourth lines I have taken the liberty of expanding considerably, to avoid too much abruptness. 5. Seneca in one of his epistles has treated the same subject and in a very similar manner. "Pray to God (says he) for a sound understanding; for health, first of the mind, and then of the body. There can be no objection to such prayers, however often repeated; for that man is no longer a slave to his passions, who has learned to ask of God nothing but what he can ask before the whole world. But what infatuation do we see in some people! They whisper to the Gods the basest petitions. If any one listen, they instantly leave off. Thus, what they are ashamed to let their fellow-creatures hear, they make no scruple of addressing to the Deity. Be it your care, my friend, so to live with mankind as if God saw you, so to converse with God as if all mankind overheard you." 10. Ebulliat. Some read ebullet as if from ebullo a word unknown to the Latin language: others ebullit contracted for ebullierit, a very unusual sort of contraction, to say the best of it. Among the various readings collected from the MSS. by Fülleborn and prefixed to his German translation, I find Ebulliat, which is probably the right reading. The letter I coalesces here with the following vowel so as to form but one syllable, and performs the office of a consonant like the letter Y in You. So Pariete is made a Dactyl in Virgil, and Fluviorum consists of three long syllables. The letter U was in like manner used occasionally as a consonant like our W. Thus, in Persius Sat. V. 93, Tenuia is a Dactyl, and in Ovid's Metamorphoses, iv. 225, Paruerunt consists of three long syllables. With regard to the meaning of the word Ebulliat, to bubble forth, it is said of the accomplishment of any event long and anxiously expected. Thus Eschylus in his tragedy of the Seven Chiefs, 'Eğer yag Οιδιπου κατευγματα, the curses of Edipus have reached their destined end. Many of the commentators and translators have mistaken the meaning of præclarum here, supposing it to intimate the pomp and splendour of the funeral of the uncle; whereas the word is used here and elsewhere to express a longing wish after some fu ture event. Thus Cicero begins his fine apostrophe at the end of his Dialogue de Senectute O præclarum diem! &c. But see and mpare the notes of Casaubon and Autumnus. 12. Dextro Hercule. Hercules, as well as Mercury, was esteemed the deity that presided over windfalls or accidental gain. See Hor. L. 2. Sat. v. 49. and vi. 12. 13. Impello-to follow close at the heels of any one-to urge him forward—and hence sometimes to displace, as in the 59th verse of this very satire, Aurum impulit æra. Expungam is evidently an allusion to the custom of erasing the name of him whose office devolves to another. 14. Servius and some modern commentators on Persius understand ducitur as equivalent with effertur in sepulturam; for what reason I cannot see, since to marry a third wife implies the death of two former ones, Brewster has not only mistaken his author's meaning in this line, but has absolutely burlesqued him: One everlasting wife sticks close by me, While neighbour Nerius has disposed of three! I can see no necessity for supposing that the gentleman who now speaks wished to dispose of his wife at all. It is merely one of his devotional inuendos: It is very hard (says he) if I may not be favoured with the death of my rich ward, when Nerius has been lucky enough to bury two wives, and having enriched himself with their portions was now about to marry a third. Martial has an epigram addressed to one who had been a vast deal more fortunate than this Nerius: Septima jam, Phileros, tibi conditur uxor in agro : Sev'n portion'd dames of noble birth Has Phileros consign'd to earth: Be thankful, Phileros !-for few Reap from that earth such crops as you. 15. For the expression impiously devout' I am indebted to Dryden. Tiberino in gurgite, &c. is like Horace's Nudus in Tiberi stabit, 1. 2. Sat, iii. 291. See also Juv. vi. 521. 22. I agree with Koenig in rejecting the authority of the old |