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That, lost in wonder, you will swear
Apollo and the Nine are there!

And this is nothing to the purpose. The Muse may indeed pour forth nectar from her lips; but to sing it surpasses her ability. The quotation from Pindar,

Και εγω νεκταρ χύλον,

Μοισάν δοσιν, αθλοφόροις

Ανδρασιν πεμπων, κ. τ. α

is still more idly brought forward. "Pegaseian nectar," in a word, is both poetry and sense; but the instant we attempt to " warble," or even to "croak it," it loses its character, and becomes mere jargon. If the criticks, after all, will not be satisfied without a Latin authority for the use of melos with the first syllable long, Marcilius has one at their service : "Matronæ melos complent spectare faventes."

ENN. Annal. xiii.

SATIRE I.

Argument.

There is something peculiar in the opening of this Satire. The poet begins as if he intended a moral essay: and when interrupted by the apposite question of his friend, wanders, without much apparent connection, into a tritical censure of the wretched taste of the times.

To the contemporaries of Persius, this must have been a very amusing performance - always excepted those whose works form the subject of ridicule :~to us, who are ignorant of the true nature of his parodies, on which much of his satire originally depended, and who cannot, in a single instance, appropriate them with certainty, it is not altogether so pleasant: Enough, however, remains to give a most favourable impression of the humour and good taste of the youthful critic. He begins with expressing his supreme contempt of that mania for public recitation which had already excited the ridicule of Horace, and which, not long after this, called forth the spleen of Juvenal; and gives an amusing picture of one of those versifiers, and his auditory. These are ancient sinners, and delight in impurity. We are next introduced to a younger set, whose passion appears to be the mawkishly tender and delicate, and who die away to the nasal sound of elegiack woe. The cause of this depravation of taste is ingeniously traced to the pedantic nurture of the schools, and the interested and ignorant admiration of sycophants and dependants. The poet then makes a digression to the bar, of which the language was grossly vitiated by a meretricious glare of elocution, and an affected display of rhetorical subtleties: returning to the poets, he parodies and ridicules the favourites of fashion; this excites the alarm of his friend, and draws forth some cautious advice, which, as generally happens, only serves to render the writer more daring, and to give a spirited conclusion to, the Satire.

A. PERSII FLACCI

SATIRE.

[SAT. I. VER. 1—4.

CURAS hominum! o quantum est in rebus

inane!

"Quis leget hæc ?" Min' tu istud ais?

[blocks in formation]

"Nemo,

"Vel duo, vel nemo; turpe et miserabile!" Quare? Ne mihi Polydamas, et Troïades Labeonem

VER. 1. Alas, for man! &c.] Sir W. Drummond pleasantly notices the mass of recondite wisdom which Casaubon supposed to be conveyed in this simple passage: but he misapprehends the commentator when he imagines that he termed it a “ facetious" opening of the Satire. By satiricus cachinnus, Casaubon meant an angry sneer; and the object of his interminable criticism on the words, is to prove that they possess the severe gravity of an academick thesis. Casaubon is, indeed, extravagantly laudatory: he finds a great resemblance between O curas hominum, and the opening of Ecclesiastes! and is persuaded that if the Romans had been as well acquainted with the Hebrews as with the Greeks, they would, at once, have exclaimed that Persius had pilfered the expression from the Royal Preacher.

But though the verse may not contain all that was seen in it

SATIRES

OF

PERSIUS.

[SAT. I. V. 1-6.

ALAS, for man! how vain are all his cares!
And oh! what bubbles, his most grave affairs!
"Tush! who will read such thread-bare-?"
This to me?

"Not one, by Jove." Not one? "Well! two, or three; Or rather-none: a piteous case, in truth!" Why piteous? lest Polydamas, forsooth,

by Casaubon, it is not altogether so vague and irrelevant as some of the criticks have been pleased to represent it. It is connected with the Scribimus indocti, &c. which follows; though the sudden intervention of a new speaker appears to have diverted the poet's attention for a moment, from the immediate subject of his satire.

VER. 6. Lest Polydamas, &c.] The criticks are sorely scandalized at this designation of Nero, which must have been detected at an early period, as it is noticed by the pseudo-Cornutus; and it is not improbable but some blundering courtier may have addressed that prince on the occasion, as Goldsmith is said to have done a late statesman on the appearance of the Letters to Malagrida — “ I wonder why they should

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