And wisdom, and high blood: the lucky, too,
May take at will the senatorial shoe;

Be first-rate speakers, pleaders, every thing;
And, though they croak like frogs, be thought to
sing.

O, there's a difference, friend, beneath what sign We spring to light, or kindly or malign ! FORTUNE IS ALL. Fortune can, if she please, Make kings of pedants, and, with equal ease,

VER. 294. May take at will the senatorial shoe ;] The shoes of senators differed from those of the people, in various ways; but chiefly in colour, shape, and ornament. The colour, Middleton says, in his Treatise on the Rom. Sen. was invariably black, while others wore them of any colour, according to their fancies; the form was somewhat like a short boot, reaching nearly to the middle of the leg, as they are sometimes seen in statues, and basreliefs; and the appropriate and peculiar ornament was a figure of a half-moon sewed upon the fore-part, near the instep. Plutarch, in his Quest. Roman. proposes several reasons for this emblem; and more may be found in the commentators on Juvenal. It is probable, after all, however, that it was merely intended to express the letter C, as the numerical sign of a hundred, the original number of the senators.

Cicero tells a pleasant story of a man who, during the confusion that followed the death of Cæsar, got into the senate merely by changing his shoes: Est etiam quidam senator voluntarius lectus ipse a se. Apertam curiam vidit post Cæsaris necem, mutavit calceos, pater conscriptus repente est factus! Phillip. XIII. 13.

VER. 299.

Fortune can, if she please,

Make kings of pedants, &c.] Though Juvenal could scarcely mean to be understood literally, yet something very like this, fies de consule rhetor, happened about the time he wrote. Valerius Licinianus, a most eloquent speaker, as Pliny tells, was expelled the senate on suspicion of an incestuous commerce with the vestal Cornelia, and driven into Sicily; where he set up a school for teaching rhetorick, His opening speech bears a wonderful similarity to the passage above: Quos tibi, Fortuna, ludos facis? Facis enim ex professoribus senatores, ex senatoribus professores! A sentence, says Pliny, so full of bitterness and gall, that I am almost persuaded he turned rhetorick-master for the sole purpose of uttering it. The other hemistich, fics de rhetore

Pedants of kings: for what was Tullius, say,
Ventidius what, the wonder of his day,
But great examples of the secret power
Of stars, presiding o'er the natal hour?
Of stars, whose unrespective smiles or frowns
Give captives triumphs, and dependents crowns!
He, then, is lucky; yet a coal-black swan
Is not more rare, than such another man:
Hence many a rhetorician counts his gains,
And execrates, too late, his fruitless pains.
Witness thy end, Thrasymachus, and thine,
Charinas: You beheld him, Athens, pine

consul, though originally, perhaps, pronounced at random, a succeeding age saw literally fulfilled in the person of Ausonius, who, from a professor of rhetorick, was advanced by Gratian to the consulship, A. D. 379.

VER. 301. Tullius, Ventidius.] He means Servius Tullius, who was born of a servant, and whom (Sat. VIII.) he calls the last good king of Rome. Ventidius ran through a greater variety of fortune. He was taken prisoner when an infant, together with his mother, by Pompeius Strabo; (father of Pompey the Great;) became an errand-boy, next a waggoner, then a muleteer, a soldier, centurion, general, tribune of the people, prætor, and, in the same year, pontiff and consul. He obtained, too, a splendid triumph over the Parthians, to which Juvenal more particularly alludes; and thus, says Stapylton" he who formerly lay in prison as a captive, at last filled the Capitol with his trophies" finally, he was honoured with a publick funeral.

The elevation of Ventidius to the consulate was considered as an extraordinary event at the time, and gave birth to many sarcastick effusions: One of them is come down to us,

"Concurrite omnes augures, aruspices!

"Portentum inusitatum conflatum est rescens ;
"Nam mulos qui fricabat consul factus est."

Time, however, which does justice to merit, established his claims, and silenced, perhaps shamed, his enemies.

VER. 311. Witness thy end, Thrasymachus, and thine,

Charinas: Thrasymachus taught rhetorick, the

In misery, and would nought but bane bestow; The only charity you seem to know!

Shades of our sires! O sacred be your rest, And lightly lie the turf upon your breast; Flowers round your urns breathe sweets beyond

compare,

And spring eternal bloom and flourish there!
You honour'd tutors, now a slighted race,
And gave them all a parent's power and place.
Achilles, grown a man, the lyre essay'd
On his paternal hills, and, while he play'd,
With trembling eyed the rod ;-and yet the tail
Of the good Chiron hardly then could fail

old commentators say, at Athens. Want of encouragement forced him to shut up his school, and want of every thing else, probably, drove him to suicide.

Charinas taught rhetorick in the same city, and with the same ill success: he left it, therefore, and came to Rome. It appears from Dio, that he might almost as well have followed the example of Thrasymachus, and hanged himself where he was:—for he had scarcely opened his school, ere he provoked the suspicion of Caligula by a declamation against tyranny, and was either sent into banishment immediately, or poisoned!

Madan, and others, refer the hunc inopem of our author to Socrates. The general allusion, indeed, in the bitter sarcasm on Athens, is to him; but the words apply immediately to Cha

rinas.

VER. $21. Achilles, grown a man, &c.] Thus Ovid, very prettily:

"Phillyrides puerum citharæ perfecit Achillem,
"Atque animos placida contudit arte feros.
"Qui toties socios, toties exterruit hostes;
"Creditur annosum pertimuisse senem.
Quas Hector sensurus erat, poscente magistro,
"Verberibus jussas præbuit ille manus.'

"

De Art. Aman. lib. 1. 10.

To raise a smile: such reverence now is rare, And boys with bibs strike Rufus on his chair, Fastidious Rufus, who, with critick rage, Arraign'd the purity of Tully's page!

Enough of these. Let the last wretched band, The poor GRAMMARIANS, say what liberal hand Rewards their toil: let learn'd Palæmon tell, Who proffers what his skill deserves so well.

such reverence now is rare,

VER. 325. And boys with bibs strike Rufus on his chair,] This was a complaint of long standing. Plautus has a remark on the subject, which, if it has lost nothing in passing through my hands, will be allowed to possess some force, as well as humour.

"Nam olim populi prius honorem capiebat suffragio,
"Quam magistri desinebat esse dicto obediens, &c."

Bacchides, Act. III. Sc. 3.

Time was, a tutor was obey'd and fear'd,
Till youth grew fit for office: now, alas!
Let him but chide a child of seven years old,
And the brat flings his tablets at his head.
You hasten to his father, and complain:
And what redress?" Aha! old bumbrusher,
You see my boy here can defend himself,
So touch him, at your peril." Thus avenged,
You hang your ears in silence, and sneak home,
With your crack'd pate beplaister'd, and bepatch'd,
Like an old paper lantern!

VER. 331. let learn'd Palamon tell, &c.] "Palæmon, a poor grammarian, but of great esteem." Dryden. If he really was poor, it was in consequence of his extravagance, for he had a very handsome income. Suetonius represents him as an arrogant, luxurious, and profligate pedant, rendered infamous by vice of every kind, and to whom no youth could with safety be trusted; though he allows his grammatical knowledge to have been very extraordinary. He had been long dead, however, when this Satire was written, being mentioned for the last time under Claudius. Juvenal merely gives his name to some excellent grammarian of his own time, in allusion to his celebrity in the art. See Sat. vI. 636.

Yet from this pittance, whatsoe'er it be,
(Less, surely, than a rhetorician's fee,)
The usher snips off something for his pains,
And the purveyor nibbles what remains.
Courage, Palæmon! be not over nice,
But suffer some abatement in your price;
As those who deal in rugs, will ask
you high,
And sink by pence, and half-pence, till you buy.
Yes, suffer this; while something's left to pay
Your rising, hours before the dawn of day,
When e'en the labouring poor their slumbers take,
And not a weaver, not a smith's awake:

While something's left, to pay you for the stench Of smouldering lamps, thick spread o'er every bench,

Where ropy vapours Virgil's pages soil,
And Horace looks one blot, all soot and oil!
Even then, the stipend thus reduced, thus small,
Without a lawsuit, rarely comes at all.

Add yet, ye parents, add to the disgrace,
And heap new hardships on this wretched race.
Make it a point that all, and every part,
Of their own science, be possess'd by heart;
That general history with our own they blend,
And have all authors at their finger's end:
That they may still inform you, should you meet,
And ask them at the bath, or in the street,
Who nurs'd Anchises; from what country came
The step-dam of Archemorus, what her name;

VER. 359. Who nurs'd Anchises; &c.] This absurd curiosity about things, which, as Seneca well observés, it is more profitable