J. What, shall the man who drugg'd three uncles three!

Tower by triumphant, and look down on me?

taken for a disjunctive, and the passage referred to a separate punishment:

Or, writhing on a hook, be dragg'd around,

And with your mangled members plough the ground! The idea of Curio and others, (adopted by Ruperti,) that the expression is proverbial in this place, and means "labouring in vain," is surely unfounded. To plough the sand, indeed, is used in all languages, for an unprofitable pursuit; but I think too highly of Juvenal, to venture on charging him with so wretched an anticlimax. "If you glance at the favourite of the day, you will be burned alive, nay-you will lose your labour!" Still, however, as some sense may be elicited from it, I subjoin a translation:

Now glance at Tigellinus, and you glare

In that pitch'd shirt, in which such crowds expire, Chain'd to the bloody stake, and wrapp'd in fire; While he, whose crimes your daring lines arraign, More vicious, proves-you plough the sand in vain! There is yet another meaning adopted by some of the learned, and which is produced by a gentleman in his remarks on Madan's translation of this very line: "I am surprised (he says) that Mr. M. should not have been acquainted with the following pas sage of Jos. Scaliger, which sets the whole in the clearest light: Stantibus ad palum destinatis unco (ne motatione capitis picem cadentem declinarent) gutturi suffixo è lamina ardente pix aut unguen in caput liquefiebat, ita ut rivi pinguedinis humanæ per arenam sulcum facerent. By this interpretation, so intuitively true, that, by one acquainted with the facts, it might have been deduced from the vulgar text without the emendation of Scaliger," (rather of Lipsius, Scaligero, as Ferrarius says, non improbante,)" the spirit of the poet is vindicated, history illustrated, and the image raised to its climax."

I have seen enough of criticism to be always on my guard against interpretations" intuitively true." intuitively true." Human fat, whether dissolved" in streams," or, as this gentleman translates it, "drop by drop," could scarcely make a wide furrow in the sand; and, indeed, Ferrarius and Vossius, who had this interpretation before them, concur in rejecting it as improbable. With respect to the "illustration of history," the former adds, " Quæ Scaliger de lamina et pice adhibita Christianis ad palum, non memini me apud alios legisse !"

Ruperti has carefully collected the different opinions on this

F. Yes; let him look. He comes! avoid his way, And on your lip your cautious finger lay;

difficult passage; but his conclusions from them are not more satisfactory than my own. He concludes with an emendation,--but this is cutting the knot,—and would read:

qui fixo gutture fumat,

Et latum media sulcum qui ducit arena.

To which he subjoins, with more of the Bentleian spirit than I gave him credit for, Et ita poetam omnino scripsisse crediderim : nisi forte totus versus, quem salvo sensu obelo transfigere licet, interpolatrici manui debetur, et plane ejiciendus, non emendandus est!

To return to Tigellinus; he was recommended to Nero by his debaucheries. After the murder of Burrhus, he succeeded to the command of the prætorian guards, and abused his ascendency over the Emperour, to the most dreadful purposes. He afterwards betrayed him; by which, and other acts of perfidy, he secured himself during the short reign of Galba. He was put to death by Otho, to the great joy of the people; and he died as he had lived, a profligate and a coward.

Who the person was that is here alluded to under his name, cannot now be known. Trajan, though a good prince on the whole, had many failings. He is covertly taxed, as I have before observed, in this very Satire, for his lenity in the affair of Marius; and the blood-suckers of Domitian's time seem to have yet possessed too much influence. He was, besides, addicted to a vice which we shall have frequent occasions to mention, and consequently surrounded by effeminate and worthless favourites, whom it might be dangerous to provoke: for these and other reasons, Juvenal seems to have regarded him with no great kindness; and, indeed, if the state of things be truly represented, we cannot accuse him of injustice.

VER. 236. What, shall the man who drugg'd three uncles! &c.] "Still harping on Tigellinus:" tres enim habuit patruos quos omnes, ut eorum hæreditatibus potiretur, veneno absumsit; subtractisque annulis, et falso tabulis signatis, hæreditates summo scelere consecutus est. Val. Prob.

It appears that Juvenal really had some one in view, whose enormities bore a wonderful similarity to those of Tigellinus. The forger,

who owed his lavish state

"To a wet seal, and a fictitious date,"

is described in the very words of this quotation; and if the reader will have the goodness to turn to ver. 97, he will probably be

Crowds of informers follow in his rear,

And if you say but "Lo!" will overhear.-
Turnus may still be vanquish'd in your strain,
Achilles struck, and Hylas sought in vain ;
Harmless, nay pleasant, shall the tale be found,
It bares no ulcer, and it probes no wound.
But when Lucilius, fired with virtuous rage,
Waves his keen falchion o'er a guilty age,
The conscious villain shudders at his sin,
And burning blushes speak the pangs within;
Cold drops of sweat from every member roll,
And growing terrours harrow up his soul!

convinced that the person there alluded to, was some worthless minion, who derived his confidence in guilt from the partiality of a powerful protector.

VER. 242. Turnus may still, &c.] Pliny has a passage on this subject nearly to the same purpose: Nos enim qui in foro, verisque litibus terimur, multum malitiæ, quamvis nolimus, addiscimus. Schola et auditorium, ut ficta causa, ita res inermis innoxia est. The same thought too, is touched, with considerable humour, in the Knight of the burning Pestle :

"Prol. By your sweet favour we intend no harm to the city. "Cit. No, sir! yes, sir. If you were not resolved to play the jack, what need you study for new subjects purposely to abuse your betters? Why could not you be content, as well as others, with the Legend of Whittington, the Story of Queen Eleanor, and the rearing of London Bridge upon woolsacks?"

VER. 246. But when Lucilius, &c.] In Randolph's Entertainment, there is so admirable a paraphrase of this passage, that I shall be easily forgiven for producing it:

"When I but frown'd in my Lucilius' brow,

"Each conscious cheek grew red, and a cold trembling
"Freezed the chill soul, while every guilty breast

"Stood, fearful of dissection, as afraid

"To be anatomized by that skilful hand,

"And have each artery, nerve, and vein of sin,

Then tears of shame, and dire revenge succeedSay; have you ponder'd well the advent'rous deed?

Now-ere the trumpet sounds-your strength de

bate;

The soldier once engaged, repents too late.

J. Yet I MUST write: and since these iron times, From living knaves preclude my angry rhymes,

VER. 256. Yet I MUST write, &c.] In the concluding lines I have consulted the advantage of the English reader, and rather paraphrased than translated the original, which is abrupt and epigrammatical.

Experiar quid concedatur in illis
"Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina:"
literally rendered, is

J. Nay, then;-I'll try what power I boast o'er those,
Whose ashes in the publick ways repose.

Juvenal affects alarm at the serious tenour of his friend's admonition, and therefore sarcastically renounces his first design, in favour of an experiment on the degree of liberty allowable in satirizing the dead.

The "publick ways" mentioned in the concluding line, (of which he specifies the Latin and Flaminian) were the usual burying places of the Romans. Little recesses were formed in the walls, or hedges, which bounded them, and in these their bodies, or more commonly the urns which enclosed their ashes, were deposited. This was not only an elegant, but a politick practice; since the names of such as deserved well of their country were thus placed perpetually in view of the multitudes whom business or amusement incessantly attracted, from every part of the empire, to the capital. Hence appears the propriety of the two words with which their epitaphs usually began, Siste, viator, Stay, traveller; words which we have preposterously introduced into our close and secluded cemeteries. This absurdity could not escape the notice of Fielding, who has ridiculed it with exquisite humour, in his epitaph on an ancestor of the worthy family of the Andrews:

"Stay, traveller; for underneath this pew,

"Lies fast asleep that merry man, Andrew!”

I point my pen against the guilty dead,

And pour its gall on each obnoxious head.

VER. 258. I point my pen against the guilty dead, &c.] Hall, on the contrary,

"I will not ransack up the quiet grave,

"Nor burn dead bones as he example gave,

"I tax the living, let the ashes rest,

"Whose faults are dead, and nailed in their chest."

But Hall, like Juvenal, makes use of departed names; so that the generosity is more in appearance than reality. The design of both was the same, and nobody was deceived.