SATIRE XIV.

TO FUSCINUS.

v. 1-10.

YES, there are faults, Fuscinus, that disgrace
The noblest qualities of birth and place;
Which, like infectious blood, transmitted run
In one eternal stream from sire to son.

If, in destructive play, the senior waste
His joyous nights, the child, with kindred taste,
Repeats, in miniature, the darling vice,
Shakes the low box, and cogs the little dice.

Nor does that infant fairer hopes inspire,
Who, under the gray epicure, his sire,

VER. 10. Who, under the gray epicure, his sire, &c.] This is appositely applied by old Knowell. Speaking of the education which he gave his son, he says,

"Drest snails or mushrooms curiously before him;
"Perfum'd my sauces, and taught him to make 'em,
"Preceding still, with my gray gluttony,

"At all the ord'naries, and only fear'd

"His palate should degenerate, not his manners."

Every Man in his Humour.

Quintilian reprobates, no less strongly than Juvenal, that early gluttony in which the children of his time were indulged: we

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Has learn'd to pickle mushrooms, and, like him,
To souse the beccaficos, till they swim!-
For take him, thus to early luxury bred,

Ere twice four springs have blossom'd o'er his head,
And let ten thousand teachers hoar with age,
Inculcate temperance from the Stoick page;
His wish will ever be, in state to dine,
And keep the table's honour from decline.
Does Rutilus inspire a generous mind,
Prone to forgive, and to slight errours blind;
Instil the liberal thought, that slaves have powers,
Sense, feeling, every thing, as fine as ours;
Or fury? He, who hears the sounding thong,
With far more pleasure than the Syren's song;

form their palate," says he, "before their tongue;" ante palatum corum quam os instituimus.

Professor Spalding has been induced, probably by his recollection of Juvenal, to give a meaning to this passage, which it will not bear: "Quid non adultus concupiscet, qui in purpuris repserit? Nondum prima verba exprimit, et jam coccum intelligit, jam conchylium poscit!" Lib. 1, Coccum, he would read, or rather interpret coquum, and understand conchylium not of the colour, but of the fish which produced it. When the obvious meaning of the words is so pertinent, why should we meddle with the text? Where does it appear that the shell-fish which produced the purple die, was ever eaten at Rome ? besides, the word purpuris determines the sense. The child, whose swaddling clothes were of purple, was brought to distinguish and call for the most costly colours, (the bright, and the ferruginous, or dark-red purple,) before he could speak distinctly! An instance of absurd and pernicious indulgence, which well deserved the lash of the satirist, and which it is rather singular that Juvenal should have overlooked.

VER. 21. that slaves have powers, &c.] One of the best chapters in Macrobius is on the subject of slavery. It contains a direct allusion to this passage: Tibi autem unde in servos tantum et tam immane fastidium ? quasi non ex üsdem tibi et constent et aluntur elementis, eundemque spiritum ab eodem prin

Who, the stern tyrant of his small domain,
The Polypheme of his domestick train,
Knows no delight, save when the torturer's hand
Stamps, for low theft, the agonising brand.—
O, what but rage can fill that stripling's breast,
Who sees his savage sire then only blest,
When his stretch'dears drink in the wretches' cries,
And racks and prisons fill his vengeful eyes!
And can we hope a girl, from Larga sprung,
Will e'er prove virtuous; when her little tongue
Ne'er told so fast her mother's wanton train,
But that she stopt and breathed, and stopt again?
Even from her tender years, unnatural trust!
The child was privy to the matron's lust;
Now, ripe for man, with her own hand, she writes
The billets, which the ancient bawd indites,
Employs the self-same pimps, and hopes, ere long,
To share the visits of the amorous throng!

So Nature prompts: drawn by her secret tie,
We view a parent's deeds with reverent eye;
With fatal haste, alas! the example take,
And love the sin for the dear sinner's sake.-
One youth, perhaps, form'd of superiour clay,
And animated by a purer ray,

May dare to spurn proximity of blood,
And, in despite of nature, to be good:

cipe carpant! Vis tu cogitare eos, quos jus tuum vocas, iisdem seminibus ortos, eodem frui cœlo, æque vivere atque mori? Lib. 1. 2. These last expressions are taken from Seneca, who is, indeed, a magazine of good things, to which, by the way, our author, as well as Macrobius, was fond of applying,

One youth-the rest the beaten pathway tread,
And blindly follow where their fathers lead.
Pernicious guides! this reason should suffice,
To make you shun the slippery route of vice,
This powerful reason; lest your race pursue
The guilty track too plainly mark'd by you!
For youth is facile, and its yielding will
Receives, with fatal ease, the imprint of ill:
Hence Catilines in every soil abound,

But where is Brutus, where is Cato found!

O friend! far from the walls where children dwell, Immodest sights, immodest sounds repel; THE PLACE IS SACRED: far, far hence, remove, Ye venal votaries of illicit love!

VER. 59. Hence Catilines &c.] This is from Seneca. tempus Clodios fert, non omne Catones feret.

Omne

VER. 61. O friend! &c.] Fully sensible of the vast importance of his maxims, Juvenal delivers them in this place with a kind of religious solemnity. That they were highly necessary, may be learned from Quintilian, who wrote about the same time: Gaudemus (i. e. parentes) si quid filius licentius dixerit; verba nec Alexandrinis quidem permittenda deliciis, risu et osculo excipimus, nec mirum: nos docuimus, ex nobis audierunt, nostras amicas, nostros concubinos vident, omne convivium obscœnis canticis strepit; fit ex iis consuetudo, deinde natura. Discunt hæc miseri antequam sciunt vitia esse: inde soluti ac fluentes, non accipiunt ex scholis mala ista, sed in scholas afferunt. Lib. 1. How strong, yet how affecting a picture!

But does it suit the fathers of a former age only? Have we none at present who labour, with a perversity truly diabolical, to assimilate the morals of their sons to their own? Can the acquaintance of my reader furnish him with no parent who encou rages his child to lisp indecencies, who forms his infant tongue to ribaldry, who accustoms him to spectacles of impurity, till what was habit becomes nature; who initiates him in debaucheries before the boy is sensible of their heinousness, and who finally dismisses him from his arms, to corrupt the seminaries of learning,