SATIRE III. i Argument. This Satire opens not unhappily. A professor of the Stoick school abruptly enters the bed-room of his pupils, whom he finds asleep at mid-day. Their confusion at this detection, their real indolence amidst an affected ardour for study, are laid open, and the fatal consequences of such thoughtless conduct beautifully illustrated by apt allusions to the favourite topicks of the Porch. The whole of this Satire manifests an earnest desire to reclaim the youthful nobility from their idle and vicious habits. The preceptor, after a brief ebullition of contempt, points out the evils to which the neglect of philosophy (i. e. the study of virtue) will expose them, and overthrows the objections which they raise against the necessity of severe application, on account of their birth and fortune. In a sublime and terrible apostrophe, he pourtrays the horrors of that late remorse which must afflict the vicious when they contemplate the fallen state to which the neglect of wisdom has consigned them. He then describes, in a lighter tone, the defects of his own education, and shews that the persons whom he addresses are without this apology for their errors; he points out with admirable brevity and force, the proper pursuits of a well-regulated mind, and teaches them to despise the scorn of the vulgar, and the rude buffoonery of those who make their wantonness their ignorance: lastly, he introduces a lively apologue of a glutton, who, in spite of advice, perseveres in his intemperance till he becomes its victim: concluding with an apposite application of the fable (more Stoicorum) to a diseased mind. The Satire and its moral may be fitly summed up in the solemn injunction of a wiser man than the Schools ever produced :-" But WISDOM is above all; therefore get WISDOM." A. PERSII FLACCI SATIRE. [SAT. III. V. 1—2. NEMPE hæc assidue! Jam clarum mane fenestras Intrat, et angustas extendit lumine rimas : VER. 1. What! ever thus ?] From the manner in which the speaker announces himself, it would seem as if he were a kind of domestick instructor, engaged perhaps, to complete the education of the young nobility who had passed through the usual discipline of the schools. Tutors of this description were invested with considerable authority, and assumed, as here, a lofty and decisive tone. With the decay of literature, and the empire, their importance diminished; and A. Gellius has a passage in which Taurus, one of these masters of philosophy, notices their fallen state in very significant terms: "Nunc, inquit, videre est philosophos ultro currere, ut doceant, ad foras juvenum divitum, eosque ibi sedere atque operiri prope ad meridiam, donec discipuli nocturnum omne vinum edormiant." lib. x. c. 6. The opening of this Satire, in Sheridan's translation, is the perfection of absurdity. VER. 4. On the fifth line the gnomon's shadow falls.] Holyday has a long and learned note on this subject. "The Romans (he says) greatly differed from us in the division of the day; for we use a civil day, i. e. the space of day and night, which we divide into twenty-four equal parts, whereas they used a natural day, which is the space from the sun rising to the sun setting, as Censorinus shews, De Die Nat. c. 24. so that their L SATIRES OF. PERSIUS. [SAT. III. V. 1-4. WHAT! ever thus ? See! while the beams of day, hours varied according to the season of the year." At this time, therefore," when the dog-star raged," and when each division of the dial must have been about one hour and one third of an hour long, the shadow fell upon the fifth line a little before eleven o'clock this was about the hour of dining among the more sober people. "Sosia, prandendum est; quartam jam totus in horam "Sol calet; ad quintam flectitur umbra notam.” AUSON. The invention of sun-dials has appeared so important, that great pains have been taken to discover the people to whose ingenuity mankind is indebted for it. The Chinese, the Mexicans, and half the barbarous and ignorant nations of the old and new world, have been complimented with it, in turn; but the great majority of the criticks seem inclined to attribute it to the Egyptians, whose pyramids and obelisks are, it seems, nothing but magnificent gnomons. The Egyptians were undoubtedly a learned people; and, if this opinion be correct, they must have |