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.

O CURAS hominum! o quantum est in rebus

inane !

66

"Quis leget hæc?" Min' tu istud ais? 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 "facethe commentator when he imagines that he termed it a tious" 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

Prætulerint? nuga! Non, si quid turbida Roma Elevet, accedas; examenve improbum in illa Castiges trutina: nec te quæsiveris extra.

call you Polydamas, Sire, for Polydamas was an honourable

man!"

It may be doubted, however, whether Persius had any thing more in view than to point out the leaders of the fashionable taste in poetry, by an expression as readily applied as understood. The Greek poets, and above all Homer, were, to say the least, as familiar to the Romans as they are to us; and the application of passages from them to passing events, created no ambiguity in the mind of the reader. The ancients quoted them, as we do Shakspeare and Milton, without meaning to be literally interpreted. The purport was well comprehended, and the sense of the extract stretched no further than was necessary. The letters of Cicero are full of such happy applications of his reading, and, indeed, the very passage before us, is given by him: 66 Aideoμas non Pompeium modo," (he was obliged to particularise here)" sed Tpwas xaι Тpwadas," &c. and Atticus, we may be confident, was at no loss for the rest of his meaning.

With respect to Labeo, nothing more is known of him than is told by the pseudo-Cornutus; who says, that he translated the Iliad and Odyssey: one line of the former work he has happily preserved :

Ωμον βεβρωθοις Πριαμον, Πριαμοιο τε παίδας, Lib. iv. 34.

"Crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos :" from which it appears that Nero, if he indeed patronized the poet, was an admirer of literal versions, after the manner of Dr. Trapp; who, in the notes to his Virgil, has done the line into English in a style not altogether unworthy of his great prototype :

"And eat up Priam, and his children raw."

Some of the commentators suppose that Labeo had the

And Troy's proud dames, pronounce my merits fall, Beneath their Labeo's! I can bear it all.

Nor should my friend, though still, as fashion

sways,

The purblind town conspire to sink or raise,
Determine, as her wavering beam prevails,
And trust his judgment to her coarser scales.
O! not abroad for vàgue opinion roam;
The wise man's bosom is his proper home:

honour of fathering a few of the Emperor's verses; but (besides that Nero was probably the better poet of the two) he was much too eager for fame himself, to transfer the chance of it to any other person.

VER. 11. Determine, as her wavering beam, &c.] Examenve improbum in illa Castiges trutina. Holiday, who has endeavoured, not very successfully, to introduce these terms into his text, has explained them very correctly in his notes. Lanx, he says, is the scale, libra the beam, examen the tongue, and trutina the cavity in which it plays. There is no dispute, however, about the general meaning of the words: though the commentators, as far as I know, have not fallen upon the true sense of the passage. Persius is already got to one of those technical illustra tions, in which his masters, the Stoicks, so much delighted: examenve improbum, &c. means, to correct the errors of an apothecary's or goldsmith's balance by a common pair of scales, such as are used in weighing bulky commodities—a process sufficiently absurd. Cicero has a similar metaphor in the second book of his Orator, where he speaks of subjects suited to popular, and to philosophical discussion: Hæc enim nostra oratio multitudini est accomodanda, ad oblectandos animos, ad impellendos, ad ea probanda, quæ non aurificis statera, sed quadam populari trutina examinantur. § 159.