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Pernicious gold! though yet no temples rise, No altars to thy name perfume the skies, Such as to Victory, Virtue, Faith are rear'd, And Concord, where the clamorous stork is heard, Yet is thy full divinity confest,

And thy shrine fix'd in every human breast.

But while, with anxious eyes, the great explore How much the dole augments their annual store, What misery must the poor dependants dread, Whom this small pittance clothed, and lodged, and fed?

Wedged in thick ranks before the donor's gates,
A phalanx firm, of chairs and litters, waits :
Thither one husband, at the risk of life,
Hurries his teeming, or his bedrid wife;
Another, practised in the gainful art,
With deeper cunning tops the beggar's part;
Plants at his side a close and empty chair:
"My Galla, master; -give me Galla's share."
'Galla!' the porter cries; let her look out.'
"Sir, she's asleep; nay, give me :-can you doubt!"
What rare pursuits employ the clients' day!-
First to the patron's door, their court to pay,

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poignancy in this expression which should be pointed out. All slaves were exposed to sale with naked feet; but such as were im. ported from remote and barbarous countries, and therefore of little estimation, were, as a further mark of distinction, "whitened on the feet" with chalk or gypsum. Such was the pristine state of this insolent upstart!

VER. 190. What rare pursuits &c.] The day is distinguished by nearly the same pursuits in Martial:

"Prima salutantes atque altera continet hora,

"Exercet raucos tertia causidicos,

“In quintam varios extendit Roma labores,
"Sexta quies lassis, septima finis erit."

Thence to the forum, to support his cause,
Last to Apollo, learned in the laws,
And the triumphal statues; where some Jew,
Some mongrel Arab, some-I know not who,-
Has impudently dared a niche to seize,

Fit to be p—against, or—what you please.
Returning home, he drops them at the gate;
And now the weary clients, wise too late,
Resign their hopes, and supperless retire,
To spend the paltry dole in herbs and fire.
Meanwhile, their patron sees his palace stored
With every dainty earth and sea afford;
Stretch'd on the vacant couch, he rolls his eyes
O'er many an orb of matchless form and size,

VER. 192. Thence to the forum, &c.] Here, in the forum a έo, (for there were several others scattered about the city,) the publick business was chiefly carried on. Apollo, who is mentioned in the next line, stood in the forum of Augustus, and acquired the legal knowledge, for which he is so handsomely complimented, from the lawyers, who frequented the courts of justice established there. The " triumphal statues" stood also in this forum; they were those of the most eminent persons who had appeared in the state. VER. 194. where some Jew, &c.] The indignation of the poet has involved him in obscurity. It is not easy to say who is meant here; and the commentators have taken advantage of the uncertainty, to display a world of research. Holyday, who recapitulates their conjectures, concludes, with every appearance of reason, that it was one Tiberius Alexander, a renegado Jew, who embraced the religion of Rome, and was made præfect of Egypt. He was the first to declare for Vespasian, (Tacit. Hist. XI. 79,) to whose party he brought a vast accession of strength, and was, therefore, probably, honoured with a statue. The partiality of Alexander to this prince, however, did him no great credit with our author; whose hatred of Domitian was such, that he seems to have looked with abhorrence

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on all unfortunate souls that traced his line."

VER. 204. Stretch'd on the vacant couch, &c.] Seneca somewhere

Selects the fairest to receive his plate,
And, at one meal, devours a whole estate!
But who, (for not a parasite is there,)
Ah, who such sordid luxury can bear?
Lo, he requires whole boars! serves up a beast
To his own maw, created for a feast!-

But mark him soon by signal wrath pursued,
When to the bath he bears the peacock crude,
That frets, and swells within ;-thence every ill,
Age premature, and death without a Will!
Swift flies the tale, by witty spleen increast,
And furnishes a laugh at every feast;
The laugh his friends not undelighted hear,
And, fallen from all their hopes, insult his bier.

says, that good cheer without a friend to partake it, is the entertainment of a wild beast. And the poet Alexis,

Ερς' ες κορακας, μονοφαγε και τοιχωρυκε.

Go and be hang'd, thou solitary glutton,

Thou house-breaker!

VER. 205. Nam de tot pulchris, et latis orbibus, et tam Antiquis, &c.] Ad hunc locum nihil videre interpretes, says Grævius, who is not a whit clearer sighted in the matter than the rest. I conceive that the satire is here levelled not so much at the gluttony, as at the extravagance of this secret gormandizer; who possessed such a number of large, beautiful, and antique orbs, (so Juvenal calls the upper part of the table, which was formed of the most rare and costly materials,) as tó be somewhat embarrassed in the selection of one for his immediate use.

The prodigality of the Romans knew no bounds in the acquisition of these favourite objects of luxury: the elder Pliny says, that two were exposed to sale amongst the effects of Asinius Gallus, which produced more than the price of two manors! See Sat. XI. VER. 218. The laugh his friends not undelighted hear,

And, fallen from all their hopes, insult his bier.] We have a good instance of this in Pliny. Domitius Tullus amused

NOTHING is left, NOTHING, for future times,
To add to the full catalogue of crimes;

The baffled sons must feel the same desires,
And act the same mad follies, as their sires.
VICE HAS ATTAIN'D ITS ZENITH.-Then, set sail,
Spread all thy canvass, catch the favouring gale—
F. Hold! Where's the genius for this bound-
less theme?

And where the liberty? Or dost thou dream
Of that blunt freedom (freedom, that I fear
To name or hint at) which allow'd, while-ere,
Our sires to pour on vice, without control,
The impassion'd dictates of the kindling soul,
Heedless alike who smiled or frown'd?-Now,
dare

To glance at Tigellinus, and you glare

himself, during a long life, with feeding the hopes of these Willhunters, se captandum præbuit, and yet left his fortune to the heirat-law; upon which they began to abuse him. There is humour in the following passage: Ergo varii tota civitate sermones: alii (scil. captatores) fictum, ingratum, immemorem loquuntur, seque ipsos, dum insectantur illum, turpissimis confessionibus produnt, qui de illo uti de patre, avo, proavo, quasi orbi, querantur; alii contra hoc ipsum laudibus ferunt, quod sit frustratus improbas spes hominum, quos sic decipere pro moribus temporum prudentia est. Lib. VIII. Epist. 18.

The glutton in the text is prevented from remembering his parasites, by the suddenness of his death, which did not allow time for a Will: hence the comical mixture of rage and ridicule with which they pursue his obsequies:

"Ducitur iratis plaudendum funus amicis."

VER. 233. To glance at Tigellinus, &c.] Fielding makes Booth, in the other world, inquire of Shakspeare the precise meaning of Othello's famous apostrophe, "Put out the light," &c.; and if some curious critick had done the same of Juvenal, respecting the sense of the following lines, he would have done a real service to

In that pitch'd shirt, in which such crowds expire, Chain'd to the bloody stake, and wrapp'd in fire.

the commentators, and saved an ocean of precious ink, which has been wasted on them to little purpose:

"Pone Tigellinum, tæda lucebis in illa

"Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture fumant,
"Et latus mediam sulcus diducit arenam."

"Touch but Tigellinus, and you shall shine in that torch, where "they stand and burn, who smoke, fastened to a stake, and *(where) a wide furrow divides the sand."

The dreadful conflagration which laid waste a great part of Rome in the reign of Nero, was found to have broken out in the house of Tigellinus. As his intimacy with the Emperour was no secret, it strengthened the general belief, that the city was burned by design. Nothing seems to have enraged Nero so much as this discovery; and to avert the odium from his favourite, he basely taxed the Christians with setting fire to his house. Under this accusation, thousands of those innocent victims were dragged to a cruel death. The Emperour, says Tacitus, (Ann. xv. 44,) added insult to their sufferings: some were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs; others were crucified, and others again, WERE SMEARED WITH INFLAMMABLE MATTER, and LIGHTED UP WHEN THE DAY DECLINED, TO SERVE AS TORCHES DURING THE NIGHT! This horrid species of barbarity sufficiently explains the two first lines; the remaining one is not so easily got over.

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I once supposed that the line contained merely a local description, and meant a sunk place in the arena," where the stakes were fixed; or that a part of it was occasionally separated from the rest by a "wide furrow," or ditch, and allotted to this dreadful purpose: these ideas, however, do not seem to have occurred to any of the criticks, (no great recommendation of them, I confess,) * since they prefer altering the text, and reading,

"Et latum media sulcum deducis arena."

"And you shall make, or draw out, a wide furrow in the sand." That is, say they," by turning round the stake to avoid the flames:" which, as the sufferer was fixed to it, he could not well do. If the alteration be allowed, I should rather imagine the sense to be, "When the pitched cloth, in which you were wrapped, is consumed, your scorched and lifeless remains shall be dragged out of the Amphitheatre, and thus make a wide furrow in the sand. Or (for I am not quite satisfied with this) Et may bẹ

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