When clouds of Thracian birds obscure the sky, To arms to arms! the desperate Pigmies cry: But soon, defeated in the unequal fray,

Disorder'd flee; while, pouncing on their

prey,

The victor cranes descend, and, clamouring, bear The wriggling mannikins aloft in air.

Here, could our climes to such a scene give birth, We all should burst with agonies of mirth;

"O he's a lovely man! an eagle, madam,
"Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye,
"As Paris hath."

Steevens, who had some glimpse of the meaning of this word, refers to an apposite passage in the Two Noble Kinsmen. It is in Emilia's address to Diana:

Oh vouchsafe

"With that thy rare green eye, which never yet

"Beheld things maculate, &c.

VER. 232. Here, could our climes to such a scene give birth, &c.] The facetious Domitian, whom we have seen, in the first Satire, amusing himself with bringing women and dwarfs into the lists, seems, if I rightly understand Statius, to have treated himself with a spectacle of this kind:

"Hic audax subit ordo pumilonum;

"Edunt vulnera, conseruntque dextras,
"Et mortem sibi (qua manu!) minantur:
"Ridet Mars pater, et cruenta Virtus !"

While these little creatures were fighting, a number of cranes appear to have been let loose about them: they did not, indeed, venture to attack them, for, as the poet, who was a spectator of the circumstance, adds, they were alarmed at the increased ferocity of these European pigmies:

"Casuræque vagis grues rapinis

"Mirantur pumilos ferociores !"

What Juvenal might have thought of such a scene I know not, but Statius appears to have been highly diverted with it. Such were the contemptible amusements of this gloomy tyrant in his retirement !

I must not forget a weighty objection of the grave Lubin, to

There, unsurprised, they view the frequent fight, Nor smile at armies scarce a foot in height.

"Shall then no ill the perjured head attend, "No punishment o'ertake this faithless friend ?" Suppose him seized, abandon'd to your will, What more would rage? to torture or to kill; Yet still your loss, your injury would remain, And draw no retribution from his pain. "True; but methinks the smallest drop of blood, Squeezed from his mangled limbs, would do me good:

"Revenge, THEY SAY, and I believe their words,
"A pleasure sweeter far than life affords."
WHO SAY? the fools, whose passions, prone to ire,
At slightest causes, or at none, take fire;
Whose boiling breasts, at every turn, o'erflow
With rancorous gall: Chrysippus SAID not so;
Nor Thales, to our frailties clement still;
Nor that old man by sweet Hymettus' hill,
Who drank the poison with unruffled soul,
And dying, from his foes withheld the bowl.

the veracity of this little narrative. Juvenal says that the cranes soar aloft with the pigmies in their crooked talons, curvis unguibus: How can this be, says Lubin, when cranes have no crooked talons? Quomodo hoc a grue fieri possit, quæ quidem curvos ungues non habet? In truth, I cannot tell. I have, however, done what I could for my author, and kept the obnoxious word out of sight.

VER. 251. Nor that old man by sweet Hymettus' hill,] This is a charming designation of Socrates by the place of his residence. The hill of Hymettus was not far from Athens: Juvenal calls it sweet Hymettus, because it was much celebrated for the richness of its honey.

Divine philosophy! by whose pure light
We first distinguish, then pursue the right,
Thy power the breast from every errour frees,
And weeds out all its vices by degrees :-
Illumined by thy beam, revenge, we find,
The abject pleasure of an abject mind,
And hence so dear to poor, weak, woman-kind.
But why are those, Calvinus, thought to scape
Unpunish'd, whom, in every fearful shape,
Guilt still pursues, and conscience, ne'er asleep,
Wounds with incessant strokes, "not loud but

deep,"

While the vex'd mind, her own tormentor, plies
A scorpion scourge, unmark'd by human eyes!
Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,
Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain
He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.

A Spartan once the Oracle besought,
To solve a scruple which perplex'd his thought,

VER. 265. While the vex'd mind, &c.] I have already observed that I love to meet with our old writers in the traces of Juvenal. He was evidently a favourite with them; and the predelection may be considered as no slight indication of their taste and spirit. The following is a pretty close rendering of the text:

-There's no punishment

"Like that to bear the witness in one's breast
"Of perpetrated evils, when the mind
"Beats it with silent stripes."

Microcosmus.

VER. 271. A Spartan once, &c.] This is taken from Herodotus. To save the reader the trouble of turning to him, I shall briefly give the story. A Milesian had entrusted a sum of money to one Glaucus, a Spartan. After a time, the sons of the Milesian came to re-demand it. Glaucus affirmed that he had no recollection

And plainly tell him, if he might forswear

A

[no!

purse, of old, confided to his care.
Shuddering, the priestess answer'd-" Waverer,
"Nor shalt thou, for the doubt, unpunish'd go."
With that, he hasten'd to restore the trust;
But fear alone, not virtue, made him just:
Hence he soon proved the Oracle divine,
And all the answer worthy of the shrine;
For plagues pursued his race without delay,
And swept them from the earth, like dust, away.
By such dire sufferings did the wretch atone
The crime of meditated fraud alone!

For, IN THE EYE OF HEAVEN, a wicked deed
Devised, is done: what, then, if he proceed?-

of the circumstance, and sent them away. As soon as they were gone, he hastened to Delphi, to inquire, as Juvenal says, whether he might safely forswear the deposit? The priestess answered as in the text, but somewhat more at large; and the terrified Spartan sent for the young Milesians, and restored the money.

This story is appositely applied to the Athenians by Leuti chydes, a Spartan prince, who concludes thus: "At the present day no descendant of Glaucus, nor any traces of his family are to be found; they are utterly extirpated from Sparta." Beloe. The original is very strong : Γλαυκο νυν ετε τι απόγονον επί εδεν, έστη εδεμίη νομιζομενη είναι Γλαυκες εκτετριπται τε προρριζω εκ Σπάρτης. Erato. 86.

VER. 285. For, IN THE EYE OF HEAVEN, a wicked deed Devised, is done ;] I did not call the reader's attention from the last paragraph but one; though I trust it did not escape him, that neither Thales, nor Chrysippus, no, nor his great master Zeno, ever taught, or even conceived doctrines of such pure, such sublime morality as are there delivered: doctrines, in short, which the light of nature alone was incapable of discovering; and which the author undoubtedly derived from that "true light" which now began to glimmer through the Roman world, and by which many sincere lovers of truth and virtue already began to direct their ways, while they were yet unconscious of

Perpetual fears the offender's peace destroy,
And rob the social hour of all its joy:

At table seated, with parch'd mouth he chaws
The loitering food, that swells beneath his jaws;
Spits out the produce of the Albanian hill,
Mellow'd by age; you bring him mellower still,
And lo, such wrinkles on his brow appear,
As if you brought Falernian vinegar!

At night, should sleep his harass'd limbs compose And steal him, one short moment, from his woes, Then dreams invade; sudden, before his eyes, The violated fane and altar rise;

And (what disturbs him most) your injured shade, In more than mortal majesty array'd,

Frowns on the wretch, alarms his treacherous rest, And wrings the dreadful secret from his breast,

the medium through which they received the illumination. With respect to the passage before us, it is not heathenism. It is not to be found in the precepts of their gravest teachers: and elevated as the morality of our author confessedly is, it is difficult to imagine that it could soar so far above the ethicks of his time, withcut the assistance of which I have spoken. What is more, this was the peculiar boast of Christianity. It was the vantage ground, on which its first professors stood, and proclaimed aloud the superiority of their faith: Vos (says Minucius Felix) Ethnici, scelera admissa punitis; apud nos et cogitare peccare est: vos conscios timetis, nos conscientiam, &c.

VER. 302. And wrings the dreadful secret from his breast.] Thus Tibullus:

"Ipse deus somno domitos emittere vocem
"Jussit, et invitos facta tegenda loqui."

How much better is this, than the gloomy and unsatisfactory ideas of Lucretius upon the subject; who, while he confesses the effect, endeavours to ridicule the cause; and with the most palpable impressions of terrour on his own mind, absurdly hopes to