Thou think'st, perhaps, that Virro treats so ill, He thinks thee a vile slave, drawn by the smell follow the other opinion; third, because it supposes nothing, but what, according to the ordinary custom of such sports, will be easily granted; and lastly, because it is far more quick and satirical, to this sense; Virro has his curious fruit; but thou such as they feed apes with." VER. 258. The golden boss.] This ornament, or rather amulet, was adopted by the Romans from the Etruscans, (who probably brought it from the East,) and at first worn only by the children of the nobility. In process of time, it became common, like the tria nomina, to all who were free born. From its Latin name bulla, it would seem to have been a little hollow drop, or globule ;indicative, as Lubin says, of human fragility. Holyday, who adopts the opinion of Macrobius on the subject, thinks it was shaped like a heart, and worn before Your palate still beguiles you: heavens! how nice That smoking haunch! Now we shall have a slice; Now that half hare is coming; Now a bit Of that young pullet; Now-and thus you sit, Thumbing your bread in silence; looking still For what has never reach'd you, never will. No more of freedom; 'tis a vain pretence! Your patron treats you like a man of sense; For, if you can, without a murmur, bear, You well deserve th' indignities you share. Anon, like voluntary slaves, you'll bow Your humbled neck beneath the oppressor's blow, Nay, with bare backs, solicit to be beat, And merit SUCH A FRIEND, and SUCH A TREAT! the breast as an incitement to virtue; while Plutarch gives it the form of a crescent, to which, indeed, the heart (if it was moulded like the trinkets of our days,) might bear no very distant resemblance. Whatever its figure was, and probably it was variable, it was considered, as the scholiast rightly remarks, as a badge of liberty, and used by the children of all ranks of freemen, till they reached the age of fifteen. Whether any degree of birth was necessary at the time our author wrote, to intitle a family to wear the Hetruscum aurum, is not easily ascertained: from his own words, I should incline to the negative, and conclude that circumstances alone determined it. In that case we may say, that the rich only had the bulla of gold; the poor, and the immediate descendants of freedmen, of leather, and, perhaps, of other cheap materials. SATIRE VI. Argument. THIS is not only the longest, but the most complete, of our author's works. With respect to his other Satires, some of them are distinguished by one excellence, and some by another; but in this he has combined them all. Forcible in argument, flowing in diction; bold, impassioned, and sublime; it looks as if the poet had risen with his theme, and, conscious of its extent, taxed all his powers to do it justice. The whole of this Satire is directed against the female sex. It is strictly methodical in its plan, and may be distributed under the following heads: lust variously modified, imperiousness of disposition, fickleness, gallantry, attachment to improper pursuits, litigiousness, drunkenness, unnatural passions, fondness for singers, dancers, &c.; gossipping, cruelty, ill-manners, outrageous pretensions to criticism, grammar, and philosophy; superstitious and unbounded credulity in diviners and fortune-tellers, introducing supposititious children into their families, poisoning their step-sons to possess their fortunes, and, lastly, murdering their husbands. These, it must be confessed, form a dreadful catalogue of enormities, and seem to have terrified the translators. Even Dryden, who was never suspected of sparing the sex, either in his poems I i VOL. I. or plays, deems it necessary to apologize here, and assures the world that he was compelled to translate this formidable Satire because "no one else would do it." "Sir C. S." he says, "had undertaken it, and, though he would have done it better than himself, he unfortunately gave it up!" That Sir C. S. (Sir Charles Sedley, I suppose) would have succeeded better than Dryden, no one but Dryden would venture to insinuate. It is a piece of affectation, equally false and foolish-but sic vivitur, as Cicero somewhere says for Dryden's translation, though neither complete nor correct, is a most noble effort of genius. I know not why such dread should be felt at approaching this Satire. The ashes of the ladies whose actions are here recorded, have long been covered by the Latin and Flaminian ways; nor have their follies, or their vices, much similarity with those of modern times. If there be any, however, who recognize themselves (for guilt is sometimes ingenuous) in the pictures here drawn, let them shudder in silence, and amend; while the rest gaze with a portion of indignant curiosity, on the representation of a profligate and abandoned race, not more distant in time, than in every virtue and accomplishment, from themselves. It would seem from internal evidence, that this Satire was written under Domitian. It has few political allusions; and might not from its subject, perhaps, have been displeasing to that ferocious hypocrite, who affected, at various times, a wonderful anxiety to restrain the licentiousness of the age. SATIRE VI. TO URSIDIUS POSTHUMUS. v. 1-6. YES, I believe that CHASTITY was known, And priz❜d on earth, while Saturn fill'd the throne ; When rocks a bleak and scanty shelter gave, When sheep and shepherds throng'd one common cave, And when the mountain wife her couch bestrew'd With skins of beasts, joint tenants of the wood, VER. 5. And when the mountain wife, &c.] "That is," says Stapylton," the wife that dwelt in the mountain before such time as the men, although they came down themselves, durst bring their wives into the level!" This is the strangest idea imaginable. The women here spoken of, were not very likely to create any fears on their account: they were not less bold and adventurous than the men, nay often, says the poet, more so.-But thus it is, when the author is thinking of one thing, and the translator of another. A few lines below, because Juvenal calls the children of these primeval women large, Madan tells us that they were suckled till they were near a hundred years old! This passage is charmingly imitated by Beaumont and Fletcher in their tragedy of Philaster: |