You think, perhaps, that Virro treats so ill, To save his gold: no, 'tis to vex you still : For, say, what comedy such mirth can raise, As hunger, tortured thus a thousand ways? No; (if you know it not,) 'tis to excite Your rage, your frenzy, for his mere delight; 'Tis to compel you all your gall to show, And gnash your teeth in agonies of woe. You deem yourself, (such pride inflates your breast,) Forsooth, a freeman, and your patron's guest; He thinks you a vile slave, drawn, by the smell Of his warm kitchen, there; and he thinks well : For who so low, so wretched, as to bear Such treatment twice, whose fortune 'twas, to wear The golden boss; nay, to whose humbler lot, The poor man's ensign fell, the leathern knot!

beaten with a rod? it might, perhaps, be sufficient to answer, that Juvenal writes like a poet, and not like a drill-serjeant :but Holyday goes further, and combats the critick's accuracy.

This learned man, who candidly recapitulates the opinions of the commentators, follows that of Rutgersius. I did not expect this:-it is but fair, however, to give his reasons for it: "First, because it is without any alteration of the copy; secondly, because it is free from any of those inconveniencies which follow the other opinions; thirdly, because it supposes nothing, but what, according to the ordinary custome of such sports, will be easily granted; and lastly, because it is far more quick and satyrical, to this sense; Virro has his curious fruit; but thou such as they feed apes with."

*VER. 252. The golden boss;] This ornament, or rather amulet,

Your palate still beguiles you: Ah, 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; watching 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 your can, without a murmur, bear, You well deserve the insults which you share.

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 freeborn. From its Latin name, bulla, it seems to have been a little hollow drop, or globule; indicative, as Lubin says, of human fraginty. Holyday, who adopts the opinion of Macrobius on the subject, thinks it was shaped like a heart, and worn before the breast as an incitement to virtue; while Plutarch gives it the form of a crescent, to which, indeed, the heart (if it were moulded like the trinkets of our days) might bear no very distant resemblance.

Whatever the figure of the bulla might be, and probably it was variable, the Romans, as the Scholiast rightly remarks, considered it as a badge of liberty: as such, it was 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, (as in the text,) and, perhaps, of other cheap materials.

Anon, like voluntary slaves, you'll throw
Your humbled necks, beneath the oppressor's blow,
Nay, with bare backs, solicit to be beat,
And merit such a Friend, and such a TREAT!

*** With what spirit does Juvenal conclude! and alas, says Dr. Ireland, with what facility does he forget his own purpose! In his eagerness to lash the guest, he excuses the host, and contradicts some of his former invectives on the inherent meanness of the great men of Rome towards their dependents: dives tibi, pauper amicis. Right taste would have directed him to carry on both his purposes together, without sacrificing one to the other: -the servility of the client might have been exposed, while the pride and parsimony of the patron were preserved as qualities necessary to the effect and consistency of his satire.

!

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 not without method 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.; gossiping, 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 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.-But sic vivitur, as Cicero says-for his translation, though neither complete nor correct, is a most noble effort of genius.

tire. The ashes of the ladies whose enormities are here recorded, have long been covered by the Latian 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 anriety to restrain the licentiousness of the age!