Anon, like voluntary slaves, you'll throw *** 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! SATIRE VI. TO URSIDIUS POSTHUMUS. Y v. 1-8. E S, I believe that CHASTITY was known, And prized 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, And reeds, and leaves pluck'd from the neighbour ing tree : A woman, Cynthia, far unlike to thee, 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 excite 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 Or thee, weak child of fondness and of fears, 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 in the tragedy of Phil aster: "Phil. O, that I had but digg'd myself a cave, "Where I, my fire, my cattle, and my bed, Might have been shut together in one shed; " And then had taken me some mountain girl, "Beaten with winds, chaste as the harden'd rock, "Whereon she dwells; that might have strew'd my bed "With leaves and reeds, and with the skins of beasts, "Our neighbours; and have born at her big breasts, "My large coarse issue." Act IV. Thus did the reading of the old dramatists enable them to enrich their works with passages of perennial beauty, which charmed alike the closet and the stage. The reading of the present race of farce-mongers, seldom, I believe, extends beyond the nursery; and their productions are, therefore, the disgrace of the one, and the contempt and aversion of the other. VER. 9. Or thee, weak child of fondness, &c.] He means Lesbia, the mistress of Catullus, whose exquisite hendecasyllables on the death of her favourite sparrow are still extant. The lines to which Juvenal particularly alludes, are these, "O factum male, O miselle passer, Cynthia, mentioned in the preceding line, was the mistress of It may be worth observing, that Juvenal has not made his age of chastity very inviting: he proceeds with too rapid a step |