'Twere worth our praise-but no such plan was

here;

'Twas for himself he bought a treat so dear!
This all past gluttony from shame redeems,
And even Apicius poor and frugal seems.
What, you, Crispinus, you, so late a slave,
Wrapt in the flags your country's marshes gave,
You purchase fish so dear! you might, I guess,
Have bought the fisherman himself for less;
Bought, in some countries, manors at this rate,
And in Apulia, an immense estate!

How gorged the Emperour, when so dear a fish,
Yet, of his cheapest meals, the cheapest dish,
Was guttled down by this impurpled lord,
Chief knight, chief parasite at Cæsar's board,

of the lady, who pretended to conceal herself, in a vehicle which, from its splendour, must have attracted universal notice.

VER. 34. Wrapt in the flags &c.] The translators have clothed Crispinus in paper: he was not, I believe, quite so delicately drest. Pliny the Elder says that the Ægyptians manufactured the stalks of the papyrus, not only into mats and sails, but into garments, vela tegetesque, nec non et vestem. I once thought Crispinus might have obtained one of these, but I am now persuaded that he was not so fortunate. He was girt, in short, round the middle with the papyrus coarsely strung, or plaited together, as the savages of the new-discovered islands are said to be, and as his countrymen are at this day. Rear Admiral Perrée, who certainly had no intention of illustrating Juvenal, mentions this circumstance, which, to my mind, does it very happily: La férocité des habitans est pire que les sauvages; majeure partie habillés en paille. The ferocity of the natives exceeds that of savages; most of them appear to be clothed in reeds or rushes. Intercept. Lett.

The contrast between Crispinus thatched with rushes, and Crispinus clothed in Tyrian purple, is not overlooked by our author.

I

Whom Egypt heard so late, with ceaseless yell, Clamouring through all her towns-" Ho! sprats to sell!"

Pierian MAIDS, begin ;-but quit your lyres, The fact I bring, no sounding chord requires: Relate it, then, and in the simplest strain, Nor let your poet style you MAIDS in vain.

When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore The prostrate world, that bled at every pore, And Rome beheld, in body as in mind, A bald-pate Nero rise, to curse mankind;

VER. 52. A bald-pate Nero rise, &c.] This Nero, as, with some injury to his worthy prototype, Juvenal calls Domitian, is said by Suetonius to have been so sore on the subject of his baldness, that it was not safe to mention a want of hair in his hearing. By a strange obliquity of reasoning, as soon as his hair was gone, he set about composing a treatise on the method of taking care of it: and it should seem from the short extract which Suetonius has preserved of the work, that Sir Fretful himself could not have born his misfortunes with greater fortitude, or talked of them with greater sincerity:-forti animo fero comam in adolescentia senescentem. Scias nec gratius quidquam decore, nec brevius, &c. Domit. 18. Be this as it may, the designation which our author has given of this last and worst of his family, is a masterly one: it seems to have grown into a proverb, for Ausonius thus repeats it:

"Et Titus imperii felix brevitate; sequutus

"Frater, quem Calvum dixit sua Roma Neronem."

The old Scholiast says that these four lines provoked the Emperour to send Juvenal into banishment. This is a judicious thought, as they must be allowed to be much more offensive than the short reflection on Paris, (in the seventh Satire,) which is commonly cited as the cause of his exile. There are, however, two objections, which have their weight with me; first, that Domitian would have thrown the author of so severe a passage from the Tarpeian Rock, instead of sending him into Egypt; and secondly, that he was dead (as the critick would have found, if he had read a few lines further) when it was written!

It chanced, that where the fane of Venus stands,
Rear'd on Ancona's coast by Grecian hands,
A turbot, wandering from the Illyrian main,
Fill'd the wide bosom of the bursting seine.
Monsters so bulky, from its frozen stream,
Mæotis renders to the solar beam,

And pours them, fat with a whole winter's ease,
Through the dull Euxine, into warmer seas.

The mighty draught the astonish'd boatman eyes, And to the Pontiff's table dooms his prize: For who would dare to sell it, who to buy, When the coast swarm'd with many a practised spy, Mud-rakers, prompt to swear the fish had fled From Cæsar's ponds, ingrate! where long it fed, And thus recaptured, claim'd to be restored To the dominion of its ancient lord!

VER. 62. And to the Pontiff's table &c.] Britannicus thinks Juvenal calls Domitian Pontiff, in allusion to his condemnation of the Vestals, which was the peculiar province of the high-priest. Others again suppose that there is an allusion to the sottish vanity of the Emperour, in accumulating upon himself every office of power, and every title of honour. But can Britannicus be right? Surely there were vices enough belonging to Domitian, and appropriate to his character. Our author could hardly mean to impute it to him as a crime that he was Pont. Max, when he assumed that title only in compliance with the custom of his predecessors. He might, indeed, mean to contrast the real viciousness of his character with the outward sanctity of his office:-after all, I cannot much admire Juvenal's taste in the selection of this word; he should rather have fixed on some title, by virtue of which the fish might be claimed. The charge, indeed, of assuming dignities improperly, might have been justly urged against him in the case of the Consulate and Censorship. He was Consul for ten years together, and Censor for life; and he was the first of the Romans that so usurped these honours, πρωτος δη και μόνος, και ιδιωτων και

αυτοκρατόρων.

Nay, if Palphurius may our credit gain,
Whatever rare or precious swims the main,
Is forfeit to the crown, and you may seize
The obnoxious dainty, when and where you please.
This point allow'd, our wary boatman chose
To give what else, he had not fail'd to lose.

Now were the dogstar's sickly fervours o'er,
Earth, pinch'd with cold, her frozen livery wore;
The old began their quartan fits to fear,
And wintry blasts deform'd the beauteous year,
And kept the turbot sweet: yet on he flew
As if the sultry South corruption blew.—
And now the lake, and now the hill he gains,
Where Alba, though in ruins, still maintains

VER. 69. Nay, if Palphurius &c.] This is not much unlike what we find in Blackstone, that sturgeon and whale were anciently called royal fish with us, on account of their excellence, and, as such, appropriated to the sovereign:

"Hath not strong reason mov'd the legist's minde,
"To say, the fayrest of all nature's kinde

"The prince, by his prerogative, may clayme?"

Very good, Master Marston. Palphurius and you "are both in a tale."

The history of this person is curious. He had been a buffoon and a parasite at the court of Nero; occupations for which Vespasian disgracefully turned him out of the senate: when he commenced Stoick in spite, and talked (which Suetonius says he could do very eloquently) of abstinence and virtue; till Domitian, who wanted little other recommendation of a man, than the having justly incurred the contempt and anger of his father, made him his own lawyer, and gave him the management of his informations, proscriptions, &c.; in which, says my author, he bestirred himself to some purpose.

VER. 82. Where Alba, &c.] Alba, where Domitian now was, stood on the declivity of a hill, near a pretty spacious lake, famous in Roman story. It was built by Ascanius, after the death of his

The Trojan fire, that but for her were lost,
And worships Vesta, though with less of cost.
The wondering crowd, that gather'd to survey
The enormous fish, and choked the fisher's way,
Satiate at length retires; then wide unfold
The gates; the senators, shut out, behold
The envied dainty enter: on the man
To great Atrides press'd, and thus began.
"This, for a private table far too great,
"Accept, and sumptuously your Genius treat:
Haste, Sire, to free your stomach, and devour
"A turbot, long reserved for this glad hour,

mother Lavinia, (Sat. x11.) and the Trojans seem to have deposited there the sacred fire brought from Ilium. When the city was destroyed, and Rome made the capital of the nation, a remnant of this fire was still left there from some superstitious motive, and piously preserved through all the vicissitudes of the commonwealth.

Domitian, as I have elsewhere observed, was attached to Alba. Here he spent much of his time, and here he usually kept the Quinquatria, or festival of Minerva,whom,with matchless propriety, he had chosen for his patron and protectress. Madan, in the true spirit of a commentator, tells us, that the occasion of Domitian's being there at this time, might be the celebration of this holiday. This is excellent; the Quinquatria began on the 19th of March, and Juvenal has just told us, that the fish was presented at the close of autumn!

VER. 91. This, for a private table &c.] The Anconian might have found a precedent for his conduct in Herodotus, who gives an account of a very fine fish which was taken, and brought to Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos. The presentation speech is preserved by the historian: it is very civil, as might be expected, but far short of this before us. Herodotus adds, that Polycrates invited the fisherman to sup with him: a trait of politeness which, we may be pretty confident, Domitian did not think it necessary to imitate. I suppose no one ever expected to see this sublim