"By favouring fates ;-he mark'd the toils I set, "And rush'd, a willing victim, to the net." Was flattery e'er so gross? yet he grows vain, And his crest rises at the fulsome strain. When to divine a mortal power we raise, He never finds hyperboles in praise. But when was joy unmix'd? no pot is found Capacious of the turbot's ample round: Aight seriously copied ; and yet there is something extremely like it, in a little poem written by a very grave doctor of the 16th century: Lycidas ad sese lina reducens, "Exeruit salientem udo de carcere piscem, "Quem nulli casses, quem nulla incendia terrent But what shall we say of Claudian? "Telis jacebunt sponte tuis feræ, In Nupt. Hon. v. 15, Jonson too, whose learning frequently overpowered his judgment, and betrayed him into absurdities, has also taken this unnatural thought, (unnatural, when seriously addressed to a man of sense,) and expanded it thus: "Fat aged carps, that run into thy net, "And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat, "Officiously at first themselves betray." VER. 99. When to divine &c.] Forest, Lib. 11. 2. "O what is it proud slime will not believe Sejanus. But Ben was not so much the imitator as the translator of the ancients. Ruperti has strangely mistaken the sense of this passage. The fisherman was evidently no fool; yet he makes him talk like an arrant driveller. In this distress, he calls the chiefs of state, Scarce was the loud Liburnian heard to say, [gown, his VER. 103. In this distress, he calls the chiefs of state, &c.] This brings to my recollection an anecdote of Nero, worthy, in every respect, to be placed by the side of this before us. When the empire was now in a state of revolt against him, (a revolt which was soon followed by his flight and death,) he affected to despise the general commotion. One day, however, he summoned the senate in great haste: they assembled (as Domitian's counsellors did) eέations oπedy, expecting to hear something about the alarming state of publick affairs. To their utter amazement, he merely wanted to inform them of an improvement he had made on the hydraulick organ! Eivρrna (for I will use, says the historian, his very words) πως η ύδραυλις και μείζον και εμμελέστρον φθέγξεται ! VER. 109. Ere Pegasus, &c.] "Pegasus attonitæ positus modo villicus urbi." "I consulted," Mr. Gibbon says, "the first volume de l' Academie des Belles Lettres, for the meaning of attonita. De Valois applies it to the astonishment which prevailed at Rome on the revolt of L. Antonius. This is not impossible. But I am surprised he has not drawn from it the only conclusion that could render it interesting. Antonius' revolt happened in the year of Rome 840: the tyranny of Domitian had then reached its meridian," (no, not quite,)" yet the Romans had the baseness to endure it nine years longer!" This is good; and yet the observation on which it is founded, is not altogether correct. Fuscus, who was present at this famous council, fell in battle about the same time that Antonius revolted in Lower Germany: some other cause of the affright must, therefore, be sought. It need not be long in finding; for, besides the Dacians, who were now keeping Rome in a constant state of And rush'd to council: from the ivory chair alarm, the Catti, the Sicambri, and other barbarous nations, were on the eve of commencing hostilities. After all, little more, perhaps, is meant by the expression than that the town was amazed and terrified at the suddenness of the summons. The caprices of the Emperour were always bloody: and, indeed, Pliny mentions it, as a striking instance of the happiness which the senate enjoyed under Trajan, that when they met, they did it without fear of losing their heads! VER. 110. (For what were Præfects more?)] Præfects were first appointed by Romulus, and his regal successours, and after them by the Consuls; but their authority was so much enlarged by Augustus, that he may be almost considered as having instituted them. He is said to have done this by the advice of Mæcenas ; and the choice of those on whom he successively conferred the office, shows his opinion of its importance. The Præfect was, indeed, trusted with extraordinary powers. His jurisdiction was no longer confined, as before, to the city, but extended a hundred miles beyond it-intra centesimum lapidem, He decided in all causes between masters and slaves, patrons and clients, guardians and wards, &c.; he had the inspection of the mints, the regulation of the markets, and the superintendence of the publick amusements. But this was in better days: the Præfect, like every other popular magistrate, was now reduced to insignificance; and the expressions of Juvenal contain a bitter sarcasm on the supineness of the Romans, who had carelessly seen this great officer degraded, by the overbearing tyranny of Domitian, and his immediate predecessors, to the humiliating situation of a bailiff, or country steward. Lubin says that Pegasus was made Præfect of the city by Vespasian. I know not how to reconcile this to our author's modo positus, just appointed; and I suspect the accuracy of the critick, who is, however, followed by Holyday. For the rest, Pegasus was an upright and worthy magistrate; and, according to the Scholiast, had presided over many of the provinces with honour to himself, and satisfaction to the people. He was, besides, a man of great learning, and a most profound lawyer. Pegasus, I be lieve, was succeeded by Rutilius Gallicus, a man of extraordinary merit; in that case, the adventure of the turbot must have taken place before the year of C. 87. But yielded oft to those licentious times, And, where he could not punish, wink'd at crimes. Had that pernicious pest, whom thus we call, VER. 115. Then old, facetious Crispus &c.] Crispus is charac terized nearly in the same manner by Statius. One of his good things is on record. He was met by a friend coming out of the palace, and asked whether any body was with the Emperour. "No," replied he, "not even a fly:" for Domitian, to keep himself in practice, used to amuse his leisure hours with chasing these poor insects, and sticking them upon a style or sharp pointed instrument for writing. Tacitus, from what motives it is not easy to guess, speaks less favourably of Crispus than our author. It could not surely be for his cautious conduct; for this is what he expressly commends in his life of Agricola. "He did not choose," says he, “to imitate the zeal of those who by their intemperance provoked their fate, and rushed on sure destruction, without rendering any kind of service to their country."Happily for mankind, the historian himself had the prudence to copy his father-in-law's example. But whatever the demerits of Crispus might be, we may be sure, from the language of Juvenal, who, though not so good a politician as Tacitus, was as honest a man, and as sincere a hater of tyranny in all its modes and forms, that a base compliance with any dangerous caprice of the Emperour was not one of them. Like Pegasus, where he could not approve, he was probably silent. The old Scholiast makes a pleasant mistake about this man: he confounds him with Crispus Passienus, who was put to death by Claudius, Not one of those, who, by no fears deterr'd, --- VER. 131. Next him, appear'd Acilius &c.] Little is known of Acilius, but that little is favourable. How he could become dangerous to Domitian, at the advanced age of eighty, is not easily explained; but we find in Suetonius, that soon after the event here so worthily celebrated, he was driven into banishment on a suspicion of treason. His treasons were probably his virtues; for Pliny, speaking of him many years after his death, describes him as a man of singular prudence and worth. In the next line I have supposed, with most of the commentators, that the young man who followed Acilius was his son: this, however, is doubtful. Why the youth, be he who he may, was induced to feign fatuity, after the example of the elder Brutus; and for what crime, real or pretended, he finally fell, are circumstances which have not come down to us. Juvenal lightly touches on the fact, as one well known to his contemporaries; and the multiplied murders of Domitian unfortunately took away all inclination, and indeed all power, from the historians to particularize them. There is, however, a story in Dio which I have been sometimes tempted to think might allude to the person who accompanied Acilius. Acilius Glabrio (the name seems to correspond) was put to death by Domitian, on an accusation of impiety, and of having fought in the arena. The impiety is explained by his attachment to what Dio calls Ta Twv Idaw non, perhaps Christianity. The fighting (or xai Impions EμaXETO) was thus: when he was Consul, (to this his youth is no objection, considering the times in which he lived, *) Domitian sent for him to Alba, and compelled him to engage a lion at the celebration of the Juvenilia. He killed the beast, and Domitian put him to death some time after, through envy of the applause he acquired by it. This also agrees with the text, profuit ergo nihil misero, &c. What follows, however, in Juvenal, seems to show, unless something occurred * He was Consul with Trajan, who must also have been young,' |