This cases, books, and busts:-thus more, much more,
The childless wretch possesses than before,
Though richest of the rich; and now there's bred
A shrewd suspicion, that, by avarice led,
Asturius set his old abode on fire,

To raise a new, more sumptuous, from the pyre.
O! from the Circus had'st thou power to fly,
At Frusino, or Sora, thou might'st buy

The singular art with which the poet contrasts the different fate of Codrus and Asturius, has not, I trust, escaped the notice of the reader; any more than the dexterity with which it is made conducive to the great, indeed the sole, object of the Satire.

VER. 338. O! from the Circus had'st thou power to fly, &c.] Si potes avelli; which implies something of force; and, indeed, the fondness of the Romans for the sports of the Circus, well warrants the expression.. Juvenal has many allusions to this extravagant attachment. In his sixth Satire, after observing that Hippia had abandoned her husband, her children, and her country, to follow a blear-eyed gladiator. he adds, with a dignity of sarcasm peculiar to himself,

"Utque magis stupeas, ludos, Paridemque reliquit!"

He is not less severe on the whole Roman people in the tenth Satire, where he VOL. I.

A a

Some elegant retreat, for what will here

Scarce hire a gloomy dungeon for a year!
There wells, by nature form'd, which need no rope,
No labouring arm, to crane their waters up,
Around thy lawn their facile streams shall pour,
And cheer the springing plant, and opening flower.
There live, delighted with the rustic's lot,
And till, with thy own hands, the little spot;
The little spot with herbs shall crown thy board,
And to thy frugal friends a pure repast afford.-
And sure, in any corner we can get,

To call one lizard ours, is something yet!

represents them as careless of the loss of their political importance, and only solicitous for two things, of which the Circus is one. It is needless to multiply instances; they will occur in the course of the translation.

VER. 350. And sure, in any corner we can get,

"We asked Doctor

To call one lizard ours, is something yet!] Johnson" (says Boswell, in his amusing life of that author)" the meaning of that expression in Juvenal, unius dominum lacerta. Johnson-I think it clear enough; it means as much ground as one may have a chance of finding a lizard upon." And so it does! and this, the Doctor might have added, is very little in Italy. Poor Boswell was a man of infinite curiosity: it is a pity he never heard of the ingenious conjecture of a Dutch critic, who would exchange lacertæ for lacerti, which he accurately translates een hand vol lands, and still more accurately interprets, "a piece of ground equal in extent to the space between the shoulder and the elbow,"-of a middle sized man I presume; though the eritic has unaccountably forgot to mention it.

But see the fallacy of criticism! This lacertus, which was triumphantly pronounced to mean een hand vol lands, by one commentator, is irrefragably proved

Sick with the fumes of undigested food,

Which, while it clogs the stomach, fires the blood, Here languid wretches painful vigils keep,

Curse the slow hours, and die for want of sleep;

For who can hope his weary lids to close,
Where brawling taverns banish all repose?—

Rest is not for the poor, it costs too dear,

And hence disease makes such wild havoc here.
The rumbling carts with rumbling carts that meet,

In every winding of the narrow street,
The drivers' efforts to inforce their way,
Their clamorous curses at each casual stay,
From Drowsy Drusus all his sleep would take,
And keep the calves of Proteus broad awake!

by another (a countryman of the former) to mean a salt-fish! Similes deliciæ in salsamentis lacerti &c. pari modo lacerti dominum" dixit Juv. sic enim malə quam lacertæ: lacertæ perperam nunc circumfertur, (could Burman possibly be ignorant that lacertus and lacerta, were both used for a lizard?) quod ipse damnat Sat. xiv. "cum parte lacerti," neque enim lacertæ inter edulia habita! Bur. Ovid. Tom. 111. p. 126.

A true critic, we know, never looks an inch on this side, or on that of the object before him; Burman may therefore be excused for giving the poet a saltfish to season his repast, notwithstanding he had said in the line immediately above, that it was the produce of his own garden, where such delicacies never grow; and was served up to his Pythagoric friends, who lived entirely on vegetables!

VER. 364. From drowsy Drusus, &c.] Some will have this to be the Emperor Claudius, who, to say the truth, if he had not, long ere this was written, fallen into the mypro voy, would not have been much injured by the supposition.

If business call, obsequious crowds divide,
While o'er their heads the rich securely ride,
By tall Illyrians borne; and read, or write,
Or, should the sultry hour to rest invite,
Shut close the litter, and enjoy the night.

}

It was more probably some well known character alive at the time. There is a good deal of humour in those unexpected, and gratuitous strokes of satire, so frequent in our author; and one can hardly help wondering at the want of taste in the commentators, who seldom appear to comprehend, and seldomer still to feel them. Thus Britannicus, vir gregis ipse caper, would alter Druso to Urso, because bears, forsooth, as Pliny somewhere says, are very good sleepers ;" and it seems more natural to proceed from one drowsy animal to another, than from a man!

Seals, or sea-calves, which are mentioned in the next line, are proverbially lethargic and sluggish. This, it must be confessed, is not a very recondite observation; and, indeed, I only make it for the sake of introducing the following remarks on the passage, by the learned Grævius. "How sea-calves, vitulis marinis, could be waked at Rome, let those tell who have seen them there, or elsewhere:" (meaning, I suppose, that there were no such persons.) Every one sees that the place is corrupt. It should be vetulis maritis; old men being naturally drowsy; besides, there is another reason why old bride-grooms, married to young brides, should sleep sound!" And yet there are critics sceptical enough, forsooth, to doubt the authenticity of the far-famed "restorations" of Martinus Scriblerus.

VER. 366. If business call, obsequious crowds divide, &c.] We have here another lively picture of the misery attending the great inequality of fortunes in a state so constituted as that of Rome. The rich rapidly, and almost without consciousness of impediment, moving to the levees of the old and childless; while the poor, whose sole support probably depended upon their early appearance there, are hopelessly struggling with dangers and difficulties that spring up at every step, to retard them!

Yet reach they first the goal; while, by the throng
Elbow'd, and jostled, scarce we creep along ;
Sharp strokes from poles, tubs, rafters, doom'd to feel;
Bespatter'd o'er with mud, from head to heel,
Kick'd by rude clowns, by brutal soldiers gor'd,
And trampled by the followers of my lord!

See, from the Dole a vast tumultuous throng,
Each follow'd by his kitchen, pours along!
Huge pans, which Corbulo could scarce uprear,
With steady neck the wretched menials bear,

VER. 377. See from the Dole, &c.] Umbritius shifts the scene. The diffi. culties of the morning are overpast, and the streets freed from the crowds of levee-hunters, &c. New perils now arise, and the poor are obstructed in the prosecution of their evening business, by the prodigious numbers of clients returning from the houses of their patrons with the sportula, or supper.

As he observes, that each of these clients was followed by his kitchen, (sequitur sua quemque culina,) and, as it further appears, preserved some state at home; it is probable that his view here, as well as in the first Satire, was to expose the meanness and avarice of the rich, who were content to swell the train of the vain or ambitious, and to exact the dole in consequence of it, to the manifest injury of the poorer claimants, in whose favour the distribution was first instituted.

The “kitchen” here spoken of was a larger kind of chaffing-dish, divided into two cells, in the uppermost of which, they put the meat, and in the lower, fire to keep it warm. It was to cherish this, that the slaves made such haste: -to bustle through the smoke and heat of such an eager throng must have been no less difficult than disagreeable. How often have I been reminded of the sportula, by the fire-pans, and suppers of the Neapolitans. As soon as it grows dark, the streets are filled with twinkling fires, glancing about, in every direction, on the heads of those modern "Corbulos;" and suddenly disappearing as they enter their houses with their frugal meal.