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Or he who in his line,

"Can chime the long-rib Apennine."
PERSIUS. All this is dogrel stuff.
FRIEND. What if I bring

A nobler verfe? "Arms and the man I fing."
PERSIUS.Why name youVirgil with such fops as these!
He's truly great, and must for ever please;
Not fierce, but awful in his manly page,
Bold in his ftrength, but fober in his rage.

FRIEND. What poems think you foft? and to be readWith languishing regards, and bending head?

PER. "Their crooked horns the Mimallonian crew With blafts infpir'd: and Baffaris, who flew The fcornful calf, with fword advanc'd on high, Made from his neck his haughty head to fly. And Mænas, when with ivy bridles bound, * She led the fpotted Lynx, then Evion rung around,

The verfes marked with commas are Nero's, and it is no wonder that men of fo delicate a tafte as Lucan and Perfius could not digeft them, though made by an emperor.

About this time the world was grown weary of Nero, for a thousand monftrous cruelties of his life, and the continued abuse of the imperial power. Rome had groaned long under the weight of them, till at length feveral of the firft rank, headed by Piso, formed ma confpiracy to rid the world of that abandoned wretch, Lucan hated him upon a double score; as

his

his country's enemy and his own, and went heartily into the defign. When it was juft ripe for execution, it came to be discovered by fome of the accomplices, and Lucan was found among the first of the confpirators. They were condemned to die, and Lucan had the choice of the manner of his death. Upon this occafion fome authors have taxed him with an action, which, if true, had been an eternal ftain upon his name, that, to fave his life, he informed against his mother. This ftory feems to me to be a meer calumny, and invented only to detract from his fame. It is certainly the most unlikely thing in the world, confidering the whole conduct of his life, and that noble fcheme of philosophy and morals he had imbibed from his infancy, and which fhines in every page of his Pharfalia. It is probable, Nero himself, or fome of his flatterers, might invent the ftory, to blacken his rival to pofterity; and fome unwary authors have afterwards taken it up on truft, without examining into the truth of it. We have feveral fragments of his life, where this particular is not to be found; and, which makes it ftill the more improbable to me, the writers that mention it, have tacked to it another calumny yet more improbable, that he accufed her unjuftly. As this accufation contradicts the whole tenor of his life, fo it does the manner of his death. It is univerfally agreed, that, having chose to have the arteries of his arms and legs opened in a hot bath, he fupped chearfully with his friends, and then, taking leave of them with the greatest tranquillity of mind

and

and the higheft contempt of death, went into the bath, and submitted to the operation. When he found the extremities of his body growing cold, and death's laft alarm in every part, he called to mind a paffage of his own in the IXth Book of the Pharfalia, which he repeated to the standers-by, with the fame grace and accent, with which he used to declaim in public, and immediately expired, in the 27th year of his age, and tenth of Nero. The paffage was that where he defcribes a foldier of Cato's dying much after the fame manner, being bit by a ferpent, and is thus tranflated by Mr. Rowe: ni

So the warm blood at once from every part

"Ran purple poifon down, and drain'd the fainting heart. Blood falls for tears, and o'er his mournful face "The ruddy drops their tainted paffage trace. « Where-e'er the liquid juices find a way, "There streams of blood, there crimson rivers tray. His mouth and gufhing noftrils pour a flood,. "And ev❜n the pores oufe out the trickling blood; "In the red deluge, all the parts lie drown'd, "And the whole body feems one bleeding wound."

He was buried in his garden at Rome; and there was lately to be feen, in the church of Santo Paulo, an ancient marble with the following infcription: MARCO ANNAEO LVCANO CORDVBENSI POETAE, BENEFICIO NERONIS, FAMA SERVATA.

This infcription, if done by Nero's order, fhows, that, even in fpite of himself, he paid a fecret homage

to

to Lucan's genius and virtue, and would have atoned in fome measure for the injuries and the death he gave him. But he needed no marble or infcription to perpetuate his memory; his Pharfalia will out-live all thefe.

Lucan wrote feveral books, that have perifhed by the injury of time, and of which nothing remains but the titles. The firft we are told he wrote, was a Poem on the Combat between Achilles and Hector, and Priam's redeeming his Son's Body, which, it is faid, he wrote before he had attained eleven years of age. The reft were, The Descent of Orpheus into Hell; The burning of Rome, in which he is faid not to have fpared Nero that fet it on fire; and a Poem in Praise of his Wife Polla Argentaria. He wrote likewife feveral Books of Saturnalia; ten Books of Silvæ; an imperfect Tragedy of Medea; a Poem upon the burning of Troy, and the Fate of Priam; to which fome have added the Panegyric to Calphurnius Pifo, yet extant, which I can hardly believe is his, but of a later age. But the Book he ftaked his fame on was his Pharfalia; the only one that now remains, and which Nero's cruelty has left us imperfect in refpect of what it would have been, if he had lived to finish it.

Statius in his Sylvæ gives us the catalogue of Lucan's works in an elegant manner, introducing the Mufe Calliope accofting him to this purpose: "When thou art scarce past the age of childhood "(fays Calliope to Lucan) thou shalt play with the

❝ valour

* valour of Achilles, and Hector's skill in driving of a chariot. Thou shalt draw Priam at the feet "of his unrelenting Conqueror, begging the dead body of his darling fon. Thou shalt fet open the gates of hell for Eurydice, and thy Orpheus fhall

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have the preference in a full theatre, in fpite of "Nero's envy;" alluding to the difpute for the prize between him and Nero, where the piece exhibited by Lucan was Orpheus's defcent into hell. "Thou

fhalt relate (continues Calliope) that flame which "the execrable tyrant kindled, to lay in ashes the "mistress of the world; nor fhalt thou be filent in "the praises that are justly due to thy beloved wife;

and when thou haft attained to riper years, thou "fhalt fing, in a lofty ftrain, the fatal fields of Philippi, "white with Roman bones, the dreadful battle of Pharfalia, and the thundering wars of that great captain, who, by the renown of his arms, merited "to be inrolled among the gods. In that work (continues Calliope) thou shalt paint, in neverfading colours, the auftere virtues of Cato, who "fcorned to out-live the liberties of his country; and the fate of Pompey, once the darling of Rome. Thou shalt, like a true Roman, weep over the "crime of the young tyrant Ptolemy; and fhalt raife to Pompey, by the power of thy eloquence, a higher monument than the Egyptian pyramids. "The poetry of Ennius (adds Calliope) and the learned fire of Lucretius, the one that conducted the Argonauts through fuch vaft feas to the con

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