Cover the country, that a sailing kite
Can scarce o'er fly them in a day and night;
Him dost thou mean, who, spite of all his store,
Is ever craving, and will still be poor?
Who cheats for half-pence, and who doffs his coat,
To save a farthing in a ferry-boat?
Ever a glutton at another's cost,
But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost ?
Who eats and drinks with his domestic slaves,
A verier hind than any of his knaves?
Born with the curse and anger of the gods,
And that indulgent genius he defrauds ?
At harvest-home, and on the shearing-day,
When he should thanks to Pan and Pales pay,
And better Ceres, f trembling to approach
The little barrel, which he fears to broach

i
He 'says the wimble, often draws it back,
And deals to thirsty servants but a smack.
To a short meal he makes a tedious grace,
Before the barley-pudding comes in place :
Then bids fall on; himself, for saving charges,
A peeled sliced onion eats, and tipples verjuice.
Thus fares the drudge: but thou, whose life's a

dreain Of lazy pleasures, takest a worse extreme. 'Tis all thy business, business how to shun; To bask thy naked body in the sun; Suppling thy stiffened joints with fragrant oil: Then, in thy spacious garden walk a while, To suck the moisture up, and soak it in; And this, thou think'st, but vainly think’st, unseen. But know, thou art observed; and there are those, Who, if they durst, would all thy secret sins expose; The depilation of thy modest part; Thy catamite, the darling of thy heart, His engine-hand, and every lewder art,

+ Note VI.

When, prone to bear, and patient to receive,
Thou tak'st the pleasure which thou canst not give.
With odorous oil thy head and hair are sleek,
And then thou kemb'st the tuzzes on thy cheek;
Of these thy barbers take a costly care,
While thy salt tail is overgrown with hair.
Not all thy pincers, nor unmanly arts,
Can smooth the roughness of thy shameful parts.
Not five, the strongest that the Circus breeds, t
From the rank soil can root those wicked weeds,
Though suppled first with soap, to ease thy pain;
The stubborn fern springs up, and sprouts again.

Thus others we with defamations wound,
While they stab us,' and so the jest goes round.
Vain are thy hopes, to 'scape censorious eyes;
Truth will appear through all the thin disguise:
Thou hast an ulcer which no leach can heal,
Though thy broad shoulder-belt the wound conceal.
Say thou art sound and hale in every part,
We know, we know thee rotten at thy heart.
We know thee sullen, inipotent, and proud:
Nor canst thou cheat thy nerve, who cheat'st the

crowd. But when they praise me in the neighbourhood, When the pleased people take me for a god, Shall I refuse their incense? Not receive The loud applauses which the vulgar give ?

If thou dost wealth with longing eyes behold, And greedily art gaping after gold; If some alluring girl, in gliding by, Shall tip the wink, with a lascivious eye, And thou, with a consenting glance, reply; If thou thy own solicitor become, And bidsťarise the lumpish pendulum;

}

+ Note VII.

If thy lewd lust provokes an empty storm,
And prompts to more than nature can perform;
If, with thy guards, thou scour'st the streets by

night,
And dost in murders, rapes, and spoils delight; †
Please not thyself, the flattering crowd to hear,
'Tis fulsome stuff to feed thy itching ear.
Reject the nauseous praises of the times;
Give thy base poets back their cobled rhimes :
Survey thy soul, not what thou dost appear,
But what thou art, and find the beggar there. I

NOTES

ON

TRANSLATIONS FROM PERSIUS.

SATIRE IV.

Note I.

Socrates ---P. 243. Socrates, whom the oracle of Delphos praised as the wisest man of his age, lived in the time of the Peloponnesian war. He, finding the uncertainty of natural philosophy, applied himself wholly to the moral. He was master to Xenophon and Plato, and to many of the Athenian young noblemen; amongst the rest to Alcibiades, the most lovely youth then living; afterwards a famous captain, whose life is written by Plutarch,

Note II.
Tell me, thou pupil to great Pericles,

Our second hope, my Alcibiades.---P. 243. Pericles was tutor, or rather overseer, of the will of Clinias, father to Alcibiades. While Pericles lived, who was a wise man, and an excellent orator, as well as a great general, the Athesians had the better of the war.

Note III.

Can'st punish crimes.-P. 244. That is, by death. When the judges would condemn a malefactor, they cast their votes into an urn; as, according to the modern custom, a balloting-box. If the suffrages were marked with

, they signified the sentence of death to the offender; as being the first letter of Oávatos, which, in English, is death.

Note IV.

Drink hellebore.---P. 244. The poet would say, that such an ignorant young man, as he here describes, is fitter to be governed bimself than to govern others. He therefore advises him to drink hellebore, which purges the brain,

Note V. Say, dost thou know Vectidius ?.--P. 245. The name of Vectidius is here used appellatively, to signify any rich covetous man, though perhaps there might be a man of that name then living. I have translated this passage paraphrastically, and loosely; and leave it for those to look on, who are not unlike the picture.

Note VI.
When he should thanks to Pan and Pales pay,

And better Ceres. -P. 945. Pan, the god of shepherds, and Pales, the goddess presiding over rural affairs; whom Virgil invocates in the beginning of his second Georgic. I give the epithet of better to Ceres, because she first taught the use of corn for bread, as the poets tell us ; men, in the first rude ages, feeding only on acorns, or mast, instead of bread.

Note VII. Not five, the strongest that the Circus breeds.---P. 246. The learned Holyday (who has made us amends for his bad poctry in this and the rest of these satires, with his excellent illustrations), here tells us, from good authority, that the number five does not allude to the five fingers of one man, but to five strong men, such as were skilful in the five robust exercises then in practice at Rome, and were performed in the circus, or public place ordained for them. These five he reckons up in this manner : 1. The Cæstus, or Whirlbatts, described by Virgil in his fifth Æneid; and this was the most dangerous of all the rest. The 2d was the foot-race. The 3d, the discus; like the throwing a weighty