Cover the country, that a sailing kite Can scarce o'er fly them in a day and night; 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? Of lazy pleasures, takest a worse extreme. And this, thou think'st, but vainly think'st, unseen. Thy catamite, the darling of thy heart, † Note VI. When, prone to bear, and patient to receive, Can smooth the roughness of thy shameful parts. 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, + Note VII. If thy lewd lust provokes an empty storm, And prompts to more than nature can perform; And dost in murders, rapes, and spoils delight; † 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 Athenians 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 mo dern custom, a balloting-box. If the suffrages were marked with e, they signified the sentence of death to the offender; as being the first letter of Oávaros, 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 himself 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, 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 Castus, 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 |