THE

FIRST SATIRE

OF

PERSIUS.

Argument

Of the Prologue to the first Satire.

THE design of the author was to conceal his name and quality, He lived in the dangerous times of the tyrant Nero; and aims particularly at him in most of his satires. For which reason,

though he was a Roman knight, and of a plentiful fortune, he would appear in this prologue but a beggarly poet, who writes for bread. After this, he breaks into the business of the first satire; which is chiefly to decry the' poetry then in fashion, and the impudence of those who were endeavouring to pass their stuff upon the world.

TO THE

FIRST SATIRES

I NEVER did on cleft Parnassus dream,
Nor taste the sacred Heliconian stream;
Nor can remember when my brain, inspir'd,
Was, by the Muses, into madness fir'd.
My share in pale Pyrene I resign;
And claim no part in all the mighty Nine.
Statues, with winding ivy crown'd, belong
To nobler poets, for a nobler song:

Heedless of verse, and hopeless of the crown,
Scarce half a wit, and more than half a clown,
Before the shrine I lay my rugged numbers down.
Who taught the parrot human notes to try,
Or with a voice endued the chattering pye?
'Twas witty want, fierce hunger to appease :
Want taught their masters, and their masters these.
Let gain, that gilded bait, be hung on high,
The hungry witlings have it in their eye;
Pyes, crows, and daws, poetic presents bring:
You say they squeak; but they will swear they sing.

Argument.

Of the First Satire.

I NEED not repeat, that the chief aim of the author is against bad poets in this satire. But I must add, that he includes also bid orators, who began at that time (as Petronius in the beginning of his book tells us) to enervate manly eloquence, by tropes and figures, ill-placed and worse applied. Amongst the poets, Persius covertly strikes at Nero; some of whose verses he recites with scorn and indignation. He also takes. notice of the noblemen and their abominable poetry, who, in the luxury of their fortunes, set up for wits and judges. The satire is in dialogue, betwixt the author and his friend or nonitor; who dissuades him from this dangerous attempt of exposing great men. But Persius, who is of a free spirit, and has not forgotten that Rome was once a commonwealth, breaks through all those difficulties, and boldly arraigns the false judgment of the age in which he lives. The reader may obsevre that our poet was a stoic philosopher; and that all his moral sentences, both here and in all the rest of his satires, are drawn from the dogmas of that sect.

THE

FIRST SATIRE.

In Dialogue betwixt the Poet and his Friend or Monitor

PERSIUS.

How anxious are our cares, and yet how vain The bent of our desires!

Friend. Thy spleen contain:

Persius. This to me?

For none will read thy satires.

Friend. None; or what's next to none, but two

'Tis hard, I grant.

(or three. Persius. 'Tis nothing; I can bear That paltry scribblers have the public ear: That this vast universal fool, the town, Should cry up Labeo's stuff, and cry me down. They damn themselves; nor will my Muse descend To clap with such, who fools and knaves commend: Their smiles and censures are to me the same: I care not what they praise, or what they blame, In full assemblies let the crow prevail: I weigh no merit by the common scale. The conscience is the test of every mind; 'Seek not thyself, without thyself, to find.'

But where's that Roman?—Somewhat I would say,
But fear; let fear, for once, to truth give way,
Truth lends the Stoic courage: when I look
On human acts, and read in Nature's book,
From the first pastimes of our infant-age,
To elder cares, and man's severer page;
When stern as tutors, and as uncles hard,
We lash the pupil, and defraud the ward:
Then, then I say,-
-or would say, if I durst-
But thus provok'd, I must speak out, or burst.
Friend. Once more forbear.

Persius. I cannot rule my spleen;
My scorn rebels, and tickles me within.
First, to begin at home: our authors write
In lonely rooms, secur'd from public sight;
Whether in prose, or verse, 'tis all the same:
The prose is fustian, and the numbers lame.
All noise, and empty pomp, a storm of words,
Labouring with sound, that little sense affords.
They comb, and then they order every hair:
A gown, or white, or scour'd to whiteness wear :
A birth-day jewel bobbing at their ear.
Next, gargle well their throats, and thus prepar'd,
They mount, a God's name, to be seen and heard.
From their high scaffold, with a trumpet cheek,
And ogling all their audience ere they speak.
The nauseous nobles, ev'n the chief of Rome,
With gaping mouths to these rehearsals come,
And pant with pleasure, when some lusty line
The marrow pierces, and invades the chine,