Cùm subita incantum dementia cepit Amantem;
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes,

I will not burden your Lordship with more of them; for I write to a master, who understands them better than myself. But I may safely con clude them to be great beauties: I might descend also to the mechanic beauties of heroic verse; but we have yet no English prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous; and what government will encourage any one, or more, who are capable of refining it, I know not: but nothing under a public expense can go through with it. And I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope an advancement of it in the present

our two great authors be answerable to their fame and reputation in the world. We have therefore endeavoured to give the public all the satisfaction we are able in this kind.

And if we are not altogether so faithful to our author, as our predecessors, Holiday and Stapylton; yet we may challenge to ourselves this praise, that we shall be far more pleasing to our readers, We have followed our authors at greater distance, though not step by step, as they have done. For oftentimes they have gone so close, that they have trod on the heels of Juvenal and Persius, and hurt them by their too near approach. A noble author would not be pursued too close by a translator. We lose his spirit, when we think to take his body. The grosser part remains with us, but the soul is flown away, in some noble expression, or some delicate turn of words, or thought. Thus Holiday, who made this way his choice, scized the meaning of Juvenal; but the poetry has always scaped him.

They who will not grant me, that pleasure is one of the ends of poetry, but that it is only a means of compassing the only end, which is instruction; must yet allow, that without the means of pleasure, the instruction is but a bare and dry philosophy; a crude preparation of morals, which

more profit than from any poet: neither Holiday nor Stapylton have imitated Juvenal, in the poetical part of him, his diction and his elocution. Nor had they been poets, as neither of them were; yet in the way they took, it was impossible for them to have succeeded in the poetic part.

I would excuse the performance of this translation, if it were all my own; but the better, though not the greater part, being the work of some gentle-we may have from Aristotle and Epictetus, with men, who have succeeded very happily in their undertaking; let their excellencies atone for my imperfections, and those of my sons. I have perused some of the satires, which are done by other hands; and they seem to me as perfect in their kind, as any thing I have seen in English verse. The common way which we have taken, is not a literal translation, but a kind of paraphrase; or somewhat which is yet more loose, betwixt a paraphrase and imitation. It was not possible for us, or any men, to have made it pleasant any other way. If rendering the exact sense of those authors, almost line for line, had been our business, Barten

Holiday had done it already to our hands: and, by the help of his learned notes and illustrations, not only Juvenal and Persius, but what is yet more obscure, his own verses, might be understood.

But he wrote for fame, and wrote to scholars : we write only for the pleasure and entertainment of those gentlemen and ladies, who, though they are not scholars, are not ignorant: persons of understanding and good sense; who, not having been conversant in the original, or at least not having made Latin verse so much their business as to be eritics in it, would be glad to find, if the wit of

The English verse, which we call heroic, consists of more than ten syllables; the Latin hexameter sometimes rises to seventeen; as for example, this verse in Virgil:

Pulverulenta putrem sonitu quatit ungula

campum.

Here is the difference of no less than seven syllables the medium of these, is about fourteen syllables; in a line betwixt the English and the Latin. Now because the dactyle is a more frequent foot in hexameters than the spondee.

with the disadvantage of four syllables less in every But Holiday, without considering that he writ verse, endeavours to make one of his lines to comprehend the sense of one of Juvenal's. According to the falsity of the proposition was the success. He was forced to crowd his verse with ill-sounding monosyllables, of which our barbarous language affords him a wild plenty; and by that means he

this work, and the thankful acknowledgments,
prayers, and perpetual good wishes, of,
my lord,

your lordship's

most obliged, most humble,
and most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN,

arrived at his pedantic end, which was to make
a literal translation: his verses have nothing of
verse in them, but only the worst part of it, the
rhyme; and that, into the bargain, is far from
good. But, which is more intolerable, by cramming
his ill-chosen, and worse sounding monosyllables
so close together, the very sense which he en- Aug. 18, 1692.
deavours to explain, is become more obscure than
that of his author. So that Holiday himself can-
not be understood, without as large a commentary,
as that which he makes on his two authors. For
my own part, I can make a shift to find the mean-
but his transla-
ing of Juvenal without his notes
And I find

tion is more difficult than his author.
beauties in the Latin to recompense my pains;
but in Holiday and Stapylton, my ears, in the
first place, are mortally offended; and then their
sense is so perplexed, that I return to the original,
as the more pleasing task, as well as the more

easy.

This must be said for our translation, that if we give not the whole sense of Juvenal, yet we give the most considerable part of it, we give it, in general, so clearly, that few notes are sufficient to make us intelligible. We make our author at We have actually least appear in a poetic dress. made him more sounding, and more elegant, than he was before in English: and have endeavoured to make him speak that kind of English, which he would have spoken had he lived in England, and had written to this age. If sometimes any of us (and it is but seldom) make him express the customs and manners of our native country, rather than of Rome, it is, either when there was some kind of analogy, betwixt their customs and ours; or when, to make him more easy to vulgar understandings, we give him those manners which are familiar to

us.

But I defend not this innovation, it is enough if I can excuse it. For, to speak sincerely, the manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded: we should either make them English, or leave them Roman. If this can neither be defended, nor excused, let it be pardoned, at least. because it is acknowledged: and so much the more easily, as being a fault which is never committed without some pleasure to the reader.

Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious visit, the best manners will be shown in the least ceremony. I will slip away while your back is turned, and while you are otherwise employed: with great confusion, for having entertained you so long with this discourse; and for having no other recompense to make you, than the worthy labours of my fellow-undertakers in VOL XIX

THE FIRST SATIRE OF

JUVENAL.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE poet gives us first a kind of humorous reason for his writing: that being provoked by hearing so many ill poets rehearse their works, he does himself justice on them, by giving them as bad as they bring. But, since no man will rank himself with ill writers, it is easy to conclude, that if such wretches could draw an audience, he thought it no hard matter to excel them, and gain a greater esteem with the public. Next he informs us more openly, why he rather addicts himself to satire, than any other kind of poetry. And here he discovers that it is not so much his indignation to ill poets, as to ill men, which has prompted him to write. He therefore give us a summary and general view of the vices and follies reignog in his time. So that this first satire is the natural ground-work of all the rest. Herein he confines himself to no one subject, but strikes indifferently at all men in his way: in every following satire he has chosen some particular moral which he would inculcate; and lashes some particular vice or folly (an art with which our lampooners are not much acquainted). But our poet being desirous to reform his own age, but not daring to attempt it by an overt-act of naming living persous, inveighs only against those who were infamous in the times immediately preceding his, whereby he not only gives a fair warning to great men, that their memory lies at the mercy of future poets and historians, but also, with a finer stroke of his pen, brands even the living, and personates them under dead men's

I

names.

have avoided as much as I could possibly the borrowed learning of marginal notes and illustrations, and for that reason have translated this satire somewhat largely. And freely own (if it be a fault) that I have likewise omitted most of the proper names, because I thought they would not much edify the reader. To conclude, if in two or three places I have deserted all the commentators, it is because they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much obscurity, that too much room is left for guessing.

STILL shall I hear, and never quit the score,
Stunn'd with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er?

Kk

bread at Rome: that none but flatterers make | Knaves, who in full assemblies have the knack ` their fortunes there: that Grecians and other foreigners raise themselves by those sordid arts which he describes, and against which he bitterly inveighs. He reckons up the several inconveniencies which arise from a city-life; and the many dangers which attend it. Upbraids the noblemen with covetousness, for not rewarding good poets; and arraigns the government for starving them. The great art of this satire is particularly shown, in common-places; and a drawing in as many vices, as could naturally fall into the compass of it.

GRIEV'D though I am an ancient friend to lose,
I lik the solitary seat he chose:
In quiet Cuma fixing his repose:
Where far from noisy Rome secure he lives,
And one more citizen to Sibyl gives:
The road to Baja, and that soft recess
Which all the gods with all their bounty bless.
Though I in Prochyta with greater ease

Could live, than in a street of palaces.

What scenes so desert, or so full of fright,
As towering houses tumbling in the night,

And Rome on fire beheld by its own blazing light?
But worse than all the clattering tiles, and worse
Than thousand padders, is the poet's curse.
Rogues that in dog-days cannot rhyme forbear:
But without mercy read, and make you hear.
Now while my friend, just ready to depart,
Was packing all his goods in one poor cart;
He stopp'd a little at the Con/luit-gate,
Where Numa model'd once the Roman state,
In mighty councils with his nymph retir'd,
Though now the sacred shades and founts are hir'd
By banish'd Jews, who their whole wealth can lay
In a small basket, on a whisp of hay;
Yet such our avarice is, that every tree
Pays for his head; nor sleep itself is free:
Nor place, nor persons, now are sacred held,
From their own grove the Musés are expell❜d.
Into this lonely vale our steps we bend,
I and my sullen discontented friend:
The marble cave, and aqueducts, we view;
But how adulterate now, and different from the
true;

How much more beauteous had the fountain been
Embellish'd with her first created green,
Where crystal streams through living turf had run,
Contented with an urn of native stone !

Then thus Umbritius (with an angry frown,
And looking back on this degenerate town,)
Since noble arts in Rome have no support,
And ragged virtue not a friend at court,
No profit rises from th' ungrateful stage,
My poverty increasing with my age,
'Tis time to give my just disdain a vent,
Aud, cursing, leave so base a government.
Where Daedalus his borrow'd wings laid by,
To that obscure retreat I choose to fly:
While yet few furrows on my face are seen,
While I walk upright, and old age is green,
And Lachesis has somewhat left to spin.
Now, now, 'tis time to quit this cursed place,
And hide from villains my too honest face:
Here let Arturins live, and such as he :
Such manners will with such a town agree.

of turning truth to lies, and white to black;
Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
Fy farm'd excise; can cleanse the common shore;
And rent the fishery; can bear the dead;
And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed,
All this for gain; for gain they sell their very head.
These fellows (see what fortune's power can do)
Were once the minstrels of a country show:
Follow'd the prizes through each paltry town,
By trumpet-cheeks and bloated faces known.
But now, grown rich, on drunken holidays,
At their own costs exhibit public plays:
Where, influenc'd by the rabble's bloody will,
With thumbs b nt back, they popularly kill.
From thence return'd, their sordid avarice rakes
In excrements again, and hires the jakes.
Why hire they not the town, not every thing,
Since such as they have Fortune in a string?
Who, for her pleasure, can her fools advance;
And toss them topmost on the wheel of chance,
What's Rome to me, what business have I there,
I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear?
Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes,
Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times;
Unskill'd in schemes by planets to foreshow,
Like canting rascals, how the wars will go:
I neither will, nor can prognosticate

To the young gaping heir, his father's fate:
Nor in the entrails of a toad have pry'd,
Nor carry'd bawdy presents to a bride:
For want of these town-virtues thus, alone,
I go conducted on my way by none;
Like a dead member from the body rent;
Maim'd, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is lov'd, but he who loves the times,
Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes;
Labouring with secrets which his bosom burn,
Yet never must to public light return?
They get reward alone who can betray:
For keeping honest counsels none will pay.
He who can Verres, when he will, accuse,
The purse of Verres may at pleasure use:
But let not all the gold which Tagus bides,
And pays the sea in tributary tides,

Be bribe sufficient to corrupt the breast;
Or violate with dreams thy peaceful rest.
Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold,
Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold.

I haste to tell thee, nor shall shame oppose
What confidence our wealthy Romans chose:
And whom I most abhor: to speak my mind,
I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find:
To see the scum of Greece, transplanted here,
Receiv'd like gods, is what I cannot bear.
Nor Greeks alone, but Syrians here abound,
Obscene Orontes, diving under ground,
Conveys his wealth to Tyber's hungry shores,
And fattens Italy with foreign whores:
Hither their crooked harps and customs come:
All find receipt in hospitable Rome.
The barbarous harlots crowd the public place:
Go, fools, and purchase an unclean embrace:
The painted mitre court, and the more painted

face.

Old Romulus, and father Mars, look down,
Your herdsman primitive, your homely clown,
Is turn'd a beau in a loose tawdry gown.
His once unkemm'd and horrid locks behold
Stilling sweet oil: his neck enchain'd with gold: