SATIRE I. V. I-4. WHAT! while with one eternal mouthing hoarse, Codrus persists on my vex'd ear to force Hear, ONLY hear, and never pay in kind? VER. 1. What! while with one eternal mouthing hoarse,] Before the invention of printing, authors had no shorter road to fame than public rehearsals. To procure full audiences for these, they had recourse to interest, solicitations, and, in case they were rich enough, to bribes. This is mentioned as one of the plagues of Rome, so early as the time of Horace-auditum scripta relictis omnibus officiis; and Suetonius relates of Augustus, that he attended them with great patience and good humour. But the race of scribblers was prodigiously multiplied in Juvenal's days, and consequently, the grievance of following their rehearsals was more deeply felt. Pliny, good man! says he sacrificed months to them: our author, if we may judge from his manner, had sacrificed more. It appears, however, from a very picturesque passage in Pliny's letter to S. Senecio, that the general listlessness with which they were attended, was exceedingly great. After repeated invitations and delays, when the rehearser has now taken his station, and spread his book before him, and is on the point of beginning, “ tum demum," says Pliny, "ac tunc quoque lente, cunctanterque veniunt, nec tamen permanent, sed ante finem recedunt ; alii dissimulanter et furtim, alii simpliciter et liberè." Ep. xiii. lib. 1. VER. 2. Codrus, &c.] Holyday supposes this to be the person who is mentioned again in the third Satire; and of whose goods and chattels so Must this with farce and folly rack my head Unpunish'd? that, with sing-song, whine me dead? The day, unpunish'd, waste? or, huger still, And back, and O, ye gods! not finish'd yet? Away-I know not my own house so well As the trite, thread-bare themes, on which ye dwell; curious an inventory is there given. It may be so; and yet the valuables alluded to, would rather seem to have been collected by an antiquary, than a poet. Holyday adds, " he had nothing of a poet but the poverty:" he might, at least, have thrown in the pertinacity. What else he had cannot now be known, as his works are lost. The old scholiast tells us, that the Theseid (which so happily provoked our author to retaliate) was a tragedy: it was more probably an epic poem. The authors of Telephus and Orestes, have escaped the edge of ridicule; they are no where mentioned. VER. 11. Away—I know not my own house so well, &c.] Hall has imitated this passage with some humour: "No man his threshold better knows than I "Brutes first arrival, and his victory, "St. George's sorrel, and his cross of blood, "But so to fill up books, both back and side, We have here a summary of the subjects which usually employed the wits of Rome; and certainly they could not be much more interesting to the readers of those times, than they are to us. Martial seems to have thought as meanly of them as our author; and in two very excellent epigrams, asserts the superior usefulness of his own compositions; you mistake, says he, when you call my works trifles; the Supper of Tereus, the Flight of Dædalus, &c. &c. these are trifles: what I write "comes home to mens' businesses, and bosoms"-et HOMINEM pagina nostra sapit! The expedition to fetch, or, as Juvenal will have it, to steal, the golden Mars' grove, and Vulcan's cave!-How the Winds roar, The poem very Satire : fleece, is a manifest allusion to the Argonauts of Valerius Flaccus. is, by no means, a bad one; and yet he sneers at it again in this but it was the triteness of the story which provoked his ridicule; to which, perhaps, may be added some little prejudice against the author, for his flattery of the Flavian family—a family which Juvenal hated; and to use an expression of Dr. Johnson's, he was a good hater! VER. 17. The walks of Fronto, &c.] Juvenal returns to the charge. The unhappy men who could not procure an audience for their rehearsals, haunted the baths, forums, porticos, and other places of general resort, in order to fasten on the loiterers, and thus obtain a hearing. For this, no place was so well adapted as the house and gardens of Fronto (a nobleman of great learning and virtue), which were always open to the public, and exceedingly frequented. The picture in the original is excellent: nor can the fancy easily conceive a more ludicrous scene, than the little groups collected by the eager poets, in various parts of the garden, and compelled to listen to the ravings which burst the pillars, and shook the statues from their pedestals. 'Twere vicious clemency to spare the oil, But why I choose, adventurous, to retrace VER. 29. But why I choose, adventurous, to retrace The Auruncan's route, &c.] By the Auruncan, Juvenal means Lucilius, who was born at Aurunca, a town in Campania. Horace calls him the first satirist, which he was not, for Ennius preceded him by many years. Quintilian, with his accustomed accuracy, terms him the first regular one; and this he confessedly was. His works appear to have been highly esteemed, even in the Augustan age, when Horace, with more good sense than success, endeavoured to qualify the general prejudice in his favour. Quintilian observes of him, that he had a great deal of wit and learning, and that his boldness was equal to his severity. It was this latter quality which endeared him to Juvenal, who, as well as his immediate predecessor, Persius, always mentions him with respect. VER. 34. When Mævia, &c.] Under Domitian such instances were common; for he not only exhibited combats of men with wild beasts, but of women also; and the noblest of both sexes were sometimes engaged in them! Dryden read, in a note on this passage, Alia indignatio in mulierum impudentiam quæ temporibus Domitiani, in venationes et pugnas theatrales descendebant. The word venationes (the technical term for these kinds of combats) struck him, and he according rendered the original thus, "When mannish Mævia, that two-handed whore, "Astride on horse-back hunts the Tuscan boar." For this, a late translator condescends to pity him, "Unhappy Dryden," saith he, "but he shall appear but once more." Now this, as Parson Hugh sagely observes," is affectations;" and should, I think, be" reformed altogether." If Pope called Dryden unhappy, it was not for an unimportant mistake; Enters the lists, and, to the middle bare, Hurls at the Tuscan boar the quivering spear; besides, that great man might venture to say what we small poets cannot with modesty repeat after him; and methinks it would not be amiss, if an observation of our author's, on another occasion, were sometimes in our minds, plurima sunt quæ "Non audent homines pertusâ dicere lænâ." Of Mævia I can find no account: there is, indeed, a strumpet so called in Martial, but she was poor: her profligacy, however, may have tempted Juvenal to transfer her name to this noble gladiatrix. VER. 37. When he who oft, &c.] "Quo tondente gravis juveni mihi barba sonabat :" Juvenal seems pleased with this line, for he introduces it in a subsequent passage. I suppose he meant it for a specimen of the mock-heroic; it is not, however, a very successful one. Holyday's translation of it, is curious enough. "One whose officious scizzars went snip, snip, "As he my troublesome young beard did clip!" This " snipper" was Cinnamus, who, from the servile employment here mentioned, raised himself, by ministering to the pleasures of the ladies, to a knight's estate, and a prodigious fortune. He is brought forward again in the tenth Satire, and nearly in the same words. His fate affords a striking illustration of the great truths contained in that admirable piece; for not long after it was written, he was prosecuted for some offence not now known, and, to avoid condemnation, left all his wealth behind him, and fled into Sicily: where Martial, who is frequently the best commentator on Juvenal, honours him with an epigram; in which, after bitterly condoling with him on his helpless old age, and reckoning up a variety of employments for which he is not fit, he points out to him the necessity of turning barber again! "Non rhetor, non grammaticus, ludive magister, "Non Cynicus, non tu Stoicus esse potes; C Ep. lxiv. lib. vii. |