'Tis just, ye gods, and what I well deserve: and dropping hair? See! by the tallest servant borne on high, To his just growth: the provinces from far Furnish our kitchens and revenge our war. Baits for the rich and childless they supply: Aurelia thence must sell, and Lenus buy. The largest lamprey which their seas afford Rash, daring nets, in hope of such a prize, With what a tail and breast salutes his With foulest mud and the rank ordure fed. lord! With what expense and art how richly dressed! Garnished with 'sparagus, himself a feast. Thou art to one small dismal dish confinedA crab ill-dressed and of the vilest kind. He on his own fish pours the noblest oil, Well rubbed with this, when Boccar comes to town He makes the theatres and baths his own: All round from him as from th' infected run; The pois'nous stink even their own serpents shun. Behold a mullet even from Corfu brought, Discharged by common sewers from all the town, No secret passage was to him unknown; One word to Virro now, if he can bear, To all their titles, all that height of power alone adore. When your poor client is condemned t' attend 'Tis all we ask-receive him like a friend; At least, let him be easy if you can, Let him be treated like a free-born man. Descend to this, and then we ask no more: Rich to yourself, to all besides be poor. Of Lybia, where such mushrooms can be You are his friends, and you his brethren With flying knife, and as his art directs too. Wouldst thou become his patron and his lord, Wouldst thou be, in thy turn, by him adored, He viler friends with doubtful mushrooms treats; Secure for you, himself champignons eats : Such Claudius loved, of the same sort and taste, If thou dare murmur, if thou dare com- Till Agrippina kindly gave the last. plain With freedom like a Roman gentleman, And dragged like Cacus by Herculean hands To him are ordered, and those happy few you, Most fragrant fruits. Such in Pheacian gar- Where a perpetual autumn ever smiled Descend to take a glass once touched by By such swift Atalanta was betrayed: Thou takst all this as done to save expense? | On thy shaved slavish head. Meanwhile, No! 'Tis on purpose done to give offence: What comedy, what farce, can more delight Than grinning hunger and the pleasing sight attend, Worthy of such a treat and such a friend. Translation of REV. WILLIAM BOWLES. Of your bilked hopes? No! t' extort Tears from your eyes. and sport. He's resolved 'Tis barb'rous jest Thou thinkst thyself companion of the great Art free and happy in thy own conceit; He thinks thou'rt tempted by th' attractive smell Of his warm kitchen. And he judges well; For who so naked, in whose empty veins One single drop of noble blood remains― What free-born man, who, though of mongrel strain JUVENAL. JUVENALIS (Decius Junius) was a famous Roman satirist-perhaps the most distinguished satirist in the world's literature. In English he has been imitated, or even reproduced, by Dryden, Pope, Dr. Johnson and Byron. He was born, probably, at Aquinum, although of the place there are doubts, and, as he died in the year 80, at a good old age, he lived during the reigns of several emperors, among whom were Caligula, Domitian and Hadrian. Although of obscure ori Would twice support the scorn and proud gin, he was from his boyhood an enthusiastic disdain student, and early disclosed his poetical pow With which those idols you adore, the ers. Very soon, too, he turned his attention great, Their wretched vassals and dependants treat? Oh, slaves most abject, you still gaping sit, Devouring with your eyes each pleasing bit, Now sure we parasites at last shall share That boar, and now that wildfowl or that hare. Thus you expecting gaze with your teeth set, With your bread ready and your knives well whet, Demure and silent; but, alas! in vain : He mocks your hunger and derides your pain. to satire, for which the vile condition of Roman society gave him full argument and illustration. Honest himself, and inculcating a purity which he displayed in his own life, he lashed Roman vices with the severest rigor. He always handles vice with angry contempt and hatred. To the taste of the present age he is somewhat offensive, because he descends into the vile details of vicious living; he describes too exactly and curiously the sins he rebukes. He has left sixteen satires. One of them, launched against a pantomime-dancer-Paris, who had been a favorite of Do If you can bear all this and think him mitian-offended Hadrian, who was under a kind, similar influence, and who therefore sent the You well deserve the treatment which you poet into honorable exile, into Egypt or Libya. find. The works of Juvenal present a remarkable delineation of the private life of the Romans in his age. At last thou wilt beneath the burden bow, And, glad, receive the manumitting blow THE MAID OF THE RHONE. WAS in that lovely land | Oh, many an eye had marked it well, But none that warrior's tale could tell, Save that he bore the Red Cross shield And fought in some far Syrian field. that lies Where Alpine shadows fall On scenes that to the pil grim's eyes Might Eden's bloom recall, As when, undimmed by curse or crime, It rose amid the dawn of time That early spring whose blossoms grew While yet the heavens and earth were new. There stood beside the rapid Rhone, That, now from Leman free, By wood and city wall swept on To meet the classic sea, An ancient and a stately hall, And battlements whose bannered pride But there the maiden's earliest glance So loved the lady of the tower; Her kindred maids were gone : Though past his manhood's prime; His sword had been in many a fight, His steps in many a clime; |