Till mine is call'd; and that long look'd-for day
Is ftill encumber'd with fome new delay:

Perhaps the cloth of state is only spread,

Some of the quorum may be fick a-bed;

That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this

O'er night was bowfy, and goes out to pifs: the time is gone

So

many rubs appear,

For hearing, and the tedious fuit goes on:
But buff and belt-men never know these cares,
No time, nor trick of law their action bars :
Their caufe they to an easier iffue put:
They will be heard, or they lug out, and cut.
Another branch of their revenue ftill

Remains, beyond their boundless right to kill,
Their father, yet alive, impower'd to make a will.
For, what their prowefs gain'd, the law declares
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs :
No share of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the fon fights well, and plunders better,
Like ftout Coranus, his old fhaking fire
Does a remembrance in his will defire :
Inquifitive of fights, and longs in vain
To find him in the number of the flain:
But ftill he lives, and rifing by the war,
Enjoys his gains, and has enough to fpare:
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part

To cherish valour, and reward defert :

Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore;
Sometimes be loufy, but be never poor.

96.

TRANS

}

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

PERSIU S.

VO L. VII.

X

THE defign 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 fatires. For which reafon, 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 bufinefs of the first fatire; 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.

PROLOGUE

то тн Е

I

FIRST SATIR E.

NEVER did on cleft Parnaffus dream,
Nor tafte the facred Heliconian stream;
Nor can remember when my brain, infpir'd,
Was, by the Mufes, into madness fir'd.
My share in pale Pyrene I refign;

And claim no part in all the mighty Nine.
Statues, with winding ivy crown'd, belong
To nobler poets, for a nobler fong:
Heedlefs of verfe, and hopeless of the crown,
Scarce half a wit, and more than half a clown,
Before the fhrine 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 mafters, and their mafters 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 fay they fqueak; but they will fwear they fing. 19

ARGU