Th' astonish'd matrons pay, before the rest;
That sex is still obnoxious to the priest.

Through ice they beat, and plunge into the
stream,

If so the god has warn'd 'em in a dream.
Weak in their limbs, but in devotion strong,
On their bare hands and feet they crawl along
A whole field's length, the laughter of the throng.
Should Io (Io's priest I mean) command
A pilgrimage to Meroe's burning sand, [spring;
Through deserts they would seek the secret
And holy water, for lustration, bring.

How can they pay their priests too much re-
spect,
[glect?
Who trade with heav'n, and earthly gains ne-
With him, domestic gods discourse by night:
By day, attended by his quire in white,
The bald-pate tribe runs madding through the
street,
[cheat.
And smile to see with how much ease they
The ghostly sire forgives the wife's delights,
Who sins, through frailty, on forbidden nights;
And tempts her husband in the holy time
When carnal pleasure is a mortal crime.
The sweating image shakes his head, but he
With inumbled pray'rs atones the deity.
The pious priesthood the fat goose receive,
And they once brib'd, the godhead must forgive.
No sooner these remove, but full of fear,
A gypsy Jewess whispers in your ear,
And begs an alms: a high-priest's daughter she,
Vers'd in their 'T'almud, and divinity,
And prophesies beneath a shady tree.
Her goods a basket, and old hay her bed,
She strolls, and, telling fortunes, gains her bread:
Farthings, and some small moneys, are her fees;
Yet she interprets all your dreams for these.
Foretells th' estate, when the rich uncle dies,
And sees a sweetheart in the sacrifice.
Such toys, a pigeon's entrails can disclose :
Which yet th' Armenian augur far outgoes:
In dogs, a victim more obscene, he rakes;
And murder'd infants for inspection takes :
For gain, his impious practice he pursues;
For gain, will his accomplices accuse.

More credit, yet, is to Chaldeans giv'n ;*
What they foretell is deem'd the voice of heav'n.
Their answers,as from Hammon's altar, come;
Since now the Delphian oracles are dumb.
And mankind, ignorant of future fate,
Believes what fond astrologers relate.

Of these the most in vogue is he, who sent
Beyond seas, is return'd from banishment,
His art who to aspiring Otho sold ;†
And sure succession to the crown foretold.

• Chaldeans are thought to have been the first astrologers.

Otho succeeded Galba in the empire; which was foretold him by an astrologer.

For his esteem is in his exile plac'd,
The more believ'd, the more he was disgrac'd
No astrologic wizard honour gains,
Who has not oft been banish'd, or in chains.
He gets renown, who, to the halter near,
But narrowly escapes, and buys it dear.

From him your wife inquires the planets' will,

When the black jaundice shall her mother kill
Her sister's and her uncle's end would know:
But, first, consults his art, when you shall go.
And, what's the greatest gift that heav'n can
give,

If, after her, th' adulterer shall live,
She neither knows nor cares to know the rest.
If Mars and Saturn shall the world infest
Or Jove and Venus with their friendly rays
Will interpose, and bring us better days.

Beware the woman too, and shun her sight,
Who in these studies does herself delight.
By whom a greasy almanac is borne,
With often handling, like chaft amber, worn
Not now consulting, but consulted, she
Of the twelve houses, and their lords, is free.
She, if the scheme a fatal journey show,
Stays safe at home, but lets her husband go.
If but a mile she travels out of town,
The planetary hour must first be known,
And lucky moment; if her eye but aches
Or itches, its decumbiture she takes.
No nourishment receives in her disease,
But what the stars and Ptolemy shall please.
The middle sort, who have not much to

And, without nurses, their own infants rear: You seldom hear of the rich mantle, spread For the babe, born in the great lady's bed. Such is the pow'r of herbs: such arts they use To make them barren, or their fruit to lose. But thou, whatever slops she will have bought, Be thankful, and supply the deadly draught: 1 Ptolemy] A famous astrologer, an Egyptian. The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day; and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to another.

Help her to make manslaughter; let her bleed,
And never want for savin at her need.
For, if she holds till her nine months be run,
Thou mayst be father to an Ethiop's son.*
A boy, who ready gotten to thy hands
By law is to inherit all thy lands:
One of that hue, that should he cross the way,
His omen would discolour all the day.†
So pass the foundling by, a race unknown,
At doors expos'd, whom matrons make their

own:

And into noble families advance

A nameless issue, the blind work of chance.
Indulgent Fortune does her care employ,
And, smiling, broods upon the naked boy:
Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold,
And covers, with her wings, from nightly cold:
Gives him her blessing; puts him in a way;
Sets up the farce, and laughs at her own play.
Him she promotes; she favours him alone,
And makes provision for him as her own.

The craving wife the force of magic tries,
And philters for th' unable husband buys:
The potion works not on the part design'd;
But turns his brains, and stupifies his mind.
The sotted moon-calf gapes, and staring on,
Sees his own bus'ness by another done:
A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head; and yesterday is lost:
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and

rave,

Like that Cæsonia to her Caius gave:‡
Who, plucking from the forehead of the fool
His mother's love, infus'd it in the bowl:,
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his brains.
The Thund'rer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the pois'ning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom be forgot,§
Giv'n to a slav'ring, old, unuseful sot;
That only clos'd the driveling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies.

To an Ethiop's son) His meaning is, help her to any kind of slops, which may cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a blackmoor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that bastard may by law inherit thy estate.

+ His omen, &c.] The Romans thought it ominous to see a blackmoor in the morning, if he were the first man they met.

Casonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant: 't is said she gave him a love-potion, which flying up into his head, distracted him; and was the occcasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.

$ Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius, by a former wife.

But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword, Nor spares the commons, when it strikes the lord:

So many mischiefs were in one combin'd;
So much one single pois'ner cost mankind.

If step-dames seek their sons-in-law to kill,
'Tis venial trespass; let them have their will;
But let the child, intrusted to the care
Of his own mother, of her bread beware:
Beware the food she reaches with her hand;
The morsel is intended for thy land.
Thy tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat;
There's poison in thy drink, and in thy meat.

You think this feign'd; the satire in a rage
Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage,
Forgets his bus'ness is to laugh and bite,
And will of deaths and dire revenges write.
Would it were all a fable that you read
But Drymon's wife pleads guilty to the deed.[]
I (she confesses) in the fact was caught,
Two sons despatching at one deadly draught.
What two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!
Yes, seven, she cries, if seven were in my way.
Medea's legend is no more a lie; ¶

One age adds credit to antiquity.
Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign,
And murders then were done: but not for gain.
Less admiration to great crimes is due,

Which they through wrath, or through revenge,

pursue.

For, weak of reason, impotent of will,
The sex is hurried headlong into ill:
And, like a cliff from its foundations torn,
By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne.
But those are fiends, who crimes from thought
begin:

And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin.
They read th' example of a pious wife,
Redeeming, with her own, her husband's life;
Yet, if the laws did that exchange afford,
Would save their lap-dog sooner than their lord.

Where'er you walk, the Belides you meet ;**
And Clytemnestras†† grow in ev'ry street:
But here's the difference; Agamemnon's wife
Was a gross butcher with a bloody knife
But murder, now, is to perfection grown,
And subtle poisons are employ'd alone:
Unless some antidote prevents their arts,
And lines with balsam all the nobler parts;

The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estate: This was done either in the poet's time, or just before it.

Medea,out of revenge to Jason, who had forsaken her, killed the children which she had by him.

The Belides] Who were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousin germans; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting Hyper mnestra, who saved her husband Linus.

+ Clytemnestra] The wife of Agamemnon, who, in favour to her adulterer Egysthus, was consenting to his murder.

in such a case, reserv'd for such a need, Rather than fail,* the dagger does the deed.

The fearful passenger, who travels late, Charg'd with the carriage of a paltry plate, Shakes at the moonshine shadow of a rush And sees a red-coat rise from every bush : The beggar sings, e'en when he sees the place

THE ARGUMENT.

The poet's design, in this divine satire, is to repre sent the various wishes and desires of mankind; and to set out the folly of them. He runs through all the several heads of riches, honours, eloquence, fame for martial achievements, long life, and beauty; and gives instances, in cach, how frequently they have proved the ruin of those that cwned them. He concludes therefore, that since we generally choose so ill for ourselves, we should 10 better to leave it to the gods, to make the choice for us. All we can safe: ask of heaven lies within a very small compass. 'Tis but health of body and mind. And if we have these, it is not much matter what we want besides ; for we have already enough to make us happy.

Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good; or knowing it, pursue
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well design'd, so luckily begun,
But, when we have our wish, we wish undone?
Whole houses, of their whole desires possest,
Are often ruin'd, at their own request.
In wars,
and peace, things hurtful we require,
When made obnoxious to our own desire.

With laurels some have fatally been crown'd; Some, who the depths of eloquence have found, In that unnavigable stream were drown'd.

The brawny fool, who did his vigour boast, In that presuming confidence was lost: But more have been by avarice opprest, And heaps of money crowded in the chest: Unwieidy sums of wealth, which higher mountThan files of marshall'd figures can account. To which the stores of Croesus, in the scale, Would look like little dolphins, when they sail In the vast shadow of the British whale.

For this, in Nero's arbitrary time, When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime, A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces : The mob, commission'd by the government, Are seldom to an empty garret sent.

Rather than fail] It will easily be understood, why it was impossible to make a single observation on this Sixth Satire, which, as he finely says in another place, is

Too foul to name, too fulsome to be read. Yet Lud. Prateus wrote long notes for the use of the Dauphin, under the inspection of Bossuet. Dr. J. W.

Milo, of Crotona, who, for a trial of his strength, going to rend an oak, perished in the attempt; for his arms were caught in the trunk of it, and he was devoured by wild beasts.

Of all the vows, the first and chief request Of each is, to be richer than the rest: And yet no doubts the poor man's draught cou trol,

He dreads no poison in his homely bowl. Then fear the deadly drug, when gems divine Enchase the cup, and sparkle in the wine.

Will you not now the pair of sages praise, Who the same end pursu'd, by several ways, One pitied, one contemn'd the woful times: One laugh'd at follies, one lamented crimes: Laughter is easy; but the wonder lies, What store of brine supplied the weeper's eyes Democritus could feed his spleen, and shake His sides and shoulders till he felt 'em ache Though in his country-town no lictors were, Nor rods, nor axe, nor tribune did appear; Nor all the foppish gravity of show, Which cunning magistrates on crowds bestow: What had he done, had he beheld, on high Our pretor seated, in mock majesty ; His chariot rolling o'er the dusty place, While, with dumb pride, and a set formal face, He moves, in the dull ceremonial track, With Jove's embroider'd coat upon his back: A'suit of hangings had not more opprest His shoulders, than that long, laborious vest: A heavy gewgaw, (call'd a crown,) that spread About his temples, drown'd his narrow head; And would have crush'd it with the massy

freight,

But that a sweating slave sustain'd the weight⚫
A slave in the same chariot seen to ride,
To mortify the mighty madman's pride.
Add now th' imperial eagle, rais'd on high,
With golden beak (the mark of majesty,)
Trumpets before, and on the left and right,
A cavalcade of nobles, all in white:
In their own natures false and flatt'ring tribes,
But made his friends, by places and by bribes.
In his own age, Democritus could find
Sufficient cause to laugh at human kind:
Learn from so great a wit; a land of bogs
With ditches fenc'd, a heaven fat with fogs,
May form a spirit fit to sway the state;
And make the neighb'ring monarchs fear their
fate.

He laughs at all the vulgar cares and fears
At their vain triumphs, and their vainer tears!
An equal temper in his mind he found,

When Fortune flatter'd him, and when she frown'd.

'Tis plain, from hence, that what our vows request,

Are hurtful things, or useless at the best.
Some ask for envied pow'r; which public hate
Pursues, and hurries headlong to their fate:
Down go the titles; and the statue crown'd,
Is by base hands in the next river drown'd.
The guiltless horses, and the chariot wheel,
The same effects of vulgar fury feel:
The smith prepares his hammer for the stroke
While the lung'd bellows hissing fire provoke,
Sejanus, almost first of Roman names,*
The great Sejanus crackles in the flames;
Form'd in the forge, the pliant brass is laid
On anvils; and of head and limbs are made
Pans, cans, and pisspots, a whole kitchen trade

Adorn your doors with laurels; and a bull, Milk white and large, lead to the Capitol; Sejanus with a rope is dragg'd along,

The sport and laughter of the giddy throng!
Good Lord, they cry, what Ethiop lips he has,
How foul a snout, and what a hanging face!
By heaven, I never could endure his sight;
But

say, how came his monstrous crimes to
light?

What is the charge, and who the evidence,
(The saviour of the nation and the prince?)
Nothing of this; but our old Cæsar sent
A noisy letter to his parliament:
Nay, Sirs, if Caesar writ, I ask no more,
He's guilty; and the question's out of door.
How goes
the mob? (for that's a mighty thing,)
When the king's trump,the mob are for the king:
They follow fortune, and the common cry
Is still against the rogue condemn'd to die.

But the same very mob, that rascal crowd,
Had cried Sejanus, with a shout as loud;
Had his designs (by fortune's favour blest)
Succeeded, and the prince's age opprest,
But long, long since, the times have chang'd
their face,

The people grown degenerate and base;
Not suffer'd now the freedom of their choice,
To make their magistrates, and sell their voice.
Our wise forefathers, great by sea and land,
Had once the power and absolute command;
All offices of trust, themselves dispos'd;
Rais'd whom they pleas'd, and whom they
pleas'd depos'd.

But we, who give our native rights away,
And our enslav'd posterity betray,

Sejanus was Tiberius's first favourite, and while he continued so had the highest marks of honour bestowed on him: statues and triumphal chariots were every where erected to him; but as soon as he fell into disgrace with the Emperor, these were all immediately dismounted, and the senate and com mon people insulted over him as meanly as they had fawned on him before.

Are now reduc'd to beg an alms, and go
On holydays to see a puppet-show.

There was a damn'd design, cries one, na
doubt;

For warrants are already issued out :
I met Brutidius in a mortal fright;

He's dipt for certain, and plays least in sight⚫
I fear the rage of our offended prince,
Who thinks the senate slack in his defence!
Come let us haste, our loyal zeal to show,
And spurn the wretched corpse of Caesar's foe
But let our slaves be present there, lest they
Accuse their masters, and for gain betray.
Such were the whispers of those jealous times,
About Sejanus' punishment and crimes.

Now tell me truly, wouldst thou change thy fate

To be, like him, first minister of state?
To have thy levees crowded with resort,
Of a depending, gaping, servile court:
Dispose all honours of the sword and
gown,
Grace with a nod, and ruin with a frown:
To hold thy prince in pupilage, and sway
That monarch, whom the master'd world obey?
While he, intent on secret lusts alone,
Lives to himself, abandoning the throne;
Coop'd in a narrow isle,† observing dreams
With flattering wizards, and erecting schemes!
I well believe, thou wouldst be great as he;
For every man's a fool to that degree;
All wish the dire prerogative to kill;
E'en they would have the power, who want
the will:

But wouldst thou have thy wishes understood,
To take the bad together with the good,
Wouldst thou not rather choose a small renown,
To be the mayor of some poor paltry town,
Bigly to look, and barbarously to speak;
To pound false weights, and scanty measures
break?

Then, grant we that Sejanus went astray
In every wish, and knew not how to pray:
For he who grasp'd the world's exhausted store,
Yet never had enough, but wish'd for more,
Rais'd a top-heavy tower, of monstrous height,
Which mould'ring, crush'd him underneath the
weight.

What did the mighty Pompey's fall beget?
It ruin'd him, who, greater than the Great,
The stubborn pride of Roman nobles broke
And bent their haughty necks beneath his yoke

The island of Capre, which lies about a league ou at sea from the Campanian shore, was the scene of Tiberius's pleasures in the latter part of his reign. There he lived for some years with diviners, soothsayers, and worse company; and from thence de spatched all his orders to the senate.

Julius Cæsar, who get the better of Pompey, that was styled the Great.

What eis, but his immoderate lust of power,
Prayers made and granted in a luckless hour?
For few usurpers to the shades descend
By a dry death, or with a quiet end.

The boy, who scarce has paid his entrance
down

To his proud pedant, or declin'd a noun,
(So small an elf, that when the days are foul,
He and his satchel must be borne to school,)
Yet prays, and hopes, and aims at nothing less,
To prove a Tully, or Demosthenes :*
But both those orators, so much renown'd,
In their own depths of eloquence were drown'd;
The hand and head were never lost, of those
Who dealt in doggerel, or who punn'd in prose.
"Fortune foretun'd the dying notes of Rome:
Till I, thy consul sole, consol'd thy doom,"
His fate had crept below the lifted swords,
Had all his malice been to murder words.
I rather would be Mævius, thrash for rhymes
Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times,
Than that Philippic, fatally divine,
Which is inscrib'd the second, should be mine.

Nor he, the wonder of the Grecian throng,
Who drove them with the torrent of his tongue,
Who shook the theatres, and sway'd the state
Of Athens, found a more propitious fate.
Whom, born beneath a boding horoscope,.
His sire, the blear-ey'd Vulcan of a shop,
From Mars his forge, sent to Minerva's schools,
To learn the unlucky art of wheedling fools.

With itch of honour, and opinion, vain, All things beyond their native worth we strain: The spoils of war. brought to Feretrian Jove, An empty coat of armour hung above The conqueror's chariot, and in triumph borne, A streamer from a boarded galley torn, A chap-fall'n beaver loosely hanging by The cloven helm, an arch of victory, On whose high convex sits a captive foe, And sighing casts a mournful look below; Of every nation, each illustrious name, Such toys as these have cheated into fame : Exchanging solid quiet, to obtain The windy satisfaction of the brain.

So much the thirst of honour fires the blood; So many would be great, so few be good. For who would Virtue for herself regard, Or wed, without the portion of reward? Yet this mad chase of fame, by few pursu'd, Has drawn destruction on the multitude: This avarice of praise in times to come, Those long inscriptions, crowded on the tomb,

⚫ Demosthenes and Tully both died for their oratory. Demosthenes gave hir self poison to avoid being carried t. Antipater, one of Alexander's captains, who had then made himself master of Athens. Tully was murdered by Mark Antony's order, in return for those invect res he had made against him.

Should some wild fig-tree take her native bent,
And heave below the gaudy monument,
Would crack the marble titles, and disperse
The characters of all the lying verse.
For sepulchres themselves must crumbling fall
In time's abyss, the common grave of all.

Great Hannibal within the balance lay;
And teil how many pounds his ashes weigh
Whom Afric was not able to contain,
Whose length runs level with the Atlantic
main,

And wearies fruitful Nilus, to convey
His sun-beat waters by so long a way;
Which Ethiopia's double clime divides,
And elephants in other nountains hides.
Spain first he won, the Pyrenæans past
And steepy Alps, the mounds that Nature cast
And with corroding juices, as he went,

A
passage through the living rocks he rent.
Then, like a torrent, rolling from on high,
He pours his headlong rage on Italy;
In three victorious battles over-run;
Yet still uneasy, cries, There 's nothing done,
Till level with the ground their gates are laid
And Punics flags on Roman towers display'd.

Ask what a face belong'd to his high fame:
His picture scarcely would deserve a frame:
A signpost dauber would disdain to paint
The one-ey'd hero on his elephant.
Now what's his end, O charming Glory! say,
What rare fifth act to crown this huffing play?
In one deciding battle overcome,

He flies, is banish'd from his native home:
Begs refuge in a foreign court, and there
Attends, bis mean petition to prefer;
Repuls'd by surly grooms, who wait before
The sleeping tyrant's interdicted door.

What wondrous sort of death has heaven
design'd,

Distinguish'd from the herd of human kind,
For so untam'd, so turbulent a mind!

Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
Are doom'd to avenge the tedious bloody war
But poison, drawn through a ring's hollow plate,
Must finish him; a sucking infant's fate.
Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
One world suffic'd not Alexander's mind;
Coop'd up, he seem'd in earth and seas confin'd;
And, struggling, stretch'd his restless limbs