let their excellencies atone for my imperfections, and those of my sons. I have perus'd some of the satires which are done by other hands, and they seem to me as perfect in their kind as anything 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 rend'ring the exact sense of these authors, almost line for line, had been our business, Barten Holyday had done it already to our hands; and, by the help of his learned notes and illustrations, not only Juvenal and Persius, but, what yet is 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, tho' 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 critics in it, would be glad to find if the wit of our two great authors be answerable to their fame and reputation in the world. We have, therefore, endeavor'd 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 Holyday and Stapylton, yet we may challenge to ourselves this praise, that we shall be far more pleasing to our readers. We have follow'd our authors at greater distance, tho' 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 Holyday, who made this way his choice, seiz'd the meaning of Juvenal; but the poetry has always scap'd 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 we may have from Aristotle and Epictetus, with more profit than from any poet. Neither Holyday 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.

The English verse which we call heroic consists of no 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 in a line, betwixt the English and the Latin. Now the medium of these is about fourteen syllables; because the dactyl is a more frequent foot in hexameters than the spondee. But Holyday, without considering that he writ with the disadvantage of four syllables less in every verse, endeavors 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 forc'd to crowd his verse with ill-sounding monosyllables, of which our barbarous language affords him a wild plenty; and by that means he arriv'd 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 endeavors to explain is become more obscure than that of his author; so that Holyday himself cannot 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 meaning of Juvenal without his notes; but his translation is more difficult than his author. And I find beauties in the Latin to recompense my pains; but, in Holyday and Stapylton, my ears, in the first place, are mortally offended; and then their sense is so perplex'd, 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 least appear in a poetic dress. We have actually made him more sounding, and more elegant, than he was before in English; and have endeavor'd to make him speak that kind of English which he would have spoken had he liv'd in England, and had written to this age. If sometimes any of us (and 't is but seldom) make him express the customs and manners of our native country rather than of Rome, 't 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 gave him those manners which are familiar to us. But I defend not this innovation; 't 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 excus'd, let it be pardon'd at least, because it is acknowledg'd; 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 shewn in the least ceremony. I will slip away while your back is turn'd, and while you are otherwise employ'd; with great confusion for having entertain'd you so long with this discourse, and for having no other recompense to make you, than the worthy labors of my fellow-undertakers in this work, and the thankful acknowledgments, prayers, and perpetual good wishes, of, MY LORD,

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, 't 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 gives us a summary and general view of the vices and follies reigning in his time. So that this first satire is the natural groundwork 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, and not daring to attempt it by an overt act of naming living persons, 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 ev'n the living, and personates them under dead men's

names.

I have avoided as much as I could possibly the borrow'd 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 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, 't is because I thought they first deserted my author, or at least have left him in so much obscurity, that too much room is left for guessing.

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Would it not make a modest author dare To draw his table-book within the square, And fill with notes, when lolling at his ease, Mæcenas-like, the happy rogue 17 he sees Borne by six wearied slaves in open view, Who cancel'd an old will and forg'd a new; Made wealthy at the small expense of signing

With a wet seal, and a fresh interlining?

The lady, next, requires a lashing line, Who squeez'd a toad into her husband's wine:

So well the fashionable med'cine thrives, That now 't is practic'd ev'n by country

wives;

The rents of five fair houses I receive;
What greater honors can the purple give?
The poor patrician " is reduc'd to keep
In melancholy walks a grazier's sheep:

21

Tho' much against the grain, forc'd to retire,

Buy roots for supper, and provide a fire.

Meantime his lordship lolls within at ease, Pamp'ring his paunch with foreign rarities; Both sea and land are ransack'd for the feast,

And his own gut the sole invited guest. Such plate, such tables, dishes dress'd so well,

That whole estates are swallow'd at a meal. Ev'n parasites are banish'd from his board: (At once a sordid and luxurious lord:) Prodigious throat, for which whole boars are dress'd;

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(A creature form'd to furnish out a feast.) But present punishment pursues his maw, When, surfeited and swell'd, the peacock