EPISTLE III. TO JUVENAL. LORD of the iron harp! thou master of diction satiric, Who, with the scourge of song, lash'd vices in monarch and people, And to the scoff of the age, and the scorn of all ages succeeding, Bar'd the rank ulcers of sin in the loins of the Mistress of Nations! I, who have touch'd the same chords, but with an indifferent finger, Claim to belong to the quire, at whose head thou art seated supernal, More, I have read thee all through, from the first to the ultimate spondee, Therefore am somewhat acquaint with thy spirit and manner of thinking. Knowing thee, then, I presume to address without more introduction Part of this packet to thee, and, out of respect to thy Owing not less unto thine than I render'd to POPE's and Whirl my brisk thoughts o'er the leaf, on the wheels of thy spondees and dactyls. Doubtless, by this time at least, thou art fully conversant with English; But, shouldst thou stumble at all, lo! POPE close at hand to assist thee. Last of the poets of ROME! thou never wouldst dream from what region Cometh this greeting to thee; no bard of thy kind hath yet mounted Up to the stars of the wise, from the bounds of the Ocean Atlantic. Green yet the world of the West, how should it yield matter for satire ? Hither no doubt, from thy LATIUM, the stone-eating husband of RHEA Fled from the vices of men, as thou in thy turn, rather later, Went to PENTAPOLIS (1). Here, the Saturnian age restored : is Witness ASTREA's own form on the dome of the palace of justice! Here, in his snug little cot, lives each one content with his neighbour, Envy, nor Hatred, nor Lust, nor any bad passion, triumphant ; Avarice known not in name, for devil a soul hath a stiver. How then, you ask, do we live? O, nothing on earth is more simple! (1) JUVENAL, in his old age, was sent in honorable banishment to the African PENTAPOLIS.* He was a native of AQUINUM in LATIUM, whither SATURN fled for refuge from JUPITER. The allegory of SATURN (Time)'s devouring his own children; RHEA'S deception; the Silver Age; are familiar to the commonest readers. *Or CYRENAICA; a province on the Mediterranean, between the modern kingdoms of TRIPOLI and EGYPT. † Now Aquino; between ROME and NAPLES, and northeast of Terracina. Latium is the modern States of the Church. A. has no coat to his back; or, B. is deficient in breeches: C. makes them both without charge, and comes upon A. for his slippers, While for his shelterless head B. gratefully shapes him a beaver. 'Tis the perfection of peace! social union most fully accomplish'd! Man is a brother to man, not a rival, or slave, or op pressor. Nay, in the compact of love, all creatures are joyful partakers. Thus have I seen the new mother, whose fountains were over replenish'd, When from the rose-tinted tube her cherub, with sigh of contentment, Closing its innocent eyes, had withdrawn its soft lips in repletion, Yield, with a smile, the rich fount, to be press'd by the gums of a kitten ; Then, in her absence, the babe, on its back in the couch of Grimalkin, Play with the visionless young, and the dam, with a civiliz'd pleasure, Purring, and swinging her tail, lick, pat with her paws, and caress it. Beautiful world! What more? Priests, lawyers, and doctors are useless; Sin being not, and a bond 'twixt the flesh and the Devil unheard of. Women, too, lie not at all; and the maidens, albeit bewitching, Cold are as JUNO, and chaste as DIANA and PALLAS to gether. Soft! I have written too fast. Is 't not thou, in a satire the keenest, Sure, of the dozen and four, that have made thee immortal, exclaimest: Quis tamen affirmat, nil actum in montibus, aut in Vain to impose upon thee! Dreams, visions of fantasy vanish, Gone the Saturnian age. Up, up from the land of COLUMBUS Rises the mist of corruption; not thick yet as that, which the Old World Wraps in a shade as of night, where-through the rare stars of the virtues Glimmer with ray scarce seen, and at moments are lost altogether; No, not as yet, but spreading, at noonday, the duskness of twilight, Solar eclipse, as it were, on the cities and fields of the nation. Temperance staggers unsham'd, and Chastity needs not her blushes; Avarice, plodding on foot, goes free of the jeers of his neighbours ; (1) Sat. vi.; on women. The poet has allowed that he had heard of one chaste woman, who lived in the country. He then corrects himself: Who yet so bold to affirm, that nothing is done in the mountains, Or in the caverns? Have Jove, then, and MARS fallen into senes cence ? Nor, in his glittering car, is the prodigal shunn'd for excesses. Over the bold and the timid the pestilent haze is expanded. Fear not, my JUVENAL, then, that thy art will be lost to the New World. Bards of thy sort will arise; though never shall one have thy power. I, even I, had prepar'd, with the thunder of moral in vective, Hurl'd at this mist of miasm, this visible fume of cor ruption, Hurl'd long ago, in my nonage, to lessen the mass of the vapor. More who so vain to attempt? Who so sanguine to dream to disperse it? Forg'd were my bolts, but not temper'd, As thine was their number; but other, Other their strength; not, as thine, being wrought on Cyclopean stithy. These laid aside, while with fire, half-sportive, I shot at RUBETA, PUPA, and one or two more, of such petulant, brazenfac'd dunces, Shall be forthcoming ere long, if the strength, that should wield them, not fail me. Think you their noise will be heard, in the regions of brightness supernal ? Proud should I be, could I deem, that thyself, POPE, PERSIUS, and DRYDEN, Others of similar note, would exult in the tuneful explo sion. |