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59.Chlamydes Lucullus, ut aiunt,

Si posset centum scenæ præbere rogatus,

*

"Qui possum tot? ait: tamen & quæram & quot habebo,
"Mittam"-post paulo scribit sibi millia quinque
Esse domi chlamydum; partem vel tolleret omnes.†

His wealth brave Timon gloriously confounds;
Ask'd for a groat, he gives a hundred pounds;
Or, if three ladies like a luckless play,
Takes the whole house upon the poet's day.‡

By no means equal to the original: there is so much pleasantry in alluding to the known story of the Prætor coming to borrow dresses (paludamenta)

* Orationis subtilitas imitabilis illa quidem videtur esse existimanti, sed nihil experienti minus. Cicero. See what Demetrius Phalereus says, in a passage full of taste and judgment, ρ xe xapanτпpos, pag. 113. Oxon. 1676.

These lines of Horace are a strong example of this species of style,

-parcentis viribus atque

Extenuantis eas consulto

This treatise of Demetrius Phalereus is not so much read, but, perhaps, is more useful, than even Dionysius de Struct. Some have imagined that Dionysius was the author of it. There are many internal proofs why it could not be written so early as D. Phalereus.

+ Ver. 40.

Ver. 85.

menta) for a chorus in a public spectacle that he intended to exhibit, who asked him to lend him a hundred, says Plutarch; but Lucullus bade him take two hundred. Horace humorously has made it five thousand. We know nothing of Timon, or

the three ladies here mentioned. There is still another beauty in Horace; he has suddenly, according to his manner, introduced Lucullus speaking; "qui possum, &c." He is for ever introducing these little interlocutions, which give his satires and epistles an air so lively and dramatic. This also is very frequently the practice of BAYLE, and is one of the circumstances that has contributed to make his Dictionary so very entertaining; and he need not have said, as he did to BOILEAU, that the reading his work was like the journey of a caravan over the deserts of Arabia, which often went twenty or thirty leagues together, without finding a single fruittree or fountain.

60. Mercemur servum, qui dictet nomina, lævum

Qui fodiąt latus, & cogat trans* pondera dextram

Porrigere:

* Various are the opinions about the meaning of trans pondera: some commentators think it means, across the carriages

and

Porrigere hic multum in Fabiâ valet, ille Velinâ;
Cui libet is fasces dabit; eripietque curule,

Cui volet, importunus ebur: Frater, Pater, adde;
Ut cuique est ætas ita quemque facetus adopta.*

Then hire a slave, or, if you will, a lord,
To do the honours, or to give the word;
Tell at your levee, as the crowds approach,
To whom to nod, whom take into your coach,
Whom honour with your hand: to make remarks,
Who rules in Cornwall, or who rules in Berks:
"This may be troublesome, is near the chair:

That makes three members; this can chuse a may'r."
Instructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest,

Adopt him son, or cousin, at the least;

Then turn about, and laugh at your own jest.†

}

An admirable picture of septennial folly and meanness during an election canvass, in which the arts of English solicitation are happily applied to Roman. Some strokes of this kind, though

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and waggons loaded with beams and stones, &c. or the weight of the gown pulled up. But Gesner's interpretation seems the most sensible; ultra æquilibrium corporis, cum periculo cadendi the candidate bows so low that he almost oversets his body. Fodit latus lævum candidati nomenclator; alacris nimium & cupidus candidatus ita protendit dextram, ut æqui librium pœne perdat. And Ovid ušes pondera in this sense; Ponderibus librata suis. Met. i. 13.

* Ver. 50.

+ Ver. 99.

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mixed with unequal trash, in the Pasquin of Fielding, may be mentioned as capital, and full of the truest humour. It is, indeed, a fine and fruitful subject for a satirist. As POPE Could not use a nomenclator (servum) he has happily added-a Lord. And if he has omitted a lively circumstance, fodiat latus, he has made ample compensation by, take into your coach. Importunus is skilfully turned by, this may be troublesome; as is facetus, by, laugh at your own jest.*

61.

-remigium vitiosum Ithacensis Ulyssei

Cui potior patriâ fuit interdicta voluptas,†

is admirably applied to the frequent mischievous effects of early foreign travel.

From Latian Syrens, French Circæan feasts,
Return well travell'd, and transform'd to beasts;
Or for a titled punk, or foreign flame,
Renounce our country, and degrade our name?‡

62. Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque, Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque.§

If

* Yet Horace, lib. 1. sect. 10. uses facetus in another sense, as interpreted by Quintilian, lib. 6. c. 3.

+ Ver. 63.

‡ Ver. 122.

§ Ver. 65.

If SWIFT cry wisely, " Vive la Bagatelle !"*

The Dean made his old age despicable, by mis-spending it in trifling and in railing; in scribbling paltry riddles and rebusses, and venting his spleen in peevish invectives. His banishment to Ireland, (for such he thought it,) and his disappointed ambition, embittered and exasperated his mind and temper. An excellent man, and excellent philosopher, whose loss I shall long and sincerely deplore, has lately made the following strictures upon one of his capital works.

Misanthropy is so dangerous a thing, and goes so far in sapping the very foundation of morality and religion, that I esteem the last part of Swift's Gulliver (that I mean relative to his Houyhnhnms and Yahoos) to be a worse book to peruse, than those which we forbid as the most flagitious and obscene. One absurdity in this author (a wretched philosopher, though a great wit) is well worth remarking: in order to render the nature of men odious, and the nature Z 2

of

* Ver. 128.

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