Not all thy pincers, nor unmanly arts,
Can smooth the roughness of thy shameful parts.
Not five, the strongest that the Circus breeds,
From the rank foil can root those wicked weeds :
Though suppled first with soap, to ease thy pain,
The stubborn fern springs up, and sprouts again.

Thus others we with defamations wound,
While they ftab us; and so the jest goes round.
Vain are thy hopes, to 'scape cenforious eyes;
Truth will appear through all the thin disguise:

Thou hast an ulcer which no leech can heal,
Though thy broad shoulder-belt the wound conceal.
Say tho: art found and hale in every part,
We know, we know thee rotten at thy heart,
We know thee sullen, impotent, and proud:
Nor canst thou cheat thy nerve, who cheat'st the croud.

But when they praise me, in the neighbourhood,
When the pleas’d people take me for a God,
Shall I refuse their incense? Not receive
The loud applauses which the vulgar give ? :

If thou dost wealth, with longing eyes, behold;
And, greedily, art gaping after gold;
If some alluring girl, in gliding by,
Shal tip the wink, with a lascivious eye,
And thou with a consenting glance, reply;
If thou thy own solicitor become,
And bid'at arise the lumpish pendulum :
If thy lewd lust provokes an empty storm,
And prompts to more than nature can perform;

If,

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If, with thy grads, thou fou's the freets by night,
Ard dok in merders, rapes, and spoils deight;
Hica'e roi thyself, the farrering crowd to hear;
I is folloose fituff to feed tby itching tar.
Rs, eâ. the raceous praifes of the times:
Give thy bofe poets back thy cobbled rhines :
S18 thy soul, not what thou doit appear,
Burhat thou art; and find the begga there,

THE judicious Casaubon, in his proem to this fatire,

tells us, that Aristophanes the grammarian being asked, what poem of Archilochus's lambics he preferred before the rest; answered, the longest. His answer may juftly be applied to this fifth latire; which, being of a greater length than any of the rest, is also, by far, the most inftru&tive : for this reason I have selected it from all the others, and inscribed it to my learned master, Doctor Bulby; to whom I am not only obliged myself for the best part

of iny own education, and that of my two sons ; but have also received from him the first and truelt taste of Persius. May he be pleased to find in this translation, the gratitude, or at least fome small acknowledgment of his unworthy scholar, at the

distance

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diitance of twenty-four years, from the time when

I departed from under his tuition. This tatire contitis of two distinct parts: the firft con

tains the praites of the fteick philofopher Cornutus, marter and cutor to our Pertius. It alio declares the love and piety of Pertius, to his well-deserving matter; and the mutual friend thip which continued betwixt then, after Pertius was now grown a man. As alto his exhortation to young noblemen, that ther world enter themselves into his inititution. From whence he makes an artful tranfition into the second part of his subject: wherein he firit complains of the tech of scholars, and afterwards perfuades them to the puniuit of their true liberty: Here our author excellenty treats that paradox of the Stoicks, which arms, that only the wile or virtucus man is tree; and thit a'l ricious men are naturziy sares. And, in the illustration of this degma, he takes up the remaining part of this inimitable catre

THE THE FIFTH SA TIRE.

Inscribed to the Reverend Dr. BUSBY.

The Speakers PERSIUS and CORNUT U S.

PERSIUS.

OF,

F ancient use to poets it belongs,
To wish themselves an hundred mouths and

tongues :
Whether to the well lung'd tragedian's rage
They recommend the labours of the stage,
Or sing the Parthian, when transfix'd he lies,
Wrenching the Roman javelin froin his thighs.

CORNUT US.
And why would'st thou these mighty morsels chuse,
Of words unchew'd, and fit to choak the Muse ?
Let fustian poets, with their stuff, be gone,
And suck the mists that hang o'er Helicon ;
When Progne or Thyestes' feast they write ;
And, for the mouthing actor, verse indite.
Thou neither, like a bellows, swell'st thy face,
As if thou wert to blow the burning mass
Of melting ore; nor canst thou strain thy throat,
Or murmur in an undistinguish'd note,
Like rolling thunder till it breaks the cloud,
And rattling nonsense is discharg'd aloud.
Soft elocution does'thy style renown,
And the sweet accents of the peaceful gown :

Ge