Part 27 (1/2)
scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum plaustra vehunt, nutant alte populoque minantur (iii. 243).
The press before him stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides.
One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in b.l.o.o.d.y rows.
See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate!
A hundred guests invited walk in state; A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait: Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear, Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear; Yet they must walk upright beneath the load, Nay run, and running blow the sparkling flames abroad, Their coats from botching newly brought are torn.
Unwieldy timber-trees in waggons borne, Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie, That nod and threaten ruin from on high.
DRYDEN.
Even in the later satires, where with the advance of age this pictorial gift begins to fail him and he tends to rely rather on brilliant rhetorical treatment of philosophical commonplaces, there are still flashes of the old power. The well-known description of the fall of Seja.n.u.s in the tenth satire is in his best manner, while even the humbler picture of the rustic family of primitive Rome in the fourteenth satire shows the same firmness of touch, the same eye for vivid and direct representation:
saturabat glaebula talis patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus vernula, tres domini, sed magnis fratribus horum a scrobe vel sulco redeuntibus altera cena amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae (166).
For then the little glebe, improved with care, Largely supplied with vegetable fare, The good old man, the wife in childbed laid, And four hale boys, that round the cottage played, Three free-born, one a slave: while, on the board, Huge porringers, with wholesome pottage stored, Smoked for their elder brothers, who were now, Hungry and tired, expected from the plough.
GIFFORD.
His handling of the essential weapons of satire, scathing epigram, and impetuous rhetoric, contribute equally to his success. He has the capacity of branding a character with eternal shame in a few terse trenchant lines. Who can forget the Greek adventurer of the third satire?--
grammaticus rhetor geometres pictor aliptes augur schoen.o.bates medicus magus, omnia novit Graeculus esuriens; in caelum miseris, ibit (iii. 76);
A cook, a conjurer, a rhetorician, A painter, pedant, a geometrician, A dancer on the ropes and a physician; All things the hungry Greek exactly knows, And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes.
DRYDEN.
or the summary of Domitian's reign with which he dates the story of the gigantic turbot?--
c.u.m iam semianimum laceraret Flavius...o...b..m ultimus et calvo serviret Roma Neroni (iv. 37);
When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore The prostrate world, which bled at every pore, And Rome beheld, in body as in mind, A bald-pate Nero rise to curse mankind.
GIFFORD.
or the curse upon the legacy-hunter Pacuvius?--
vivat Pacuvius quaeso vel Nestora totum, possideat quantum rapuit Nero, montibus aurum exaequet, nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo (xii. 128).
Health to the man! and may he thus get more Than Nero plundered! pile his s.h.i.+ning store High, mountain high: in years a Nestor prove, And, loving none, ne'er know another's love!
GIFFORD.
Not less mordant in a different way is the savage and sceptical melancholy of the conclusion of the second satire, where he contrasts the degenerate Roman, tainted by the foulest l.u.s.ts, with the n.o.ble Romans of the past, and even with the barbarians, newly conquered, on the confines of empire (149):
esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna et contum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras atque una transire vadum tot milia c.u.mba nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.
sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sent.i.t et ambo Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli, quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus, tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos umbra venit? cuperent l.u.s.trari, si qua darentur sulpura c.u.m taedis et si foret umida laurus.
illic heu miseri traducimur. arma quidem ultra litora Iuvernae promovimus et modo captas Orcadas ac minima contentos nocte Britannos, sed quae nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe, non faciuut illi quos vicimus.
That angry Justice formed a dreadful h.e.l.l, That ghosts in subterranean regions dwell, That hateful Styx his sable current rolls, And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls, Are now as tales or idle fables prized; By children questioned and by men despised.
Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare, Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war!
Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost!
Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host!
Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannae slain!
Spirits of many a brave and b.l.o.o.d.y plain!
What thoughts are yours, whene'er with feet unblest, An unbelieving shade invades your rest?