Degrees, Observances, customs and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries !
And yet confufion live!-Plagues, incident to men,
Your potent and infe&ious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold Sciatica,
Cripple our fenators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty
Creep in the minds ard marrows of our youth,
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,
Sow all th' Athenian bosoms, and their crop ·
Pe general leprosy: breath infect breath,
That their fociety (as their friendship) may
Be meerly poison. Nothing I'll bear from thee,
Eut nakedness, thou detestable town!

Scene II. A Friend forsaken.

As wę do tụśn our backs
From our companion, thrown into his grave,
So his familiars from his buried fortunes
Slink all awayı; leave their falfe vows with him,
Like empty purses pick d: and his poor fe'f,
(4) A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-fhun’d poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.

(4) A dedicated, &c.] In Romeo and Juliet, at the beginnings he speaks prettily of a bud bit by an envious worin,

Ere he can spread his fweet wings to the air,

Or dedicate his beauty to the sun, In the next line, the author seems to have had his eye on that trite and well-known line of Ovid's;

Nullus ad amiffas ibit amicus opes.

Scene SCENE HIT. On Gold.

(5) What is here? Gold ? yellow, glittering, precious gold? (6) No, gods, I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens ! thus much of this will make: Black, white; foul, fair ; wrong, right; Base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. You gods! why this? what this? you gods! why,

this
Willlug your priests and servants from your fides :
Pluck ftout mens pillows from below their heads.
This yellow flave
Will knit and break religions ; bless th' accursd;

Make

race ;

(5) What is, &c.} See page 27 of this volumes Ben Johnson, in his Volpone, speaking of gold, says,

Thou art virtue, fame,
Honour and all things else! who can get thee

He shall be noble, valiant, honeft, wife
Mosc. And what he will, fir..

Act 1. Sc. 1. Which lines are an exact trandation of the following from Ha

Omnis enim res
Virtus, fama, decus, divina bumanaque pulabris,
Divitiis parent : quas qui conftruxerit, ille
Clarus erit fortis, juftus, sapieris; etiam et rex
Et quicquid volet.

L. 2. S. 3. I leave the learned reader to judge, which of the two, this claffical bard, or our illiterate one, with bis small Latin and Greek, have best expreft the fpirit and meaning of Horace.

(6) No, &c.] This is well explained, Mr. Wa burton observesy, by the fol'owing lines of Perlius-Sat. 2. v. 10.

Er o fi

Subraftio crapet argenti feria dextro
Hercule !
Or, O thou thund'rer's son, great Hercules,
That once thy bounteous deity would please,
To guide my rake upon the chinking found
Of some vaft treasure hidden under ground.

,5 ܐ

Drydent',

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench : this is it,
That makes the (7) waped widow'wed again ;
She, whom the spittle-house and ulcerous fores
Would.cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th’April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that patt'it odds
Among the rout of nations, I will make thee'
Do thy right nature.

SCENE IV. Timon to Alcibiades,

Go on, here's gold, go on ;
Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-vic'd city hang his poison
In the fick air : let not thy sword skip one,
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard,
He is an ulurer. Strike me the matron,
It is her habit only that is honeft,
Herself's a bawd. Let not the virgin's cheek
Make foft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps,
That through the window-lawn bore at mens eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ;
Set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools extort * their mercy;

Think

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(7) W'aped, 1. e. sorrowful, mournful. Ben Johnson, in the 5th act of the same play we mentioned but now, observes,

That gold transforms
The most deformed, and restores them lovely

As 'twere the strange poetical girdle.
The old fellow is here again at his books, as if, the flightest remark
were not to proceed from his own brain, but to be midwiru'd
by him into the world from the classics. Lucian, in his Gallus, says,
Ozas owwv, &c. You see what mighty advantages gold produces,
since it transforms the most deformed, just as it were that famous
poeticalgirdle.

Ex!977Oxford editor, vulg, exhauf.

Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounc'd thy, throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse. Swear against objects,
Put armour on thine ears, and on thine eyes ;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priest in holy vestments bleeding,
Shail pierce a jot. There's gold to pay thy soldiers.
Make large confusion; and thy fury spent,
Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.

To the Courtezans.

Consumptions sow In hollow bones of man, strike their sharp shins, And mar mens spurring Crack the lawyer's voice, That he may never more false title plead, Nor found his quillets shrilly. (8) Hoar the Flamen,

That

(8) Hoar, &c.7 Mr. Upton, plainly perceiving there was some.. thing wrong in this pamage, propoles to read,

Hoarse the Flamen. i e. make hoarse : for to be boary claims reverence: this, not only the poets but the scripture teaches us : Levit. xix 32. Thou fhalt rise up before the boary bead." Add to this, that boa-se, is here most proper, as opposed to scolds. The poet could never mean-“ Give the Flamen the hoary leprosy that scolds; boar, in this sense is so ambiguous, that the construction hardly admits it, and the opposition plainly requires the other reading.' See Crit. Observations, p. 198. Tho', I must confess Mr. Up!or's conjece t ure very ingenious, and acknowledge with him, boar, as it stands, can never be Shakespear's word ; yet neither can I think, boarje, . to be fo: tho' perhaps it may seem unreafonable in me to conciemn it, without being able to offer a better in its place. But I am apt to imagine there is a word by some means or other Dipt : out of the text, and wanted where I have plac'd the afterisk.

Nor sound his quillets shrilly. . * the hoar. Flamen

That scolds, &c. What the word so loft is, or how it must be supplied, can be only conjecture, so that every reader will have a pleasing opportunity of trying his critical fagacity : the epithet is very proper for th:

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That scolds againk the quality of flesh,
And not believes himself, Down with the nose,
Down with it fat; take the bridge quite away
Of him, that his particular (9) to foresee
Smells from the gen’rał weal. Make cursd. pate ruf,

fians bald,
And let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war
Derive fome pain from you.

SCENE V. Timon's Reflections on the Earth.
That nature being fick of man's unkindness,
Should yet be hungry! Common mother, thou
Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast
Teems, and feeds all; oh, thou! whose felf-fame

mettle
(Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puft)
Engenders the black toad, and adder blue,
The gilded newt, and eyeless venom'd worm ;
With all th' abhorred births below (10) crisp heavin,

Whereon Flamen, and it seems to me, if we allow bóirse, there is none, or very little difference between what he and the lawyer were to suf. fer : it seems probable, scolds, in the next line, has been misplacd; and, indulging conjecture, we may at least be allowed to Tuppose the passage originally stood thus ;

Nor sound his quillets shrewdly. Scald the boar Flamen,
That rails against the quality of the flesh

And not believes himself,
Thus, that part of the Flamen, which procures him reverence,,
his hoary head would suffer, and thus the punishments are varied.
But this is only guess-work, and yet in such cases we have a better
right to proceed in the daring work of alteration, than where an
author's text is corrupt only to our feeble imaginations.

(9) To foresee] As men by foreseeing, provide for and take care of their affairs, Shakespear uses the word in that sense, " of him that to foresee, provide for and see after] his own particular ada vantage, c."

(10) Crifpcrispus, crispatus, curled; alluding to the clouds that appear curled, and to which he gives that epithet in the Tempeft.

To ride
On the curled claude,

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