“Is it the moon’s distorted face? 
  The ghost-like image of a cloud? 
  Is it a gallows these pourtrayed? 
  Is Peter of himself afraid? 
  Is it a coffin—­or a shroud?

  “A grisly idol hewn in stone? 
  Or imp from witch’s lap let fall? 
  Or a gay ring of shining fairies,
  Such as pursue their brisk vagaries
  In sylvan bower or haunted hall?

  “Is it a fiend that to a stake
  Of fire his desperate self is tethering? 
  Or stubborn spirit doomed to yell
  In solitary ward or cell,
  Ten thousand miles from all his brethren.”

  “Is it a party in a parlour? 
  Cramm’d just as they on earth revere cramm’d—­
  Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
  But, as you by their faces see,
  All silent and all damn’d!

  “A throbbing pulse the gazer hath,” &c. 
                        Part i., pp. 33, 39.

This last stanza was omitted in subsequent editions.  Indeed, it is not very easy to imagine what it could possibly mean, or how any stretch of imagination could connect it with the appearance presented by a body in the water.

To return, however, from this digression to the subject of translations.  In the passage already quoted, the reader has been presented with a proof how well Dryden could compress the words, without losing the sense, of his author.  In the following, he has done precisely the reverse.

  “Lectus erat Codro Procula minor.”—­Juv.  Sat. iii. 203.

  “Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot,
  That his short wife’s short legs hung dangling out!”

In the year 1801 there was published at Oxford, in 12mo., a translation of the satires of Juvenal in verse, by Mr. William Rhodes, A.M., superior Bedell of Arts in that University, which he describes in his title-page as “nec verbum verbo.”  There are some prefatory remarks prefixed to the third satire in which he says: 

“The reader, I hope, will neither contrast the following, nor the tenth satire, with the excellent imitation of a mighty genius; though similar, they are upon a different plan.  I have not adhered rigidly to my author, compared with him; and if that were not the case, I am very sensible how little they are calculated to undergo so fiery an ordeal.”

And speaking particularly of the third satire, he adds: 

“This part has been altered, as already mentioned, to render it more applicable to London:  nothing is to be looked for in it but the ill-humour of the emigrant.”

The reader will perhaps recollect, that in the opening of the third satire, Juvenal represents himself about to take leave of his friends Umbritius, who is quitting Rome for Canae:  they meet on the road (the Via Appia), and turning aside, for greater freedom of conversation, into the Vallis Egeriae, the sight of the fountain there, newly decorated with foreign marbles, leads to an expression of regret that it was no longer suffered to remain in the simplicity of the times of Numa: