And rent the fishery; can bear the dead, } And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed; } All this for gain; for gain they sell their very head. } These fellows (see what fortune's power can do!) Were once the minstrels of a country show; Followed the prizes through each paltry town, By trumpet-cheeks and bloated faces known. But now, grown rich, on drunken holidays, At their own costs exhibit public plays; Where, influenced by the rabble's bloody will, With thumbs bent back, they popularly kill.[88] From thence returned, their sordid avarice rakes In excrements again, and hires the jakes. Why hire they not the town, not every thing, Since such as they have fortune in a string, Who, for her pleasure, can her fools advance, And toss them topmost on the wheel of chance? What's Rome to me, what business have I there? I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear? Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times? Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow, Like canting rascals, how the wars will go: I neither will, nor can, prognosticate To the young gaping heir, his father's fate; Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried, Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride: For want of these town-virtues, thus alone I go, conducted on my way by none; Like a dead member from the body rent, Maimed, and unuseful to the government. Who now is loved, but he who loves the times, Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes, Labouring with secrets which his bosom burn, Yet never must to public light return? They get reward alone, who can betray; For keeping honest counsels none will pay. He who can Verres[89] when he will accuse, The purse of Verres may at pleasure use: But let not all the gold which Tagus hides, And pays the sea in tributary tides,[90] Be bribe sufficient to corrupt thy breast, Or violate with dreams thy peaceful rest. Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold, Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold. I haste to tell thee,--nor shall shame oppose,-- What confidents our wealthy Romans chose; And whom I must abhor: to speak my mind, I hate, in Rome, a Grecian town to find; To see the scum of Greece transplanted here, Received like gods, is what I cannot bear. Nor Greeks alone, but Syrians here abound; Obscene Orontes,[91] diving under ground, Conveys his wealth to Tyber's hungry shores, And fattens Italy with foreign whores: Hither their crooked harps and customs come; All find receipt in hospitable Rome. The barbarous harlots crowd the public place:-- } Go, fools, and purchase an unclean embrace; } The painted mitre court, and the more painted face. }