endless shout,
The long dry see-saw of his horrible bray."{146}

After remarks on Peter's strange state of mind when saluted by this
horrible music, and describing him as preparing to seize the ass by the
neck, we are told his purpose was interrupted by something he just then
saw in the water, which afterwards proves to be a corpse. The reader is,
however, first excited and disposed to expect something horrible by the
following startling conjectures:--

"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