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 Canæ: they meet on the road (the Via
Appia), and turning aside, for greater freedom of conversation, into the
Vallis Egeriæ, 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:

"In valem Egeriæ descendimus, et speluncas
Dissimiles veris. Quanto præstantius esset
Numen aquæ, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"
_Sat._ iii. 17.

In imitating this passage, Mr. Rhodes, finding no fons Egeriæ, no Numa,
and perhaps no Muses in London, transfers his regrets from a rivulet to
a navigable stream; and makes the whole ridiculous, by suggesting that
the Thames would look infinitely better if it flowed through grass, as
every ordinary brook would do.

"Next he departed to the river side,
Crowded with buildings, tow'ring in their pride.