Pergræcari.

To live voluptuously like the Greeks, to be great topers. The phrase seems to have been used by the Romans to express their contempt of the soft and effeminate manners of the Grecians, particularly of that portion of them who had taken up their residence at Rome, and were probably the most worthless of the country, who were not able to get a living at home. These men, we are told, had the art, by flattery and by administering to the vices of the great, to make themselves so acceptable that scarcely any favour could be procured, or even any access to the nobles could be obtained but through them. Juvenal severely censures his countrymen for their attachment to these vermin:

«All Greeks are actors, and in this vain town,
Walk a short road to riches and renown.
Smiles the great man? they laugh with noisy roar;
Weeps he? their eyes with bidden tears run o'er.
Asks he a fire in winter's usual cold?
The warmest rugs their shivering limbs enfold.
Pants he beneath the summer's common heat?
Lo! they are bath'd in sympathetic sweat.
In vain the Roman would contest the prize,
For native genius arms the Greek with lies;
He, every moment of the night or day,
Mimics the great in all they look or say;
Loads their vain ear with praise that never tires,
And all their folly, all their trash admires».
Hodgson's Translation.

Johnson, in his imitation of the same satire, has transferred the censure to the French, who, he seems to think, had obtained the same influence here, the Grecians had at Rome:

«Obsequious, artful, voluble and gay,
On Britons' fond credulity they prey.
No gainful trade their industry can 'scape,
They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or cure a clap;
All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows,
And bid him go to hell, to hell he goes».