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or the words, but more in the nobleness of our
conception. Yet when you have finished all, and
it appears in its full lustre, when the diamond is
not only found, but the roughness smoothed,
when it is cut into a form, and set in gold, then
we cannot but acknowledge, that it is the perfect
work of art and nature and every one will be so
vain, to think he himself could have performed
the like, till he attempts it. It is just the de-
scription that Horace makes of such a finished
piece: it appears so easy, Ut sibi quivis speret
idem; sudet multum, frustraque laboret, ausus
idem. And besides all this, it is your lordship's
particular talent to lay your thoughts so close
together, that were they closer they would be
crowded, and even a due connection would be
wanting. We are not kept in expectation of two
good lines, which are to come after a long pa-
renthesis of twenty bad; which is the April-poetry
of other writers; a mixture of rain and sunshine
by fits; you are always bright, even almost to a
fault, by reason of the excess. There is continual
abundance, a magazine of thought, and yet a
perpetual variety of entertainment; which creates
such an appetite in your reader, that he is not
cloyed with any thing, but satisfied with all. It
is that which the Romans call coena dubia; where
there is such plenty, yet withal, so much diver-
sity and so good order, that the choice is difficult
betwixt one excellency and another; and yet the
conclusion, by a due climax, is evermore the
best; that is, as a conclusion ought to be, ever
the most proper for its place. See, my lord,
whether I have not studied your lordship with
some application: and since you are so modest,
that you will not be judge and party, I appeal to
the whole world, if I have not drawn your picture
to a great degree of likeness, though it is but in
miniature: and, that some of the best features
are yet wanting. Yet, what I have done is enough
to distinguish you from any others, which is the
proposition I took upon me to demonstrate.

And now, my lord, to apply what I have said to my present business. The satires of Juvenal and Persius appearing in this new English dress, cannot so properly be inscribed to any man as to your lordship, who are the first of the age in that way of writing. Your lordship, amongst many other favours, has given me your permission for this address; and you have particularly encouraged me by your perusal and approbation of the sixth and tenth satires of Juvenal, as I have translated them. My fellow-labourers have likewise commissioned me to perform in their behalf this office of a dedication to you; and will acknowledge, with

all possible respect and gratitude, your acceptance of their work. Some of them have the honour to be known to your lordship already; and they who have not yet that happiness, desire it now. Be pleased to receive our common endeavours with your wonted candour, without entitling you to the protection of our common failings, in so difficult an undertaking. And allow me your patience, if it be not already tired with this long epistle, to give you, from the best authors, the origin, the antiquity, the growth, the change, and the compleatment of satire among the Romans. To describe, if not define, the nature of that poem, with its several qualifications and virtues, together with the several sorts of it. To compare the excellencies of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, and show the particular manners of their satires. And lastly, to give an account of this new way of ver sion which is attempted in our performance. All which, according to the weakness of my ability, and the best lights which I can get from others, shall be the subject of my following discourse. ;

The most perfect work of poetry, says our mas ter Aristotle, is tragedy. His reason is, because it is the most united; being more severely con fined within the rules of action, time, and place. The action is entire, of a piece, and one, without episodes: the time limited to a natural day; and the place circumscribed at least within the compass of one town or city. Being exactly proportioned thus, and uniform in all its parts, the mind is more capable of comprehending the whole beauty of it without distraction.

But after all these advantages, an heroic poem is certainly the greatest work of human nature. The beauties and perfections of the other are but mechanical; those of the epic are more noble. Though Homer has limited his place to Troy and the fields about it; his action to forty-eight natural days, whereof twelve are holidays, or cessation from business, during the funerals of Patroclus. To proceed, the action of the epic is greater: the extension of time enlarges the pleasure of the reader, and the episodes give it more ornament, and more variety. The instruction is equal; but in the first is only instructive, the latter forms a hero and a prince.

If it signifies any thing which of them is of the more ancient family, the best and most absolute heroic poem was written by Homer long before tragedy was invented: but if we consider the natural endowments, and acquired parts, which are necessary to make an accomplished writer in either kind, tragedy requires a less and more confined knowledge: moderate learning, and observation of

But in an epic poet, one who is worthy of that name, besides an universal genius, is required universal learning, together with all those qualities and acquisitions which I have named above, and as many more as I have, through haste or negligence, omitted, And after all, he must have exactly studied Homer and Virgil as his patterns, Aristotle and Horace as his guides, and Vida and Bossu as their commentators, with many others, both Italian and French critics, which I want leisure here to recommend.

the rules is sufficient, if a genius be not wanting., their art of railing, neither needed the Romang to take it from them. But considering satire as a species of poetry, here the war begins amongst the critics. Scaliger the father will have it des scend from Greece to Rome; and derives the word satire from Satyrus, that mixt kind of animal, or, as the ancients thought him, rural god, made up betwixt a man and a goat; with a human head, hooked nose, pouting lips, a bunch or struma under the chin, pricked ears, and upright horns; the body shagged with hair, espe cially from the waist, and ending in a goat, with the legs and feet of that creature. But Casaubon, and his followers, with reason, condemn this deriva. tion; and prove that from Satyrus, the word satira, as it signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend, For satira is not properly a substantive, but an adjective; to which the word lans, in English a charger, or large platter, is un derstood: so that the Greek poem, made according to the manner of a satyr, and expressing his

not satire. And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had such poems; but that they were wholly different in species from that to which the Romans gave the name of satire.

In a word, what I have to say in relation to this subject, which does not particularly concern satire, is, that the greatness of an heroic poem, beyond that of a tragedy, may easily be discovered, by observing how few have attempted that work, in comparison of those who have written dramas; and of those few, how small a number have succeeded. But, leaving the critics on either side to contend about the preference due to this or that sort of poetry; I will hasten to my pre-qualities, must properly be called satyrical, and gent business, which is the antiquity and origin of satire, according to those informations which I have received from the learned Casaubon, Heinsius, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the Dauphin's Juvenal; to which I shall add some observations of my own. There has been a long dispute among the modern critics, whether the Romans derived their satire from the Grecians, or first invented it themselves. Julius Scaliger and Heinsius, are of the first opinion; Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the pub lisher of the Dauphin's Juvenal, maintain the latter. If we take satire in the general signification of the word, as it is used in all modern languages for an invective, it is certain that it is almost as old as verse; and, though hymns, which are praises of God, may be allowed to have been before it, yet the defamation of others was not long after it. After God had cursed Adam and Eve in Paradise, the husband and wife excused themselves, by laying the blame on one another; and gave a beginning to those conjugal dialogues in prose, which the poets have perfected in verse. The third chapter of Job is one of the first instances of this poem in Holy Scripture: unless we will take it higher, from the latter end of the second; where his wife advises him to curse his Maker.

The original, I confess, is not much to the honour of satire; but here it was nature, and that depraved! When it became an art, it bore better fruit. Only we have learnt thus much already, that scoffs and revilings are of the growth of all nations; and consequently that neither the Greek poets borrowed from other people

Which

Aristotle divides all poetry, in relation to the progress of it, into nature without art, art begun, and art completed, Mankind, even the most barbarous, have the seeds of poetry implanted in them. The first specimen of it was certainly shown in the praises of the Deity, and prayers to him; and as they are of natural obligation, sø they are likewise of divine institution. Milton observing, introduces Adam and Eve every morning adoring God in hymns and prayers. The first poetry was thus begun, in the wild notes of natural poetry, before the invention of feet and measures. The Grecians and Romans had no other original of their poetry. Festivals and holidays soon succeeded to private worship, and we need not doubt but they were enjoined by the true God to his own people; as they were after, wards imitated by the heathens; who by the light of reason knew they were to invoke some superior being in their necessities, and to thank him foṛ Thus the Grecian holidays were his benefits. celebrated with offerings to Bacchus and Ceres, and other deities, to whose bounty they supposed they were owing for their corn and wine, and other helps of life. And the ancient Romans, Horace tells us, paid their thanks to mother Earth, or Vesta, to Silvanus, and their genius, in the same manner. But as all festivals have s double reason for their institution; the first of

religion, the other of recreation, for the unbending | epistle of the second book, which was written to Augustus:

of our minds: so both the Grecians and Romans agreed, after their sacrifices were performed, to spend the remainder of the day in sports and merriments; amongst which, songs and dances, and that which they called wit (for want of knowing better), were the chiefest entertainments. The Grecians had a notion of satyrs, whom I have already described; and taking them, and the Sileni, that is, the young satyrs and the old, for the tutors, attendants, and humble companions of their Bacchus, habited themselves like those rural deities, and imitated them in their rustic dances, to which they joined songs, with some sort of rude harmony, but without certain numbers; and to these they added a kind of chorus.

The Romans also (as nature is the same in all places :) though they knew nothing of those Grecian demi-gods, nor had any communication with Greece, yet had certainly young men, who, at their festivals, danced and sung after their uncouth manner, to a certain kind of verse, which they called Saturnian: what it was, we have no certain light from antiquity to discover; but we may conelude, that, like the Grecian, it was void of art, or at least with very feeble beginnings of it. Those ancient Romans, at these holidays, which were a mixture of devotion and debauchery, had a custom of reproaching each other with their faults, in a sort of extempore poetry, or rather of tuneable hobbling verse; and they answered in the same kind of gross raillery; their wit and their music being of a piece. The Grecians, says Casaubon, had formerly done the same in the persons of their petulant satyrs: but I am afraid he mistakes the matter, and confounds the singing and dancing of the satyrs, with the rustical entertainments of the first Romans. The reason of my opinion is this; that, Casaubon, finding little light from antiquity, of these beginnings of poetry, amongst the Grecians, but only these representations of satyrs, who carried canisters, and cornucopias full of several fruits in their hands, and danced with them at their public feasts: and afterwards reading Horace, who makes mention of his homely Romans jesting at one another in the same kind of solemnities, might suppose those wanton satyrs did the same. And especially because Horace possibly might seem to him to have shown the original of all poetry in general, including the Grecians as well as Romans. Though it is plainly otherwise, that he only described the beginning, and first rudiments of poetry in his own country. The verses are these, which he cites from the first

Agricolæ prisci, fortes, parvoque beati,

Condita post frumenta, levantes tempore festo
Corpus & ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentur,
Cum sociis operum pueris, & conjuge fidâ,
Tellurem porco, Silvanum lacte piabant,
Floribus & vino Genium memorem brevis ævi:
Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit.

Our brawny clowns of old, who turn'd the soil,
Content with little, and inur'd to toil,

At harvest-home, with mirth and country cheer
Restor❜d their bodies for another year;
Refresh'd their spirits, and renew'd their hope
Of such a future feast, and future crop.
Then, with their fellow-joggers of the ploughs,
Their little children, and their faithful spouse,
A sow they slew to Vesta's deity,

And kindly milk, Silvanus, pour'd to thee. With flowers, and wine, their genius they ador'd; A short life, and a merry, was the word. From flowing cups, defaming rhymes ensue, And at each other homely taunts they threw. Yet since it is a hard conjecture, that so great a man as Casaubon should misapply what Horace writ concerning ancient Rome, to the ceremonies and manners of ancient Greece, I will not insist on this opinion, but rather judge in general, that since all poetry had its original from religion, that of the Grecians and Romans had the same beginning: both were invented at festivals of thanksgiving: and both were prosecuted with mirth and raillery, and rudiments of verse: amongst the Greeks, by those who represented satyrs; and amongst the Romans by real clowns.

For indeed, when I am reading Casaubon on these two subjects, methinks I hear the same story told twice over with very little alteration. Of which Dacier taking notice in his interpretation of the Latin verses which I have translated, says plainly, that the beginning of poetry was the same, with a small variety, in both countries: and that the mother of it, in all nations, was devotion. But what is yet more wonderful, that most learned critic takes notice also, in his illus trations on the first epistle of the second book, that as the poetry of the Romans, and that of the Grecians, had the same beginning, at feasts of thanksgiving, as it has been observed: and the old comedy of the Greeks which was invective, and the satire of the Romans which was of the same nature, were begun on the very same occa

sion, so the fortune of both, in process of time, was | tained; till, being perceived by Polyphemus, they

just the same; the old comedy of the Grecians was forbidden, for its too much licence in exposing of particular persons, and the rude satire of the Romans was also punished by a law of the Decemviri, as Horace tells us, in these words:

Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, donec jam sævus apertam In rabiem verti cœpit jocus; & per honestas Ire domos impune miņax: doluere cruento Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura Conditione super communi, quinetiam lex, Pœnaque lata, malo quæ nolit carmine quemquam Describi, vertere modum formidine fustis; Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti. The law of the Decemviri was this: Si quis eccentassit malum carum, sive condidissit, quod infamiam faxit, flagitiumve alteri, capital esto. A strange likeness, and barely possible: but the critics being all of the same opinion, it becomes me to be silent, and to submit to better judgments than my own.

But to return to the Grecians, from whose satiric dramas, the elder Scaliger and Heinsius will have the Roman satire, to proceed; I am to take a view of them first, and see if there be any such descent from them as those authors have pretended.

Thespis, or whatsoever he were that invented tragedy, (for authors differ) mingled with them a chorus and dances and satyrs, which had been used in the celebration of their festivals; and there they were ever afterwards retained. The character of them was also kept, which was m rth and wantonness and this was given, I suppose, to the folly of the common audience, who soon grow weary of good sense; and, as we daily see in our own age and country, are apt to forsake poetry, and still ready to ruturn to buffoonry and farce. From hence it came, that in the Olympic games, where the poets contended for four prizes, the satiric tragedy was the last of them; for, in the rest, the satyrs were excluded from the chorus. Among the plays of Euripides which are yet remaining, there is one of these satirics, which is called the Cyclops; in which we may see the nature of those poems, and from thence conclude what likeness they have to the Roman satire.

The story of this Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus, so famous in the Grecian fables, was, that Ulysses, who, with his company, was driven on the coast of Sicily, where those Cyclops inhabited, coming to ask relief from Silenus, and the satyrs, who were herdsmen to that one-eyed giant, was kindly received by them, and enter

were made prisoners against the rites of hospitality, for which Ulysses eloquently pleaded; were afterwards put down in the den, and some of them devoured; after which, Ulysses, having made him drunk, when he was asleep, thrust a great firebrand into his eye; and so revenging his dead fol. lowers, escaped with the remaining party of the living and Silenus, and the satyrs, were freed from their servitude under Polyphemus, and remitted to their first liberty of attending and accompanying their patron Bacchus.

This was the subject of the tragedy; which being one of those that end with a happy event, is therefore by Aristotle judged below the other sort, whose success is unfortunate. Notwithstanding which, the satyrs, who were part of the dramatis personæ, as well as the whole chorus, were properly introduced into the nature of the poem, which is mixed of farce and tragedy. The adventure of Ulysses was to entertain the judging part of the audience, and the uncouth persons of Silenus, and the satyrs, to divert the common people with their gross railleries.

Your lordship has perceived by this time, that this satyric tragedy, and the Roman satire, have little resemblances in any other features. The very kinds are different: for what has a pastoral tragedy to do with a paper of verses satirically written? The character and raillery of the satyrs is the only thing that could pretend to a likeness ; were Scaliger and Heinsius alive to maintain their opinion. And the first farces of the Romans, which were the rudiments of their poetry, were written before they had any communication with the Greeks; or indeed, any knowledge of that people.

And here it will be proper to give the definition of the Greek satiric poem, from Casaubon, before I leave this subject. The satiric, says he, is a dramatic poem, annexed to a tragedy; having a chorus, which consists of satyrs: the persons represented in it, are illustrious men: the action of it is great; the style is partly serious, and partly jocular; and the event of the action most commonly is happy.

The Grecians, besides these satiric tragedies, had another kind of poem, which they called Silli; which were more of kin to the Roman satire: those Silli were indeed invective poems, but of a different species from the Roman poems of Ennius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Horace, and the rest of their successors. They were so called, says Casaubon in one place, from Silenus, the foster father to Bacchus; but in another place, bethinking him

self better, he derives their name &ò reu oiλλaivai,, that sort of poetry, Et Græcis intacti carminis

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from their scoffing and petulancy. From some
fragments of the Silli, written by Timon, we may
find, that they were satiric poems, full of parodies;
that is, of verses patched up from great poets
and turned into another sense than their author
intended them. Such among the Romans is the
famous Cento of Ausonius, where the words are
Virgil's but by applying them to another sense,
they are made the relation of a wedding-night;
and the act of consummation fulsomely described
in the very words of the most modest amongst
all poets. Of the same manner are our songs,
which are turned into burlesque, and the serious
words of the author perverted into a ridiculous
meaning. Thus in Timon's Silli, the words are
generally those of Homer, and the tragic poets;
but he applies them satirically to some customs
and kinds of philosophy, which he arraigns. But
the Romans not using any of these parodies in
their satires; sometimes, indeed, repeating verse's
of other men, as Persius cites some of Nero's;
but not turning them into another meaning, the
Silli cannot be supposed to be the original of Ro-
man satire. To these Silli, consisting of parodies,
we may properly add the satires which were written
were the
against particular persons; such as
iambics of Archilochus against Lycambes, which
Horace undoubtedly imitated in some of his odes
and epodes, whose titles bear a sufficient witness
of it: I might also name the invective of Ovid
against Ibis, and many others: but these are the
underwood of satire, rather than the timber-tree,
they are not a general extension, as reaching only
to some individual person. And Horace seems to
have purged himself from those splenetic reflec-
tions in those odes and epodes, before he under-
took the noble work of satires, which were properly
so called.

Thus, my lord, I have at length disengaged
myself from those antiquities of Greece: and have
proved, I hope, from the best critics, that the
Roman satire was not borrowed from thence, but
of their own manufacture: I am now almost gotten
into my depth; at least by the help of Dacier I
Not that I will pro-
am swimming towards it.
mise always to follow him, any more than he
follows Casaubon; but to keep him in my eye,
as my best and truest guide; and where I think
he may possibly mislead me, there to have re-
course to my own lights, as I expect that others
should do by me.

Quintilian says, in plain words, Satira quidem tota nostra est; and Horace has said the same thing before him, speaking of his predecessor in

auctor. Nothing can be clearer than the opinion
of the poet, and the orator, both the best critics
of the two best ages of the Roman empire, than
that satire was wholly of Latin growth, and not
transplanted from Athens to Rome. Yet, as I
have said, Scaliger the father, according to his
custom, that is, insolently enough, contradicts
them both; and gives no better reason, than the
derivation of Satyrus from alù, salacitas; and so,
from the letchery of those fauns, thinks he has
sufficiently proved, that satire is derived from
them. As if wantonness and lubricity were essen-
tial to that sort of poem, which ought to be
avoided in it. His other allegation, which I have
already mentioned, is as pitiful: that the satyrs
carried platters and canisters full of fruit, in their
hands. If they had entered empty-handed, had
they been ever the less satyrs? Or were the fruits
and flowers, which they offered, any thing of kin
to satire? Or any argument that this poem was
originally Grecian? Casaubon judged better, and
his opinion is grounded on sure authority, that
satire was derived from satura, a Roman word,
which signifies full, and abundant, and full also
of variety, in which nothing is wanting in its due
perfection. It is thus, says Dacier, that we lay
a full colour, when the wool has taken the whole

tincture, and drunk in as much of the dye as it

can receive. According to this derivation from
satur, comes satura, or satyra, according to the
new spelling; as optumus and maxumus are now
spelled optimus. and maximus. Satura, as I have
formerly noted, is an adjective, and relates to the
word lanx, which is understood. And this lanx,
in English, a charger, or large platter, was yearly
filled with all sorts of fruits, which were offered
to the gods at their festivals, as the premices, or
first-gatherings. These offerings of several sorts
thus mingled, it is true, were not known to the
Grecians, who called them wavágrov buriav, a
sacrifice of all sorts of fruits; and wavriquíav, when
they offered all kinds of grain. Virgil has men.
tioned these sacrifices in his Georgics.

Lancibus & pandis fumantia reddimus exta.
And in another place, Lancesque & liba feremus:
that is, we offer the smoking entrails in great plat-
ters, and we will offer the chargers and the cakes.

This word satura has been afterwards applied to many other sorts of mixtures; as Festus calls it a kind of olla, or hotchpotch, made of several sorts of meats. Laws were also called legis saturæ, when they were of several heads and titles; like our tacked bills of parliament. And per saturam legem ferre, in the Roman senate, was to carry a

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