give you from the best authors, the origin, the antiquity, the growth, the change, and the completement 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 shew the particular manners of their satires; and lastly, to give an account of this new way of version, 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 master, Aristotle, is tragedy. His reason is, because it is the most united; being more severely confined 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 heroick poem is certainly the greatest work of human nature."

In the Essay on Dramatick Poesy, our author has given the preference to tragedy, that being the topick on which he was employed. His custom was, as has often been observed, to place his present subject, whatever it might be, in the fairest and most captivating point of view.

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The beauties and perfections of the other are but mechanical; those of the epick are more noble. Though Homer has limited his place to Troy, and the fields about it; his actions to forty-eight natural days, whereof twelve are holydays, or cessation from business, during the funeral of Patroclus. To proceed; the action of the epick is greater; the extention of time enlarges the pleasure of the reader, and the episodes give it more ornament, and more variety. The instruction is equal; but 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 heroick 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 the rules is sufficient, if a genius be not wanting. But in an epick poet, one who is worthy of that name, besides an universal genius, is required universal learning, together with all those qualities

Here, therefore, and in the Dedication of the Eneid, we find the palm given to heroick poesy, and the second place allotted to tragedy.

3 The meaning, I conceive is-" Homer, however, in his Iliad, has made some approaches to the strict rules of the drama, for he has limited his place," &c.; but it is not well expressed.

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 criticks, which I want leisure here to recommend.

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 heroick poem, beyond that of a tragedy, may easily be discovered by observing how few have attempted that work, in comparison to those who have written dramas; and of those few, how small a number have succeeded. But leaving the criticks on either side to contend about the preference due to this or that sort of poetry, I will hasten to my present 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 criticks, 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 publisher 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 holy scripture, unless we will take it higher, from the latter end of the second, where his wife advises him to curse his maker.

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This 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 their art of railing, neither needed the Romans to take it from them. But considering satire as a species of poetry, -here the war begins amongst the criticks. Scaliger, the father, will have it descend from Greece to Rome; and derives the word, satire, from Satyrus, that mixed 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, powting lips, a bunch or struma under the chin, pricked ears, and upright horns; the body shagged with hair, especially 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 derivation; 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 lanx, in English a charger or large platter, is understood: so that the Greek poem made according to the manners of a Satyr, and expressing his qualities, must properly be called satyrical, and 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.

4 The metre, as well as the subject, of these satyrick pieces, was different from that employed in the more refined species of drama, which succeeded them. "It was late, says Aristotle, (as excellently translated by Mr. Twining) before tragedy threw aside the short and simple fable, and ludicrous language, of its satyrick original, and attained its proper magnitude and dignity. The iambick measure was then first adopted; for originally the trochaick tetrameter was made use of, as better suited to the satyrick and saltatorial genius of the poem at that time: but when the dialogue was formed, nature itself pointed out the proper metre. For the iambick is of all metres the most colloquial; as appears evidently from this fact, that our common conversation frequently falls into iambick verse, seldom into hexameter, and only when we depart from the usual melody of speech."-" Satyrick, Mr. Twining adds, (commenting on this passage) from the share which those fantastick beings called Satyrs, the companions and playfellows of