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 shewn in the praises of the DEITY, and prayers to him; and as they are of natural obligation, so they are likewise of divine institution: which 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 holydays 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 afterwards 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 for his benefits. Thus the Grecian holydays were celebrated with offerings to Bacchus and Ceres, and other deities, to whose bounty they supposed they were owing

Bacchus, had in the earliest tragedy, of which they formed the Chorus. Joking and dancing were essential attributes of these rustick semi-deities. Hence the ludicrous language,' and the dancing genius' of the old tragedy, to which the trochaick or running metre here spoken of, was peculiarly adapted, being no other than this:

86

Jolly mortals, fill your glasses; noble deeds are done

by wine."

for their corn and wine, and other helps of life. And the ancient Romans, as 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 a double reason of their institution, the first of religion, the other of recreation, for the unbending 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 rustick 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 certain 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 conclude that, like the Grecian, it was void of art,

or at least with very feeble beginnings of it. Those ancient Romans, at these holydays, which were a mixture of devotion and debauchery, had á custom of reproaching each other with their faults, in a sort of extempore poetry, or rather of tunable hobbling verse, and they answered in the same kind of gross raillery; their wit and their musick 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 publick 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 shewn 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 Epistle of the Second Book, which was written to Augustus: