you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring in my
imagination, and what I had intended to have put in practice (though far
unable for the attempt of such a poem), and to have left the stage, to
which my genius never much inclined me, for a work which would have taken
up my life in the performance of it. This, too, I had intended chiefly
for the honour of my native country, to which a poet is particularly
obliged. Of two subjects, both relating to it, I was doubtful—whether I
should choose that of King Arthur conquering the Saxons (which, being
farther distant in time, gives the greater scope to my invention), or
that of Edward the Black Prince in subduing Spain and restoring it to the
lawful prince, though a great tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruel—which for the
compass of time, including only the expedition of one year; for the
greatness of the action, and its answerable event; for the magnanimity of
the English hero, opposed to the ingratitude of the person whom he
restored; and for the many beautiful episodes which I had interwoven with
the principal design, together with the characters of the chiefest
English persons (wherein, after Virgil and Spenser, I would have taken
occasion to represent my living friends and patrons of the noblest
families, and also shadowed the events of future ages in the succession
of our imperial line)—with these helps, and those of the machines which I
have mentioned, I might perhaps have done as well as some of my
predecessors, or at least chalked out a way for others to amend my errors
in a like design; but being encouraged only with fair words by King
Charles the Second, my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a
future subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my
attempt; and now age has overtaken me, and want (a more insufferable
evil) through the change of the times has wholly disenabled me; though I
must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal
memory of your charity, that since this Revolution, wherein I have
patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that
poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more
faithfully than profitably to myself—then your lordship was pleased, out
of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or
the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present,
which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably
and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself
sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to
all the future service which one of my mean condition can be ever able to
perform. May the Almighty God return it for me, both in blessing you
here and rewarding you hereafter! I must not presume to defend the cause
for which I now suffer, because your lordship is engaged against it; but
the more you are so, the greater is my obligation to you for your laying
aside all the considerations of factions and parties to do an action of
pure disinterested charity. This is one amongst many of your shining
qualities which distinguish you from others of your rank. But let me add
a farther truth—that without these ties of gratitude, and abstracting
from them all, I have a most particular inclination to honour you, and,
if it were not too bold an expression, to say I love you. It is no shame
to be a poet, though it is to be a bad one. Augustus Cæsar of old, and
Cardinal Richelieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David and
Solomon were such. You who, without flattery, are the best of the
present age in England, and would have been so had you been born in any
other country, will receive more honour in future ages by that one
excellency than by all those honours to which your birth has entitled
you, or your merits have acquired you.
“_Ne fortè pudori_
_Sit tibi Musa lyræ solers_, _et cantor Apollo_.”
I have formerly said in this epistle that I could distinguish your
writings from those of any others; it is now time to clear myself from
any imputation of self-conceit on that subject. I assume not to myself
any particular lights in this discovery; they are such only as are
obvious to every man of sense and judgment who loves poetry and
understands it. Your thoughts are always so remote from the common way
of thinking that they are, as I may say, of another species than the
conceptions of other poets; yet you go not out of nature for any of them.
Gold is never bred upon the surface of the ground, but lies so hidden and
so deep that the mines of it are seldom found; but the force of waters
casts it out from the bowels of mountains, and exposes it amongst the
sands of rivers, giving us of her bounty what we could not hope for by
our search. This success attends your lordship’s thoughts, which would
look like chance if it were not perpetual and always of the same tenor.
If I grant that there is care in it, it is such a care as would be
ineffectual and fruitless in other men; it is the _curiosa felicitas_
which Petronius ascribes to Horace in his odes. We have not wherewithal
to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly: in short, if we
have the same knowledge, we cannot draw out of it the same quintessence;
we cannot give it such a turn, such a propriety, and such a beauty.
Something is deficient in the manner 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 until he attempts it. It is just the description 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 chose 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 parenthesis
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 anything, but
satisfied with all. It is that which the Romans call _cæna dubia_; where
there is such plenty, yet withal so much diversity, 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 other, which is the proposition that 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 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 show 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 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 actions to forty-eight
natural days, whereof twelve are holidays, or cessation from business
during the funeral 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 the first is only instructive, the latter forms a hero and a
prince.
If it signifies anything 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 the rules is sufficient if a genius
be not wanting. 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.
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 to 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 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 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 publisher of 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.
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 critics. 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, pouting 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 satirical,
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.
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, 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 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 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
holidays were 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, 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 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 certain young men who at their festivals danced and sang
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 holy days, 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 tunable 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 Epistle of the Second
Book, which was written to Augustus:—
“_Agricolæ prisci_, _fortes_, _parvoque beati_,
_Condita post frumenta_, _levantes tempore festo_
_Corpus_, _et ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentem_,
_Cum sociis operum_, _et pueris_, _et conjuge fidâ_,
_Tellurem porco_, _Silvanum lacte piabant_;
_Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis ævi_.
_Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem_
_Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit_.”
“Our brawny clowns of old, who turned the soil,
Content with little, and inured to toil,
At harvest-home, with mirth and country cheer,
Restored their bodies for another year,
Refreshed their spirits, and renewed 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, poured to thee.
With flowers and wine their Genius they adored;
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 Rome had the same beginning. Both were invented
at festivals of thanksgiving, and both were prosecuted with mirth and
raillery and rudiments of verses; 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 illustrations 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 and 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 occasion, so the fortune of both in process of time was
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 cæpit jocus_, _et per honestas_
_Ire domos impune minax_: _doluere cruento_
_Dente lacessiti_; _fuit intactis quoque cura_
_Conditione super communi_: _quinetiam lex_,
_Pænaque lata_, _malo quæ nollet carmine quenquam_
_Describi_: _vertere modum_, _formidine fustis_
_Ad benedicendum delectandumque redacti_.”
The law of the Decemviri was this: _Siquis occentassit malum carmen_,
_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 whoever he were that invented tragedy (for authors differ),
mingled with them a chorus and dances of Satyrs which had before been
used in the celebration of their festivals, and there they were ever
afterwards retained. The character of them was also kept, which was
mirth 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
return to buffoonery 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. Amongst 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 entertained till, being perceived by
Polyphemus, they were made prisoners against the rites of hospitality
(for which Ulysses eloquently pleaded), were afterwards put down into the
den, and some of them devoured; after which Ulysses (having made him
drunk when he was asleep) thrust a great fire-brand into his eye, and so
revenging his dead followers 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 satiric tragedy and
the Roman satire have little resemblance in any of their 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.”