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 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 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 any thing, 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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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
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 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 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 coepit jocus, et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax: doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi: quinetiam lex,
Poenaque 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 condidisit, 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. Among the plays of Euripides which are
yet remaining, there is one of these SATYRICS, 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 firebrand
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 satyric
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 of Bacchus; but, in another
place, bethinking himself better, he derives their name, #apo tou
sillainein#, 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,
amongst the Romans, is the famous Cento of Ausonius; where the words
are Virgil's, but, by applying them to another sense, they are made
a 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
verses 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 Roman satire. To these Silli, consisting of parodies, we
may properly add the satires which were written against particular
persons; such as were the Iambics of Archilochus against Lycambes,
which Horace undoubtedly imitated in some of his Odes and Epodes, whose
titles bear sufficient witness of it. I might also name the invective
of Ovid against Ibis, and many others; but these are the under-wood
of satire, rather than the timber-trees: they are not of general
extension, as reaching only to some individual person. And Horace seems
to have purged himself from those splenetic reflections in those Odes
and Epodes, before he undertook 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 am swimming towards it. Not that I will promise
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 recourse to my own lights, as I
expect that others should do by me.