manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded; we should either make them English, or leave them Roman. If this can neither be defended, nor excused, let it be pardoned, at least, because it is acknowledged; and so much the more easily, as being a fault which is never committed without some pleasure to the reader. Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious visit, the best manners will be shewn in the least ceremony. I will slip away while your back is turned, and while you are otherwise employed; with great confusion, for having entertained you so long with this discourse, and for having no other recompense to make you, than the worthy labours of my fellow undertakers in this work; and the thankful acknowledgements, prayers, and perpetual good wishes of, MY LORD, Your Lordship's Most obliged, most humble, and JOHN DRYDEN. appears, while the translator endeavoured to give a decorous turn to the passage, he introduced a custom, not only not mentioned by Juvenal, but probably unknown in that age. 8 The great advantage derived from following the first edition of a work, (unless where the author has himself made any change,) cannot be too frequently mentioned: and, indeed, is the more necessary to be insisted on, tecause it is a common practice with booksellers, when they reprint any piece, to make the last edition, with all its accumulated errours, their archetype, instead of the first.— In the modern editions of our author's Discourse on Satire, the following gross errours may be found, which have been here avoided, by following the original folio copy, published in 1693. In the octavo edition of 1697, and all subsequent, the author is made thus to express himself: "For if the poet had given the faithful more courage, which had cost him nothing, or at least have made them exceed the Turks in number, that he might have gained the victory for us Christians, without interesting heaven in the quarrel; and that with as much ease," &c.-Here, by the insertion of the word that, the passage is rendered nonsense. See p. 102. In p. 103, all the editions but the first, read-"The perusing of one chapter in the prophecy of Daniel, &c. would have the ministry of angels as strong an engine,”instead of the true reading-" would have made the ministry of angels," &c. So, instead of " this satyrick tragedy, and the Roman satire, have little resemblance in any of their features," (p. 127) we find in all the modern editions" have little resemblance in any other features:" and in p. 129-"they are not a general extension," instead of-they are not of general extension. A few pages afterwards, in the octavo copy of 1697, a material errour occurs, which has been implicitly followed in all the subsequent editions: "During the space of four hundred years, since the building of their city, the Romans had never known any entertainments of the state." The true reading-" of the stage," (p. 132) is furnished by the first copy. And in p. 197, instead of the passage as it now stands, we find in all the modern copies, "To make his figures intelligible, &c. is no greater matter." For the correction of one manifest errour of the press, which escaped our author in the original copy, I am answerable. -- In the passage translated from Dacier, (p. 138) the folio reads " It is thus, says Dacier, we lay a full colour, when the wool has taken the whole tincture, &c.; but our author without doubt wrote "It is thus - we say a full colour, when the wool has taken the whole tincture;" as is evident from Dacier's own words, to which I referred: "C'est ainsi qu'ils ont dit satur color, quand la laine a bien pris la couleur, &c." By way of supplement to this Discourse, I subjoin a letter written by Mr. Creech to our author's bookseller, Jacob Tonson, who appears to have requested him to draw up a chronological table of the Satires of Juvenal, arranged in the order in which they were written. It is copied from the original, now in the possession of William Baker, Esq., representative in parliament for Hertfordshire. The writer has omitted a date; but the letter was probably written in the end of the year 1692, not long before the translation was published. 66 SIR, "After I had drawn up ye greatest part of ye tables, I showd them to some friends; who likt ye design well enough, if y author would have born it. But chronology makes strange work in Juyenal, which I did not observe before I had taken out y particulars, and put them in their order. ffor Juvenal composed his Satyrs after this manner. He wrote a great many little Satyrs, which he kept private, either for his own satisfaction or for yo diversion of his friends. Afterwards, w" it was fit for him. to appear in publick, he put his scattered verses under several heads, and compild these Satyrs as we now have them. Hence it comes to pass y' he observes no order of time. The first verses ever Juvenal made are now read in ye seventh Satyr. He begins a Satyr with one prince, and ends it with his predecessor.-But the worst is, yt now and then he brings in persons discourseing upon some certain occafion, when 'tis evident y when y' thing happened which gave occasion to y' discourse, some of the persons were dead. Yet a greater inconvenience, if possible, than the former, we now and then meet with; ffor he gives the same name to persons of quite different characters. Thus, MATHO is a villanous rich lawyer in one Satyr, and an honest poor good pleader in another. So yt 'tis impossible to put him into any order; and such an attempt would certainly do ye book a great deal of injury; for such tables would discover what is now thought upon to be history, to be meer fiction and romance, and yt too untowardly put together. "Besides all this, since I had only y Latin to draw ye tables by, no reference could be made to ye pages; several matters and names would be mentioned, which cannot be found in ye English, and so ye whole seem absurd, and altogether useless. ffor these reasons I send you no tables, for I would not willingly take pains to do your book an injury. "Mr. Burghers came to me on Saturday, and told me he had a design (in which as he describes it there is nothing extraordinary): he could not promise it in less than three weeks, and so I desired him not to proceed. I am sorry for ye disappointment; but I hope 'twill do you no injury. All Souls, Sunday. I am Yours, THO. CREECH,” |