Let these three ancients be preferr'd to all the moderns, as first arriving at the goal; let them all be crown'd, as victors, with the wreath that properly belongs to satire; but, after that, with this distinction amongst themselves:

Primus equum phaleris insignem victor habeto :·
let Juvenal ride first in triumph:

Alter Amazoniam pharetram, plenamque sagittis
Threiciis, lato quam circumplectitur auro
Balteus, et tereti subnectit fibula gemma: —

let Horace, who is the second, and but just the second, carry off the quivers and the arrows, as the badges of his satire, and the golden belt, and the diamond button:

Tertius Argolico hoc clypeo contentus abito:· and let Persius, the last of the first three worthies, be contented with this Grecian shield, and with victory, not only over all the Grecians, who were ignorant of the Roman satire, but over all the moderns in succeeding ages, excepting Boileau and your Lordship.

And thus I have given the history of satire, and deriv'd it as far as from Ennius to your Lordship; that is, from its first rudiments of barbarity to its last polishing and perfection; which is, with Virgil, in his address to Augustus:

nomen fama tot ferre per annos, Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Cæsar. I said only from Ennius; but I may safely carry it higher, as far as Livius Andronicus; who, as I have said formerly, taught the first play at Rome, in the year ab urbe condita 514. I have since desir'd my learn'd friend, Mr. Maid well, to compute the difference of times betwixt Aristophanes and Livius Andronicus; and he assures me, from the best chronologers, that Plutus, the last of Aristophanes his plays, was represented at Athens, in the year of the 97th Olympiad, which agrees with the year urbis condita 364. So that the difference of years betwixt Aristophanes and Andronicus is 150; from whence I have probably deduc'd, that Livius Andronicus, who was a Grecian, had read the plays of the Old Comedy, which were satirical, and also of the New; for Menander was fifty years before him, which must needs be a great light to him in his

own plays, that were of the satirical nature. That the Romans had farces before this, 't is true; but then they had no communication with Greece; so that Andronicus was the first who wrote after the manner of the Old Comedy in his plays: he was imitated by Ennius, about thirty years afterwards. Tho' the former writ fables, the latter, speaking properly, began the Roman satire; according to that description which Juvenal gives of it in his First:

Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voGaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli. luptas,

This is that in which I have made bold to differ from Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics, that not Ennius, but Andronicus was the first; who, by the Archæa Comadia of the Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous Roman satire: which sort of poem, tho' we had not deriv'd from Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages, and in every country.

'Tis but necessary, that after so much has been said of satire, some definition of it should be given. Heinsius, in his Dissertations on Horace, makes it for me, in these words: "Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produc'd from them in every man, are severely reprehended; partly dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both kinds of speaking; but, for the most part, figuratively, and occultly; consisting in a low familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech; but partly, also, in a facetious and civil way of jesting; by which either hatred, or laughter, or indignation is mov'd.' Where I cannot but observe, that this obscure and perplex'd definition, or rather description, of satire, is wholly accommodated to the Horatian way; and excluding the works of Juvenal and Persius, as foreign from that kind of poem. The clause in the beginning of it, without a series of action, distinguishes satire properly from stageplays, which are all of one action, and one continued series of action. The end or scope of satire is to purge the passions; so far it is common to the satires of Juvenal and Persius. The rest

which follows is also generally belonging to all three; till he comes upon us, with the excluding clause, consisting in a low familiar way of speech, which is the proper character of Horace; and from which the other two, for their honor be it spoken, are far distant. But how come lowness of style, and the familiarity of words, to be so much the propriety of satire, that without them a poet can be no more a satirist, than without risibility he can be a man? Is the fault of Horace to be made the virtue and standing rule of this poem? Is the grande sophos of Persius, and the sublimity of Juvenal, to be circumscrib'd with the meanness of words and vulgarity of expression? If Horace refus'd the pains of numbers, and the loftiness of figures, are they bound to follow so ill a precedent? Let him walk afoot, with his pad in his hand, for his own pleasure; but let not them be accounted no poets, who choose to mount, and shew their horsemanship. Holyday is not afraid to say, that there was never such a fall, as from his Odes to his Satires, and that he, injuriously to himself, untun'd his harp. The majestic way of Persius and Juvenal was new when they began it, but 't is old to us; and what poems have not, with time, receiv'd an alteration in their fashion? "Which alteration," says Holyday, "is to aftertimes as good a warrant as the first." Has not Virgil chang'd the manners of Homer's heroes in his Eneis? Certainly he has, and for the better: for Virgil's age was more civiliz'd, and better bred; and he writ according to the politeness of Rome, under the reign of Augustus Cæsar, not to the rudeness of Agamemnon's age, or the times of Homer. Why should we offer to confine free spirits to one form, when we cannot so much as confine our bodies to one fashion of apparel? Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming, if he had taken care of his words, and of his numbers? But he follow'd Horace so very close, that of necessity he must fall with him; and I may safely say it of this present age, that if we are not so great wits as Donne, yet certainly we are better poets.

But I have said enough, and it may be too much, on this subject. Will your Lordship be pleas'd to prolong my audience, only so far, till I tell you my own trivial

thoughts, how a modern satire should be made. I will not deviate in the least from the precepts and examples of the ancients, who were always our best masters. I will only illustrate them, and discover some of the hidden beauties in their designs, that we thereby may form our own in imitation of them. Will you please but to observe, that Persius, the least in dignity of all the three, has notwithstanding been the first who has discover'd to us this important secret in the designing of a perfect satire that it ought only to treat of one subject; to be confin'd to one particular theme; or at least, to one principally. If other vices occur in the management of the chief, they should only be transiently lash'd, and not be insisted on, so as to make the design double. As in a play of the English fashion, which we call a tragi-comedy, there is to be but one main design; and tho' there be an underplot, or second walk of comical characters and adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried along under it, and helping to it; so that the drama may not seem a monster with two heads. Thus, the Copernican system of the planets makes the moon to be mov'd by the motion of the earth, and carried about her orb, as a dependent of hers. Mascardi, in his discourse of the Doppia favola, or double tale in plays, gives an instance of it in the famous pastoral of Guarini, call'd Il Pastor Fido; where Corisca and the Satyr are the under parts; yet we may observe that Corisca is brought into the body of the plot, and made subservient to it. "T is certain that the divine wit of Horace was not ignorant of this rule — that a play, tho' it consists of many parts, must yet be one in the action, and must drive on the accomplishment of one design; for he gives this very precept, sit quodvis simplex duntaxat et unum; yet he seems not much to mind it in his Satires, many of them consisting of more arguments than one; and the second without dependence on the first. Casaubon has observ'd this before me, in his preference of Persius to Horace; and will have his own belov'd author to be the first who found out and introduc'd this method of confining himself to one subject. I know it may be urg'd in defense of Horace, that this unity is not necessary; because the very word satura signifies a dish plentifully stor❜d with all variety of fruits and grains. Yet

Juvenal, who calls his poems a farrago, which is a word of the same signification with satura, has chosen to follow the same method of Persius, and not of Horace; and Boileau, whose example alone is a sufficient authority, has wholly confin'd himself, in all his Satires, to this unity of design. That variety, which is not to be found in any one satire, is at least in many, written on several occasions. And if variety be of absolute necessity in every one of them, according to the etymology of the word, yet it may arise naturally from one subject, as it is diversely treated, in the several subordinate branches of it, all relating to the chief. It may be illustrated accordingly with variety of examples in the subdivisions of it, and with as many precepts as there are members of it; which, altogether, may complete that olla, or hotchpotch, which is properly a satire.

Under this unity of theme, or subject, is comprehended another rule for perfecting the design of true satire. The poet is bound, and that ex officio, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue, and to caution him against some one particular vice or folly. Other virtues, subordinate to the first, may be recommended under that chief head; and other vices or follies may be scourg'd, besides that which he principally intends. But he is chiefly to inculcate one virtue, and insist on that. Thus Juvenal, in every satire excepting the First, ties himself to one principal instructive point, or to the shunning of moral evil. Even in the Sixth, which seems only an arraignment of the whole sex of womankind, there is a latent admonition to avoid ill women, by shewing how very few who are virtuous and good are to be found amongst them. But this, tho' the wittiest of all his satires, has yet the least of truth or instruction in it. He has run himself into his old declamatory way, and almost forgotten that he was now setting in for a moral poet.

Persius is never wanting to us in some profitable doctrine, and in exposing the opposite vices to it. His kind of philosophy is one, which is the Stoic; and every satire is a comment on one particular dogma of that sect, unless we will except the First, which is against bad writers; and yet ev'n there he forgets not the precepts of the Porch. In general, all virtues are every

where to be prais'd and recommended to practice; and all vices to be reprehended, and made either odious or ridiculous; or else there is a fundamental error in the whole design.

I have already declar'd who are the only persons that are the adequate object of private satire, and who they are that may properly be expos'd by name for public examples of vices and follies; and therefore I will trouble your Lordship no farther with them. Of the best and finest manner of satire, I have said enough in the comparison betwixt Juvenal and Horace: 't is that sharp, well-manner'd way of laughing a folly out of countenance, of which your Lordship is the best master in this age. I will proceed to the versification which is most proper for it, and add somewhat to (what I have said already on that subject. The sort of verse which is call'd burlesque, consisting of eight syllables, or four feet, is that which our excellent Hudibras has chosen. I ought to have mention'd him before, when I spoke of Donne; but by a slip of an old man's memory he was forgotten. The worth of his poem is too well known to need my commendation, and he is above my censure. His satire is of the Varronian kind, tho' unmix'd with prose. The choice of his numbers is suitable enough to his design, as he has manag'd it; but in any other hand, the shortness of his verse, and the quick returns of rhyme, had debas'd the dignity of style. And besides, the double rhyme (a necessary companion of burlesque writing) is not so proper for manly satire; for it turns earnest too much to jest, and gives us a boyish kind of pleasure. It tickles awkwardly with a kind of pain, to the best sort of readers: we are pleas'd ungratefully, and, if I may say so, against our liking. We thank him not for giving us that unseasonable delight, when we know he could have given us a better, and more solid. He might have left that task to others, who, not being able to put in thought, can only make us grin with the excrescence of a word of two or three syllables in the close. 'Tis, indeed, below so great a master to make use of such a little instrument. But his good sense is perpetually shining thro' all he writes; it affords us not the time of finding faults. We pass thro' the levity of his rhyme, and are im

mediately carried into some admirable useful thought. After all, he has chosen this kind of verse, and has written the best in it; and had he taken another, he would always have excell'd: as we say of a court favorite, that whatsoever his office be, he still makes it uppermost, and most beneficial to himself.

The quickness of your imagination, my Lord, has already prevented me; and you know beforehand, that I would prefer the verse of ten syllables, which we call the English heroic, to that of eight. This is. truly my opinion; for this sort of number is more roomy: the thought can turn itself with greater ease in a larger compass. When the rhyme comes too thick upon us, it straitens the expression; we are thinking of the close, when we should be employ'd in adorning the thought. It makes a poet giddy with turning in a space too narrow for his imagination; he loses many beauties, without gaining one advantage. For a burlesque rhyme I have already concluded to be none; or, if it were, 't is more easily purchas'd in ten syllables than in eight. In both occasions 't is as in a tennis court, when the strokes of greater force are given, when we strike out and play at length. Tassoni and Boileau have left us the best examples of this way, in the Secchia Rapita, and the Lutrin; and next them Merlin Coccaius in his Baldus. I will speak only of the two former, because the last is written in Latin verse. The Secchia Rapita is an Italian poem, a satire of the Varronian kind. 'Tis written in the stanza of eight, which is their measure for heroic verse. The words are stately, the numbers smooth, the turn both of thoughts and words is happy. The first six lines of the stanza seem majestical and severe; but the two last turn them all into a pleasant ridicule. Boileau, if I am not much deceiv'd, has model'd from hence his famous Lutrin. He had read the burlesque poetry of Scarron with some kind of indignation, as witty as it was, and found nothing in France that was worthy of his imitation; but he copied the Italian so well, that his own may pass for an original. He writes it in the French heroic verse, and calls it an heroic poem; his subject is trivial, but his verse is noble. I doubt not but he had Virgil in his eye, for we find many admirable imitations of him, and some par

odies; as particularly this passage in the fourth of the Eneids:

Nec tibi diva parens, generis nec Dardanus auctor, Perfide; sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens Caucasus; Hyrcanæque admorunt ubera tigres:

which he thus translates, keeping to the words, but altering the sense:

Non, ton père à Paris ne fut point boulanger; Et tu n'es point du sang de Gervais, horloger: Ta mère ne fut point la maîtresse d'un coche ; Caucase dans ses flancs te forma d'une roche: Une tigresse affreuse, en quelque antre écarté, Te fit, avec son lait, sucer sa cruauté.

And, as Virgil in his Fourth Georgic, of the Bees, perpetually raises the lowness of his subject by the loftiness of his words, and ennobles it by comparisons drawn from empires, and from monarchs:

Admiranda tibi levium spectacula rerum,
Magnanimosque duces, totiusque ordine gentis
Mores et studia, et populos, et prælia dicam ;
and again:

Sed genus immortale manet; multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum; we see Boileau pursuing him in the same flights, and scarcely yielding to his master. This, I think, my Lord, to be the most beautiful and most noble kind of satire. Here is the majesty of the heroic, finely mix'd with the venom of the other; and raising the delight which otherwise would be flat and vulgar, by the sublimity of the expression. I could say somewhat more of the delicacy of this and some other of his satires; but it might turn to his prejudice, if 't were carried back to France.

I have given your Lordship but this bare hint, in what verse and in what manner this sort of satire may best be manag'd. Had I time, I could enlarge on the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as requisite in this, as in heroic poetry itself, of which this satire is undoubtedly a species. With these beautiful turns, I confess myself to have been unacquainted, till about twenty years ago, in a conversation which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he ask'd me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller and Sir John Denham, of which he repeated many to me. I had often read with pleasure,

and with some profit, those two fathers of our English poetry, but had not seriously enough consider'd those beauties which give the last perfection to their works. Some sprinklings of this kind I had also formerly in my plays; but they were casual, and not design'd. But this hint, thus seasonably given me, first made me sensible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to seek for the supply of them in other English authors. I look'd over the darling of my youth, the famous Cowley; there I found, instead of them, the points of wit, and quirks of epigram, even in the Davideis, a heroic poem, which is of an opposite nature to those puerilities; but no elegant turns either on the word or on the thought. Then I consulted a greater genius, (without offense to the manes of that noble author,) I mean Milton; but as he endeavors everywhere to express Homer, whose age had not arriv'd to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were cloth'd with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and of Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I look'd. At last I had recourse to his master, Spenser, the author of that immortal poem call'd The Fairy Queen, and there I met with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer, and amongst the rest of his excellencies had copied that. Looking farther into the Italian, I found Tasso had done the same; nay more, that all the sonnets in that language are on the turn of the first thought; which Mr. Walsh, in his late ingenious preface to his poems, has observ'd. In short, Virgil and Ovid are the two principal fountains of them in Latin poetry. And the French at this day are so fond of them, that they judge them to be the first beauties: délicat et bien tourné are the highest commendations which they bestow on somewhat which they think a masterpiece.

An example of the turn on words, amongst a thousand others, is that in the last book of Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Heu! quantum scelus est, in viscera, viscera condi! Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus ; Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto.

An example on the turn both of thoughts and words is to be found in Catullus, in the complaint of Ariadne, when she was left by Theseus:

Tum jam nulla viro juranti fæmina credat ;
Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles ;
Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestit
apisci,

Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt:
Sed simul ac cupidæ mentis satiata libido est,
Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant.

An extraordinary turn upon the words is that in Ovid's Epistolæ Heroidum, of Sappho to Phaon:

Si, nisi quæ forma poterit te digna videri,

Nulla futura tua est, nulla futura tua est.

Lastly, a turn, which I cannot say is absolutely on words, for the thought turns with them, is in the Fourth Georgic of Virgil; where Orpheus is to receive his wife from hell, on express condition not to look on her till she was come on earth:

Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem ; Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes.

I will not burthen your Lordship with more of them, for I write to a master who understands them better than myself. But I may safely conclude them to be great beauties. I might descend also to the mechanic beauties of heroic verse; but we have yet no English prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous; and what government will encourage any one, or more, who are capable of refining it, I know not: but nothing under a public expense can go thro' with it. And I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope an advancement of it in the present age.

I am still speaking to you, my Lord, tho', in all probability, you are already out of hearing. Nothing which my meanness can produce is worthy of this long attention. But I am come to the last petition of Abraham; if there be ten righteous lines in this vast preface, spare it for their sake; and also spare the next city, because it is but a little one.

I would excuse the performance of this translation, if it were all my own; but the better, tho' not the greater part, being the work of some gentlemen who have succeeded very happily in their undertaking,