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 derived 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 Caesar."
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 CCCCCXIV. I have since desired my learned friend Mr. Maidwell 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' plays, was represented at Athens in the year of the 97th Olympiad, which agrees with the year urbis conditae CCCLXIV. So that the difference of years betwixt Aristophanes and Andronicus is 150; from whence I have probably deduced 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, it 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. Though 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 voluptas, Gaudia, discurses, nostri est farrago libelli."
This is that in which I have made hold to differ from Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics--that not Ennius, but Andronicus, was the first who, by the archaea comedia of the Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous Roman satire; which sort of poem, though we had not derived from Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages and in every country.
It is 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 produced 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 moved." Where I cannot but observe that this obscure and perplexed 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 stage-plays, 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 honour 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 circumscribed with the meanness of words and vulgarity of expression? If Horace refused 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 show 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, untuned his harp.
The majestic way of Persius and Juvenal was new when they began it, but it is old to us; and what poems have not, with time, received an alteration in their fashion?--"which alteration," says Holyday, "is to after-times as good a warrant as the first." Has not Virgil changed the manners of Homer's heroes in his AEneis? Certainly he has, and for the better; for Virgil's age was more civilised and better bred, and he writ according to the politeness of Rome under the reign of Augustus Caesar, 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 followed 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.
