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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry, by
+John Dryden, Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry
+
+
+Author: John Dryden
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2014  [eBook #2615]
+[This file was first posted on May 21, 2000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DISCOURSES ON SATIRE AND ON EPIC
+POETRY***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+                           DISCOURSES ON SATIRE
+                                  AND ON
+                               EPIC POETRY.
+
+
+                                    BY
+                               JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
+                                  1888.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+DRYDEN’S discourses upon Satire and Epic Poetry belong to the latter
+years of his life, and represent maturer thought than is to be found in
+his “Essay of Dramatic Poesie.”  That essay, published in 1667, draws its
+chief interest from the time when it was written.  A Dutch fleet was at
+the mouth of the Thames.  Dryden represents himself taking a boat down
+the river with three friends, one of them his brother-in-law Sir Robert
+Howard, another Sir Charles Sedley, and another Charles Sackville Lord
+Buckhurst to whom, as Earl of Dorset, the “Discourse of Satire” is
+inscribed.  They go down the river to hear the guns at sea, and judge by
+the sound whether the Dutch fleet be advancing or retreating.  On the way
+they talk of the plague of Odes that will follow an English victory;
+their talk of verse proceeds to plays, with particular attention to a
+question that had been specially argued before the public between Dryden
+and his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard.  The question touched the use
+of blank verse in the drama.  Dryden had decided against it as a
+worthless measure, and the chief feature of the Essay, which was written
+in dialogue, was its support of Dryden’s argument.  But in that year
+(1667) “Paradise Lost” was published, and Milton’s blank verse was the
+death of Dryden’s theories.  After a few years Dryden recanted his error.
+The “Essay of Dramatic Poesie” is interesting as a setting forth in 1667
+of mistaken critical opinions which were at that time in the ascendant,
+but had not very long to live.  Dryden always wrote good masculine prose,
+and all his critical essays are good reading as pieces of English.  His
+“Essay of Dramatic Poesie” is good reading as illustrative of the
+weakness of our literature in the days of the influence of France after
+the Restoration.  The essays on Satire and on Epic Poetry represent also
+the influence of the French critical school, but represent it in a larger
+way, with indications of its strength as well as of its weakness.  They
+represent also Dryden himself with a riper mind covering a larger field
+of thought, and showing abundantly the strength and independence of his
+own critical judgment, while he cites familiarly and frequently the
+critics, little remembered and less cared for now, who then passed for
+the arbiters of taste.
+
+If English literature were really taught in schools, and the eldest boys
+had received training that brought them in their last school-year to a
+knowledge of the changes of intellectual fashion that set their outward
+mark upon successive periods, there is no prose writing of Dryden that
+could be used by a teacher more instructively than these Discourses on
+Satire and on Epic Poetry.  They illustrate abundantly both Dryden and
+his time, and give continuous occasion for discussion of first
+principles, whether in disagreement or agreement with the text.  Dryden
+was on his own ground as a critic of satire; and the ideal of an epic
+that the times, and perhaps also the different bent of his own genius,
+would not allow him to work out, at least finds such expression as might
+be expected from a man who had high aspirations, and whose place, in
+times unfavourable to his highest aims, was still among the master-poets
+of the world.
+
+The Discourse on Satire was prefixed to a translation of the satires of
+Juvenal and Persius, and is dated the 18th of August, 1692, when the
+poet’s age was sixty-one.  In translating Juvenal, Dryden was helped by
+his sons Charles and John.  William Congreve translated one satire; other
+translations were by Nahum Tate and George Stepney.  Time modern reader
+of the introductory discourse has first to pass through the unmeasured
+compliments to the Earl of Dorset, which represent a real esteem and
+gratitude in the extravagant terms then proper to the art of dedication.
+We get to the free sea over a slimy shore.  We must remember that Charles
+the Second upon his death was praised by Charles Montague, who knew his
+faults, as “the best good man that ever filled a throne,” and compared to
+God Himself at the end of the first paragraph of Montague’s poem.  But
+when we are clear of the conventional unmeasured flatteries, and Dryden
+lingers among epic poets on his way to the satirists, there is equal
+interest in the mistaken criticisms, in the aspirations that are blended
+with them, and in the occasional touches of the poet’s personality in
+quiet references to his critics.  The comparisons between Horace and
+Juvenal in this discourse, and much of the criticism on Virgil in the
+discourse on epic poetry, are the utterances of a poet upon poets, and
+full of right suggestions from an artist’s mind.  The second discourse
+was prefixed in 1697—three years before Dryden’s death—to his translation
+of the Æneid.
+
+                                                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGINAL AND PROGRESS OF SATIRE:
+
+
+                    ADDRESSED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+                  CHARLES, EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX,
+
+  LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF HIS MAJESTY’S HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE
+                        ORDER OF THE GARTER, ETC.
+
+MY LORD,
+
+THE wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your lordship
+from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplished, from
+your obtaining those honours and dignities which you have so long
+deserved.  There are no factions, though irreconcilable to one another,
+that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay
+you.  They are equally pleased in your prosperity, and would be equally
+concerned in your afflictions.  Titus Vespasian was not more the delight
+of human kind.  The universal empire made him only more known and more
+powerful, but could not make him more beloved.  He had greater ability of
+doing good, but your inclination to it is not less: and though you could
+not extend your beneficence to so many persons, yet you have lost as few
+days as that excellent emperor; and never had his complaint to make when
+you went to bed, that the sun had shone upon you in vain, when you had
+the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man.  This, my lord, has justly
+acquired you as many friends as there are persons who have the honour to
+be known to you.  Mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them
+all into a nearer line; and they who have conversed with you are for ever
+after inviolably yours.  This is a truth so generally acknowledged that
+it needs no proof: it is of the nature of a first principle, which is
+received as soon as it is proposed; and needs not the reformation which
+Descartes used to his; for we doubt not, neither can we properly say, we
+think we admire and love you above all other men: there is a certainty in
+the proposition, and we know it.  With the same assurance I can say, you
+neither have enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never
+heard of you can neither love or hate you; and they who have, can have no
+other notion of you than that which they receive from the public, that
+you are the best of men.  After this, my testimony can be of no farther
+use, than to declare it to be daylight at high noon: and all who have the
+benefit of sight can look up as well and see the sun.
+
+It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to myself,
+that I saw you in the east at your first arising above the hemisphere: I
+was as soon sensible as any man of that light when it was but just
+shooting out and beginning to travel upwards to the meridian.  I made my
+early addresses to your lordship in my “Essay of Dramatic Poetry,” and
+therein bespoke you to the world; wherein I have the right of a first
+discoverer.  When I was myself in the rudiments of my poetry, without
+name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of a writer
+than the skill; when I was drawing the outlines of an art, without any
+living master to instruct me in it—an art which had been better praised
+than studied here in England; wherein Shakespeare, who created the stage
+among us, had rather written happily than knowingly and justly; and
+Jonson, who, by studying Horace, had been acquainted with the rules, yet
+seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge, and, like an inventor of some
+useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning—when thus, as I may say,
+before the use of the loadstone or knowledge of the compass, I was
+sailing in a vast ocean without other help than the pole-star of the
+ancients and the rules of the French stage amongst the moderns (which are
+extremely different from ours, by reason of their opposite taste), yet
+even then I had the presumption to dedicate to your lordship—a very
+unfinished piece, I must confess, and which only can be excused by the
+little experience of the author and the modesty of the title—“An Essay.”
+Yet I was stronger in prophecy than I was in criticism: I was inspired to
+foretell you to mankind as the restorer of poetry, the greatest genius,
+the truest judge, and the best patron.
+
+Good sense and good nature are never separated, though the ignorant world
+has thought otherwise.  Good nature, by which I mean beneficence and
+candour, is the product of right reason; which of necessity will give
+allowance to the failings of others by considering that there is nothing
+perfect in mankind; and by distinguishing that which comes nearest to
+excellency, though not absolutely free from faults, will certainly
+produce a candour in the judge.  It is incident to an elevated
+understanding like your lordship’s to find out the errors of other men;
+but it is your prerogative to pardon them; to look with pleasure on those
+things which are somewhat congenial and of a remote kindred to your own
+conceptions; and to forgive the many failings of those who, with their
+wretched art, cannot arrive to those heights that you possess from a
+happy, abundant, and native genius which are as inborn to you as they
+were to Shakespeare, and, for aught I know, to Homer; in either of whom
+we find all arts and sciences, all moral and natural philosophy, without
+knowing that they ever studied them.
+
+There is not an English writer this day living who is not perfectly
+convinced that your lordship excels all others in all the several parts
+of poetry which you have undertaken to adorn.  The most vain and the most
+ambitions of our age have not dared to assume so much as the competitors
+of Themistocles: they have yielded the first place without dispute; and
+have been arrogantly content to be esteemed as second to your lordship,
+and even that also with a _longo_, _sed proximi intervallo_.  If there
+have been, or are, any who go farther in their self-conceit, they must be
+very singular in their opinion; they must be like the officer in a play
+who was called captain, lieutenant, and company.  The world will easily
+conclude whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of making a
+revolution in Parnassus.
+
+I will not attempt in this place to say anything particular of your lyric
+poems, though they are the delight and wonder of the age, and will be the
+envy of the next.  The subject of this book confines me to satire; and in
+that an author of your own quality, whose ashes I will not disturb, has
+given you all the commendation which his self-sufficiency could afford to
+any man—“The best good man, with the worst-natured muse.”  In that
+character, methinks, I am reading Jonson’s verses to the memory of
+Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric: where good
+nature—the most godlike commendation of a man—is only attributed to your
+person, and denied to your writings; for they are everywhere so full of
+candour, that, like Horace, you only expose the follies of men without
+arraigning their vices; and in this excel him, that you add that
+pointedness of thought which is visibly wanting in our great Roman.
+There is more of salt in all your verses than I have seen in any of the
+moderns, or even of the ancients: but you have been sparing of the gall;
+by which means you have pleased all readers and offended none.  Donne
+alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent, but was not happy enough
+to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers and
+English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression.  That
+which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of Virgil, which
+distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in your
+verses that it casts a shadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot be
+seen, or but obscurely, while you are present.  You equal Donne in the
+variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the
+manner and the words.  I read you both with the same admiration, but not
+with the same delight.  He affects the metaphysics, not only in his
+satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only should reign; and
+perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy,
+when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses
+of love.  In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley
+has copied him to a fault: so great a one, in my opinion, that it throws
+his “Mistress” infinitely below his “Pindarics” and his later
+compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his poems and the most
+correct.  For my own part I must avow it freely to the world that I never
+attempted anything in satire wherein I have not studied your writings as
+the most perfect model.  I have continually laid them before me; and the
+greatest commendation which my own partiality can give to my productions
+is that they are copies, and no farther to be allowed than as they have
+something more or less of the original.  Some few touches of your
+lordship, some secret graces which I have endeavoured to express after
+your manner, have made whole poems of mine to pass with approbation: but
+take your verses all together, and they are inimitable.  If, therefore, I
+have not written better, it is because you have not written more.  You
+have not set me sufficient copy to transcribe; and I cannot add one
+letter of my own invention of which I have not the example there.
+
+It is a general complaint against your lordship, and I must have leave to
+upbraid you with it, that, because you need not write, you will not.
+Mankind that wishes you so well in all things that relate to your
+prosperity, have their intervals of wishing for themselves, and are
+within a little of grudging you the fulness of your fortune: they would
+be more malicious if you used it not so well and with so much generosity.
+
+Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps
+too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires strength by
+going forward.  Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods,
+and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity which we worship
+has given us not only a precept against it, but His own example to the
+contrary.  The world, my lord, would be content to allow you a seventh
+day for rest; or, if you thought that hard upon you, we would not refuse
+you half your time: if you came out, like some great monarch, to take a
+town but once a year, as it were for your diversion, though you had no
+need to extend your territories.  In short, if you were a bad, or, which
+is worse, an indifferent poet, we would thank you for our own quiet, and
+not expose you to the want of yours.  But when you are so great, and so
+successful, and when we have that necessity of your writing that we
+cannot subsist entirely without it, any more (I may almost say) than the
+world without the daily course of ordinary Providence, methinks this
+argument might prevail with you, my lord, to forego a little of your
+repose for the public benefit.  It is not that you are under any force of
+working daily miracles to prove your being, but now and then somewhat of
+extraordinary—that is, anything of your production—is requisite to
+refresh your character.
+
+This, I think, my lord, is a sufficient reproach to you, and should I
+carry it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little less than
+satire.  And indeed a provocation is almost necessary, in behalf of the
+world, that you might be induced sometimes to write; and in relation to a
+multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with their
+insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged from writing any more.
+I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have been the
+public mark for many years.  I am vindictive enough to have repelled
+force by force if I could imagine that any of them had ever reached me:
+but they either shot at rovers, and therefore missed; or their powder was
+so weak that I might safely stand them at the nearest distance.  I
+answered not the “Rehearsal” because I knew the author sat to himself
+when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce;
+because also I knew that my betters were more concerned than I was in
+that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main
+pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation
+that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those
+noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town.  The like
+considerations have hindered me from dealing with the lamentable
+companions of their prose and doggerel.  I am so far from defending my
+poetry against them that I will not so much as expose theirs.  And for my
+morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by
+posterity what those authors would be thought if any memory of them or of
+their writings could endure so long as to another age.  But these dull
+makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been to me, are yet of
+dangerous example to the public.  Some witty men may perhaps succeed to
+their designs, and, mixing sense with malice, blast the reputation of the
+most innocent amongst men, and the most virtuous amongst women.
+
+Heaven be praised, our common libellers are as free from the imputation
+of wit as of morality, and therefore whatever mischief they have designed
+they have performed but little of it.  Yet these ill writers, in all
+justice, ought themselves to be exposed, as Persius has given us a fair
+example in his first Satire, which is levelled particularly at them; and
+none is so fit to correct their faults as he who is not only clear from
+any in his own writings, but is also so just that he will never defame
+the good, and is armed with the power of verse to punish and make
+examples of the bad.  But of this I shall have occasion to speak further
+when I come to give the definition and character of true satires.
+
+In the meantime, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the
+municipal and statute laws may honestly inform a just prince how far his
+prerogative extends, so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who by an
+undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have,
+and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant scribblers of this
+age.  As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all
+that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage.  You can
+banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the
+licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things that shock
+the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion
+of humour.  But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office,
+I speak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your person; what is
+produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and commanding genius
+over all writers: whereby you are empowered, when you please, to give the
+final decision of wit, to put your stamp on all that ought to pass for
+current and set a brand of reprobation on clipped poetry and false coin.
+A shilling dipped in the bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant, but
+the sceptres on the guineas show the difference.  That your lordship is
+formed by nature for this supremacy I could easily prove (were it not
+already granted by the world) from the distinguishing character of your
+writing, which is so visible to me that I never could be imposed on to
+receive for yours what was written by any others, or to mistake your
+genuine poetry for their spurious productions.  I can farther add with
+truth, though not without some vanity in saying it, that in the same
+paper written by divers hands, whereof your lordship’s was only part, I
+could separate your gold from their copper; and though I could not give
+back to every author his own brass (for there is not the same rule for
+distinguishing betwixt bad and bad as betwixt ill and excellently good),
+yet I never failed of knowing what was yours and what was not, and was
+absolutely certain that this or the other part was positively yours, and
+could not possibly be written by any other.
+
+True it is that some bad poems, though not all, carry their owners’ marks
+about them.  There is some peculiar awkwardness, false grammar, imperfect
+sense, or, at the least, obscurity; some brand or other on this buttock
+or that ear that it is notorious who are the owners of the cattle, though
+they should not sign it with their names.  But your lordship, on the
+contrary, is distinguished not only by the excellency of your thoughts,
+but by your style and manner of expressing them.  A painter judging of
+some admirable piece may affirm with certainty that it was of Holbein or
+Vandyck; but vulgar designs and common draughts are easily mistaken and
+misapplied.  Thus, by my long study of your lordship, I am arrived at the
+knowledge of your particular manner.  In the good poems of other men,
+like those artists, I can only say, “This is like the draught of such a
+one, or like the colouring of another;” in short, I can only be sure that
+it is the hand of a good master: but in your performances it is scarcely
+possible for me to be deceived.  If you write in your strength, you stand
+revealed at the first view, and should you write under it, you cannot
+avoid some peculiar graces which only cost me a second consideration to
+discover you: for I may say it with all the severity of truth, that every
+line of yours is precious.  Your lordship’s only fault is that you have
+not written more, unless I could add another, and that yet greater, but I
+fear for the public the accusation would not be true—that you have
+written, and out of a vicious modesty will not publish.
+
+Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen thousand
+lines, and has not treated many subjects, yet he ever had, and ever will
+have, the reputation of the best poet.  Martial says of him that he could
+have excelled Varius in tragedy and Horace in lyric poetry, but out of
+deference to his friends he attempted neither.
+
+The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world cannot
+pardon your concealing it on the same consideration, because we have
+neither a living Varius nor a Horace, in whose excellences both of poems,
+odes, and satires, you had equalled them, if our language had not yielded
+to the Roman majesty, and length of time had not added a reverence to the
+works of Horace.  For good sense is the same in all or most ages, and
+course of time rather improves nature than impairs her.  What has been,
+may be again; another Homer and another Virgil may possible arise from
+those very causes which produced the first, though it would be impudence
+to affirm that any such have yet appeared.
+
+It is manifest that some particular ages have been more happy than others
+in the production of great men in all sorts of arts and sciences, as that
+of Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and the rest, for stage-poetry
+amongst the Greeks; that of Augustus for heroic, lyric, dramatic,
+elegiac, and indeed all sorts of poetry in the persons of Virgil, Horace,
+Varius, Ovid, and many others, especially if we take into that century
+the latter end of the commonwealth, wherein we find Varro, Lucretius, and
+Catullus; and at the same time lived Cicero and Sallust and Cæsar.  A
+famous age in modern times for learning in every kind was that of Lorenzo
+de Medici and his son Leo the Tenth, wherein painting was revived, and
+poetry flourished, and the Greek language was restored.
+
+Examples in all these are obvious, but what I would infer is this—that in
+such an age it is possible some great genius may arise to equal any of
+the ancients, abating only for the language; for great contemporaries
+whet and cultivate each other, and mutual borrowing and commerce makes
+the common riches of learning, as it does of the civil government.
+
+But suppose that Homer and Virgil were the only of their species, and
+that nature was so much worn out in producing them that she is never able
+to hear the like again, yet the example only holds in heroic poetry; in
+tragedy and satire I offer myself to maintain, against some of our modern
+critics, that this age and the last, particularly in England, have
+excelled the ancients in both those kinds, and I would instance in
+Shakespeare of the former, of your lordship in the latter sort.
+
+Thus I might safely confine myself to my native country.  But if I would
+only cross the seas, I might find in France a living Horace and a Juvenal
+in the person of the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent,
+whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is
+pure, whose satire is pointed and whose sense is close.  What he borrows
+from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own in coin as good and
+almost as universally valuable: for, setting prejudice and partiality
+apart, though he is our enemy, the stamp of a Louis, the patron of all
+arts, is not much inferior to the medal of an Augustus Cæsar.  Let this
+be said without entering into the interests of factions and parties, and
+relating only to the bounty of that king to men of learning and merit—a
+praise so just that even we, who are his enemies, cannot refuse it to
+him.
+
+Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration of
+epic poetry, I have confessed that no man hitherto has reached or so much
+as approached to the excellences of Homer or of Virgil; I must farther
+add that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil, knew not how to
+design after him, though he had the model in his eye; that Lucan is
+wanting both in design and subject, and is besides too full of heat and
+affectation; that amongst the moderns, Ariosto neither designed justly
+nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time, or moderation in
+the vastness of his draught: his style is luxurious without majesty or
+decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and
+possibility.  Tasso, whose design was regular, and who observed the roles
+of unity in time and place more closely than Virgil, yet was not so happy
+in his action: he confesses himself to have been too lyrical—that is, to
+have written beneath the dignity of heroic verse—in his episodes of
+Sophronia, Erminia, and Armida.  His story is not so pleasing as
+Ariosto’s; he is too flatulent sometimes, and sometimes too dry; many
+times unequal, and almost always forced; and, besides, is full of
+conceits, points of epigram, and witticisms; all which are not only below
+the dignity of heroic verse, but contrary to its nature: Virgil and Homer
+have not one of them.  And those who are guilty of so boyish an ambition
+in so grave a subject are so far from being considered as heroic poets
+that they ought to be turned down from Homer to the “Anthologia,” from
+Virgil to Martial and Owen’s Epigrams, and from Spenser to Flecknoe—that
+is, from the top to the bottom of all poetry.  But to return to Tasso: he
+borrows from the invention of Boiardo, and in his alteration of his poem,
+which is infinitely for the worse, imitates Homer so very servilely that
+(for example) he gives the King of Jerusalem fifty sons, only because
+Homer had bestowed the like number on King Priam; he kills the youngest
+in the same manner; and has provided his hero with a Patroclus, under
+another name, only to bring him back to the wars when his friend was
+killed.  The French have performed nothing in this kind which is not far
+below those two Italians, and subject to a thousand more reflections,
+without examining their “St. Louis,” their “Pucelle,” or their “Alaric.”
+The English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton, who neither of them
+wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets; and yet both
+of them are liable to many censures.  For there is no uniformity in the
+design of Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he
+raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them
+with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without
+subordination or preference: every one is most valiant in his own legend:
+only we must do him that justice to observe that magnanimity, which is
+the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and
+succours the rest when they are in distress.  The original of every
+knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth, and he attributed
+to each of them that virtue which he thought was most conspicuous in
+them—an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his
+account.  Had he lived to finish his poem in the six remaining legends,
+it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect,
+because the model was not true.  But Prince Arthur, or his chief patron
+Sir Philip Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his
+Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to
+accomplish his design.  For the rest, his obsolete language and the ill
+choice of his stanza are faults but of the second magnitude; for,
+notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible—at least, after a
+little practice; and for the last, he is the more to be admired that,
+labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various
+and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has
+surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the English.
+
+As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his subject
+is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called.  His design is the
+losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all
+other epic works; his heavenly machines are many, and his human persons
+are but two.  But I will not take Mr. Rymer’s work out of his hands: he
+has promised the world a critique on that author wherein, though he will
+not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will grant us that his thoughts
+are elevated, his words sounding, and that no man has so happily copied
+the manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his Grecisms and the
+Latin elegances of Virgil.  It is true, he runs into a flat of thought,
+sometimes for a hundred lines together, but it is when he has got into a
+track of Scripture.  His antiquated words were his choice, not his
+necessity; for therein he imitated Spenser, as Spencer did Chaucer.  And
+though, perhaps, the love of their masters may have transported both too
+far in the frequent use of them, yet in my opinion obsolete words may
+then be laudably revived when either they are more sounding or more
+significant than those in practice, and when their obscurity is taken
+away by joining other words to them which clear the sense—according to
+the rule of Horace for the admission of new words.  But in both cases a
+moderation is to be observed in the use of them; for unnecessary coinage,
+as well as unnecessary revival, runs into affectation—a fault to be
+avoided on either hand.  Neither will I justify Milton for his blank
+verse, though I may excuse him by the example of Hannibal Caro and other
+Italians who have used it; for, whatever causes he alleges for the
+abolishing of rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine), his
+own particular reason is plainly this—that rhyme was not his talent; he
+had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest
+in his “Juvenilia” or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is
+always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when
+the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a
+rhymer, though not a poet.
+
+By this time, my lord, I doubt not but that you wonder why I have run off
+from my bias so long together, and made so tedious a digression from
+satire to heroic poetry; but if you will not excuse it by the tattling
+quality of age (which, as Sir William Davenant says, is always
+narrative), yet I hope the usefulness of what I have to say on this
+subject will qualify the remoteness of it; and this is the last time I
+will commit the crime of prefaces, or trouble the world with my notions
+of anything that relates to verse.  I have then, as you see, observed the
+failings of many great wits amongst the moderns who have attempted to
+write an epic poem.  Besides these, or the like animadversions of them by
+other men, there is yet a farther reason given why they cannot possibly
+succeed so well as the ancients, even though we could allow them not to
+be inferior either in genius or learning, or the tongue in which they
+write, or all those other wonderful qualifications which are necessary to
+the forming of a true accomplished heroic poet.  The fault is laid on our
+religion; they say that Christianity is not capable of those
+embellishments which are afforded in the belief of those ancient
+heathens.
+
+And it is true that in the severe notions of our faith the fortitude of a
+Christian consists in patience, and suffering for the love of God
+whatever hardships can befall in the world—not in any great attempt, or
+in performance of those enterprises which the poets call heroic, and
+which are commonly the effects of interest, ostentation, pride, and
+worldly honour; that humility and resignation are our prime virtues; and
+that these include no action but that of the soul, whereas, on the
+contrary, an heroic poem requires to its necessary design, and as its
+last perfection, some great action of war, the accomplishment of some
+extraordinary undertaking, which requires the strength and vigour of the
+body, the duty of a soldier, the capacity and prudence of a general, and,
+in short, as much or more of the active virtue than the suffering.  But
+to this the answer is very obvious.  God has placed us in our several
+stations; the virtues of a private Christian are patience, obedience,
+submission, and the like; but those of a magistrate or a general or a
+king are prudence, counsel, active fortitude, coercive power, awful
+command, and the exercise of magnanimity as well as justice.  So that
+this objection hinders not but that an epic poem, or the heroic action of
+some great commander, enterprised for the common good and honour of the
+Christian cause, and executed happily, may be as well written now as it
+was of old by the heathens, provided the poet be endued with the same
+talents; and the language, though not of equal dignity, yet as near
+approaching to it as our modern barbarism will allow—which is all that
+can be expected from our own or any other now extant, though more
+refined; and therefore we are to rest contented with that only
+inferiority, which is not possibly to be remedied.
+
+I wish I could as easily remove that other difficulty which yet remains.
+It is objected by a great French critic as well as an admirable poet, yet
+living, and whom I have mentioned with that honour which his merit exacts
+from me (I mean, Boileau), that the machines of our Christian religion in
+heroic poetry are much more feeble to support that weight than those of
+heathenism.  Their doctrine, grounded as it was on ridiculous fables, was
+yet the belief of the two victorious monarchies, the Grecian and Roman.
+Their gods did not only interest themselves in the event of wars (which
+is the effect of a superior Providence), but also espoused the several
+parties in a visible corporeal descent, managed their intrigues and
+fought their battles, sometimes in opposition to each other; though
+Virgil (more discreet than Homer in that last particular) has contented
+himself with the partiality of his deities, their favours, their counsels
+or commands, to those whose cause they had espoused, without bringing
+them to the outrageousness of blows.  Now our religion, says he, is
+deprived of the greatest part of those machines—at least, the most
+shining in epic poetry.  Though St. Michael in Ariosto seeks out Discord
+to send her amongst the Pagans, and finds her in a convent of friars,
+where peace should reign (which indeed is fine satire); and Satan in
+Tasso excites Soliman to an attempt by night on the Christian camp, and
+brings a host of devils to his assistance; yet the Archangel in the
+former example, when Discord was restive and would not be drawn from her
+beloved monastery with fair words, has the whip-hand of her, drags her
+out with many stripes, sets her on God’s name about her business, and
+makes her know the difference of strength betwixt a nuncio of heaven and
+a minister of hell.  The same angel in the latter instance from Tasso (as
+if God had never another messenger belonging to the court, but was
+confined, like Jupiter to Mercury, and Juno to Iris), when he sees his
+time—that is, when half of the Christians are already killed, and all the
+rest are in a fair way to be routed—stickles betwixt the remainders of
+God’s host and the race of fiends, pulls the devils backward by the
+tails, and drives them from their quarry; or otherwise the whole business
+had miscarried, and Jerusalem remained untaken.  This, says Boileau, is a
+very unequal match for the poor devils, who are sure to come by the worst
+of it in the combat; for nothing is more easy than for an Almighty Power
+to bring His old rebels to reason when He pleases.  Consequently what
+pleasure, what entertainment, can be raised from so pitiful a machine,
+where we see the success of the battle from the very beginning of it?
+unless that as we are Christians, we are glad that we have gotten God on
+our side to maul our enemies when we cannot do the work ourselves.  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, he might
+have gained the victory for us Christians without interesting Heaven in
+the quarrel, and that with as much ease and as little credit to the
+conqueror as when a party of a hundred soldiers defeats another which
+consists only of fifty.
+
+This, my lord, I confess is such an argument against our modern poetry as
+cannot be answered by those mediums which have been used.  We cannot
+hitherto boast that our religion has furnished us with any such machines
+as have made the strength and beauty of the ancient buildings.
+
+But what if I venture to advance an invention of my own to supply the
+manifest defect of our new writers?  I am sufficiently sensible of my
+weakness, and it is not very probable that I should succeed in such a
+project, whereof I have not had the least hint from any of my
+predecessors the poets, or any of their seconds or coadjutors the
+critics.  Yet we see the art of war is improved in sieges, and new
+instruments of death are invented daily.  Something new in philosophy and
+the mechanics is discovered almost every year, and the science of former
+ages is improved by the succeeding.  I will not detain you with a long
+preamble to that which better judges will, perhaps, conclude to be little
+worth.
+
+It is this, in short—that Christian poets have not hitherto been
+acquainted with their own strength.  If they had searched the Old
+Testament as they ought, they might there have found the machines which
+are proper for their work, and those more certain in their effect than it
+may be the New Testament is in the rules sufficient for salvation.  The
+perusing of one chapter in the prophecy of Daniel, and accommodating what
+there they find with the principles of Platonic philosophy as it is now
+Christianised, would have made the ministry of angels as strong an engine
+for the working up heroic poetry in our religion as that of the ancients
+has been to raise theirs by all the fables of their gods, which were only
+received for truths by the most ignorant and weakest of the people.
+
+It is a doctrine almost universally received by Christians, as well
+Protestants as Catholics, that there are guardian angels appointed by God
+Almighty as His vicegerents for the protection and government of cities,
+provinces, kingdoms, and monarchies; and those as well of heathens as of
+true believers.  All this is so plainly proved from those texts of Daniel
+that it admits of no farther controversy.  The prince of the Persians,
+and that other of the Grecians, are granted to be the guardians and
+protecting ministers of those empires.  It cannot be denied that they
+were opposite and resisted one another.  St. Michael is mentioned by his
+name as the patron of the Jews, and is now taken by the Christians as the
+protector-general of our religion.  These tutelar genii, who presided
+over the several people and regions committed to their charge, were
+watchful over them for good, as far as their commissions could possibly
+extend.  The general purpose and design of all was certainly the service
+of their great Creator.  But it is an undoubted truth that, for ends best
+known to the Almighty Majesty of Heaven, His providential designs for the
+benefit of His creatures, for the debasing and punishing of some nations,
+and the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were not wholly known
+to these His ministers; else why those factious quarrels, controversies,
+and battles amongst themselves, when they were all united in the same
+design, the service and honour of their common master?  But being
+instructed only in the general, and zealous of the main design, and as
+finite beings not admitted into the secrets of government, the last
+resorts of Providence, or capable of discovering the final purposes of
+God (who can work good out of evil as He pleases, and irresistibly sways
+all manner of events on earth, directing them finally for the best to His
+creation in general, and to the ultimate end of His own glory in
+particular), they must of necessity be sometimes ignorant of the means
+conducing to those ends, in which alone they can jar and oppose each
+other—one angel, as we may suppose (the Prince of Persia, as he is
+called), judging that it would be more for God’s honour and the benefit
+of His people that the Median and Persian monarchy, which delivered them
+from the Babylonish captivity, should still be uppermost; and the patron
+of the Grecians, to whom the will of God might be more particularly
+revealed, contending on the other side for the rise of Alexander and his
+successors, who were appointed to punish the backsliding Jews, and
+thereby to put them in mind of their offences, that they might repent and
+become more virtuous and more observant of the law revealed.  But how far
+these controversies and appearing enmities of those glorious creatures
+may be carried; how these oppositions may be best managed, and by what
+means conducted, is not my business to show or determine: these things
+must be left to the invention and judgment of the poet, if any of so
+happy a genius be now living, or any future age can produce a man who,
+being conversant in the philosophy of Plato as it is now accommodated to
+Christian use (for, as Virgil gives us to understand by his example, that
+is the only proper, of all others, for an epic poem), who to his natural
+endowments of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong memory,
+has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences (and
+particularly moral philosophy, the mathematics, geography, and history),
+and with all these qualifications is born a poet, knows, and can practise
+the variety of numbers, and is master of the language in which he
+writes—if such a man, I say, be now arisen, or shall arise, I am vain
+enough to think that I have proposed a model to him by which he may build
+a nobler, a more beautiful, and more perfect poem than any yet extant
+since the ancients.
+
+There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but by what I have
+said, it would have been easily supplied by a judicious writer.  He could
+not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the good; they
+have also their design, ever opposite to that of Heaven; and this alone
+has hitherto been the practice of the moderns: but this imperfect system,
+if I may call it such, which I have given, will infinitely advance and
+carry farther that hypothesis of the evil spirits contending with the
+good.  For being so much weaker since their fall than those blessed
+beings, they are yet supposed to have a permitted power from God of
+acting ill, as from their own depraved nature they have always the will
+of designing it—a great testimony of which we find in Holy Writ, when God
+Almighty suffered Satan to appear in the holy synod of the angels (a
+thing not hitherto drawn into example by any of the poets), and also gave
+him power over all things belonging to his servant Job, excepting only
+life.
+
+Now what these wicked spirits cannot compass by the vast disproportion of
+their forces to those of the superior beings, they may by their fraud and
+cunning carry farther in a seeming league, confederacy, or subserviency
+to the designs of some good angel, as far as consists with his purity to
+suffer such an aid, the end of which may possibly be disguised and
+concealed from his finite knowledge.  This is indeed to suppose a great
+error in such a being; yet since a devil can appear like an angel of
+light, since craft and malice may sometimes blind for a while a more
+perfect understanding; and lastly, since Milton has given us an example
+of the like nature, when Satan, appearing like a cherub to Uriel, the
+intelligence of the sun, circumvented him even in his own province, and
+passed only for a curious traveller through those new-created regions,
+that he might observe therein the workmanship of God and praise Him in
+His works—I know not why, upon the same supposition, or some other, a
+fiend may not deceive a creature of more excellency than himself, but yet
+a creature; at least, by the connivance or tacit permission of the
+Omniscient Being.
+
+Thus, my lord, I have, as briefly as I could, given your lordship, and by
+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.”
+
+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 ὰπὸ τοῦ σιλλαίνειν, 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 underwood 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.
+
+Quintilian says in plain words, _Satira quidem tota nostra est_; and
+Horace had said the same thing before him, speaking of his predecessor in
+that sort of poetry, _et Græcis intacti carminis auctor_.  Nothing can be
+clearer than the opinion of the poet and the orator (both the best
+critics of the two best ages of the Roman empire), that satire was wholly
+of Latin growth, and not transplanted to Rome from Athens.  Yet, as I
+have said, Scaliger the father, according to his custom (that is,
+insolently enough), contradicts them both, and gives no better reason
+than the derivation of _satyrus_ from σάθυ, _salacitas_; and so, from the
+lechery of those fauns, thinks he has sufficiently proved that satire is
+derived from them: as if wantonness and lubricity were essential to that
+sort of poem, which ought to be avoided in it.  His other allegation,
+which I have already mentioned, is as pitiful—that the Satyrs carried
+platters and canisters full of fruit in their hands.  If they had entered
+empty-handed, had they been ever the less Satyrs?  Or were the fruits and
+flowers which they offered anything of kin to satire? or any argument
+that this poem was originally Grecian?  Casaubon judged better, and his
+opinion is grounded on sure authority: that satire was derived from
+_satura_, a Roman word which signifies full and abundant, and full also
+of variety, in which nothing is wanting to its due perfection.  It is
+thus, says Denier, that we say a full colour, when the wool has taken the
+whole tincture and drunk in as much of the dye as it can receive.
+According to this derivation, from _setur_ comes _satura_ or _satira_,
+according to the new spelling, as _optumus_ and _maxumus_ are now spelled
+_optimus_ and _maximus_.  _Satura_, as I have formerly noted, is an
+adjective, and relates to the word _lanx_, which is understood; and this
+_lanx_ (in English a “charger” or “large platter”) was yearly filled with
+all sorts of fruits, which were offered to the gods at their festivals as
+the _premices_ or first gatherings.  These offerings of several sorts
+thus mingled, it is true, were not unknown to the Grecians, who called
+them πανκαρπιὸν θυσίαν, a sacrifice of all sorts of fruits; and
+πανπερμίαν, when they offered all kinds of grain.  Virgil has mentioned
+these sacrifices in his “Georgics”:—
+
+    “_Lancibus et pandis fumantia reddimus exta_;”
+
+and in another place, _lancesque et liba feremus_—that is, “We offer the
+smoking entrails in great platters; and we will offer the chargers and
+the cakes.”
+
+This word _satura_ has been afterward applied to many other sorts of
+mixtures; as Festus calls it, a kind of _olla_ or hotch-potch made of
+several sorts of meats.  Laws were also called _leges saturæ_ when they
+were of several heads and titles, like our tacked Bills of Parliament;
+and _per saturam legem ferre_ in the Roman senate was to carry a law
+without telling the senators, or counting voices, when they were in
+haste.  Sallust uses the word, _per saturam sententias exquirere_, when
+the majority was visibly on one side.  From hence it might probably be
+conjectured that the Discourses or Satires of Ennius, Lucilius, and
+Horace, as we now call them, took their name, because they are full of
+various matters, and are also written on various subjects—as Porphyrius
+says.  But Dacier affirms that it is not immediately from thence that
+these satires are so called, for that name had been used formerly for
+other things which bore a nearer resemblance to those discourses of
+Horace; in explaining of which, continues Dacier, a method is to be
+pursued of which Casaubon himself has never thought, and which will put
+all things into so clear a light that no further room will be left for
+the least dispute.
+
+During the space of almost four hundred years since the building of their
+city the Romans had never known any entertainments of the stage.  Chance
+and jollity first found out those verses which they called Saturnian and
+Fescennine; or rather human nature, which is inclined to poetry, first
+produced them rude and barbarous and unpolished, as all other operations
+of the soul are in their beginnings before they are cultivated with art
+and study.  However, in occasions of merriment, they were first
+practised; and this rough-cast, unhewn poetry was instead of stage-plays
+for the space of a hundred and twenty years together.  They were made
+_extempore_, and were, as the French call them, _impromptus_; for which
+the Tarsians of old were much renowned, and we see the daily examples of
+them in the Italian farces of Harlequin and Scaramucha.  Such was the
+poetry of that savage people before it was tuned into numbers and the
+harmony of verse.  Little of the Saturnian verses is now remaining; we
+only know from authors that they were nearer prose than poetry, without
+feet or measure.  They were ἔυρυθμοι, but not ἔμμετροι.  Perhaps they
+might be used in the solemn part of their ceremonies; and the Fescennine,
+which were invented after them, in their afternoons’ debauchery, because
+they were scoffing and obscene.
+
+The Fescennine and Saturnian were the same; for as they were called
+Saturnian from their ancientness, when Saturn reigned in Italy, they were
+also called Fescennine, from Fescennia, a town in the same country where
+they were first practised.  The actors, with a gross and rustic kind of
+raillery, reproached each other with their failings, and at the same time
+were nothing sparing of it to their audience.  Somewhat of this custom
+was afterwards retained in their Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn,
+celebrated in December; at least, all kind of freedom in speech was then
+allowed to slaves, even against their masters; and we are not without
+some imitation of it in our Christmas gambols.  Soldiers also used those
+Fescennine verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at
+the triumph of their generals; of which we have an example in the triumph
+of Julius Cæsar over Gaul in these expressions: _Cæsar Gallias subegit_,
+_Nicomedes Cæsarem_.  _Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat_, _qui subegit Gallias_;
+_Nicomedes non triumphat_, _qui subegit Cæsarem_.  The vapours of wine
+made those first satirical poets amongst the Romans, which, says Dacier,
+we cannot better represent than by imagining a company of clowns on a
+holiday dancing lubberly and upbraiding one another in _extempore_
+doggerel with their defects and vices, and the stories that were told of
+them in bake-houses and barbers’ shops.
+
+When they began to be somewhat better bred, and were entering, as I may
+say, into the first rudiments of civil conversation, they left these
+hedge-notes for another sort of poem, somewhat polished, which was also
+full of pleasant raillery, but without any mixture of obscenity.  This
+sort of poetry appeared under the name of “satire” because of its
+variety; and this satire was adorned with compositions of music, and with
+dances; but lascivious postures were banished from it.  In the Tuscan
+language, says Livy, the word _hister_ signifies a player; and therefore
+those actors which were first brought from Etruria to Rome on occasion of
+a pestilence, when the Romans were admonished to avert the anger of the
+gods by plays (in the year _ab urbe conditâ_ CCCXC.)—those actors, I say,
+were therefore called _histriones_: and that name has since remained, not
+only to actors Roman born, but to all others of every nation.  They
+played, not the former _extempore_ stuff of Fescennine verses or clownish
+jests, but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly farce, with music
+and dances, and motions that were proper to the subject.
+
+In this condition Livius Andronicus found the stage when he attempted
+first, instead of farces, to supply it with a nobler entertainment of
+tragedies and comedies.  This man was a Grecian born, and being made a
+slave by Livius Salinator, and brought to Rome, had the education of his
+patron’s children committed to him, which trust he discharged so much to
+the satisfaction of his master that he gave him his liberty.
+
+Andronicus, thus become a freeman of Rome, added to his own name that of
+Livius, his master; and, as I observed, was the first author of a regular
+play in that commonwealth.  Being already instructed in his native
+country in the manners and decencies of the Athenian theatre, and
+conversant in the _archæa comædia_ or old comedy of Aristophanes and the
+rest of the Grecian poets, he took from that model his own designing of
+plays for the Roman stage, the first of which was represented in the year
+CCCCCXIV. since the building of Rome, as Tully, from the Commentaries of
+Atticus, has assured us; it was after the end of the first Punic War, the
+year before Atticus was born.  Dacier has not carried the matter
+altogether thus far; he only says that one Livius Andronicus was the
+first stage-poet at Rome.  But I will adventure on this hint to advance
+another proposition, which I hope the learned will approve; and though we
+have not anything of Andronicus remaining to justify my conjecture, yet
+it is exceeding probable that, having read the works of those Grecian
+wits, his countrymen, he imitated not only the groundwork, but also the
+manner of their writing; and how grave soever his tragedies might be, yet
+in his comedies he expressed the way of Aristophanes, Eupolis, and the
+rest, which was to call some persons by their own names, and to expose
+their defects to the laughter of the people (the examples of which we
+have in the fore-mentioned Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates
+into ridicule, and is also very free with the management of Cleon,
+Alcibiades, and other ministers of the Athenian government).  Now if this
+be granted, we may easily suppose that the first hint of satirical plays
+on the Roman stage was given by the Greeks—not from the _satirica_, for
+that has been reasonably exploded in the former part of this
+discourse—but from their old comedy, which was imitated first by Livius
+Andronicus.  And then Quintilian and Horace must be cautiously
+interpreted, where they affirm that satire is wholly Roman, and a sort of
+verse which was not touched on by the Grecians.  The reconcilement of my
+opinion to the standard of their judgment is not, however, very
+difficult, since they spoke of satire, not as in its first elements, but
+as it was formed into a separate work—begun by Ennius, pursued by
+Lucilius, and completed afterwards by Horace.  The proof depends only on
+this _postalatum_—that the comedies of Andronicus, which were imitations
+of the Greek, were also imitations of their railleries and reflections on
+particular persons.  For if this be granted me, which is a most probable
+supposition, it is easy to infer that the first light which was given to
+the Roman theatrical satire was from the plays of Livius Andronicus,
+which will be more manifestly discovered when I come to speak of Ennius.
+In the meantime I will return to Dacier.
+
+The people, says he, ran in crowds to these new entertainments of
+Andronicus, as to pieces which were more noble in their kind, and more
+perfect than their former satires, which for some time they neglected and
+abandoned; but not long after they took them up again, and then they
+joined them to their comedies, playing them at the end of every drama, as
+the French continue at this day to act their farces, in the nature of a
+separate entertainment from their tragedies.  But more particularly they
+were joined to the “Atellane” fables, says Casaubon; which were plays
+invented by the Osci.  Those fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy,
+were tempered with the Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy
+or obsceneness; and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the
+_Exodiarii_, which were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the
+people with light songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away
+oppressed with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre.  So
+that the ancient satire of the Romans was in _extempore_ reproaches; the
+next was farce, which was brought from Tuscany; to that succeeded the
+plays of Andronicus, from the old comedy of the Grecians; and out of all
+these sprang two several branches of new Roman satire, like different
+scions from the same root, which I shall prove with as much brevity as
+the subject will allow.
+
+A year after Andronicus had opened the Roman stage with his new dramas,
+Ennius was born; who, when he was grown to man’s estate, having seriously
+considered the genius of the people, and how eagerly they followed the
+first satires, thought it would be worth his pains to refine upon the
+project, and to write satires, not to be acted on the theatre, but read.
+He preserved the groundwork of their pleasantry, their venom, and their
+raillery on particular persons and general vices; and by this means,
+avoiding the danger of any ill success in a public representation, he
+hoped to be as well received in the cabinet as Andronicus had been upon
+the stage.  The event was answerable to his expectation.  He made
+discourses in several sorts of verse, varied often in the same paper,
+retaining still in the title their original name of satire.  Both in
+relation to the subjects, and the variety of matters contained in them,
+the satires of Horace are entirely like them; only Ennius, as I said,
+confines not himself to one sort of verse, as Horace does, but taking
+example from the Greeks, and even from Homer himself in his “Margites”
+(which is a kind of satire, as Scaliger observes), gives himself the
+licence, when one sort of numbers comes not easily, to run into another,
+as his fancy dictates; for he makes no difficulty to mingle hexameters
+with iambic trimeters or with trochaic tetrameters, as appears by those
+fragments which are yet remaining of him.  Horace has thought him worthy
+to be copied, inserting many things of his into his own satires, as
+Virgil has done into his “Æneids.”
+
+Here we have Dacier making out that Ennius was the first satirist in that
+way of writing, which was of his invention—that is, satire abstracted
+from the stage and new modelled into papers of verses on several
+subjects.  But he will have Ennius take the groundwork of satire from the
+first farces of the Romans rather than from the formed plays of Livius
+Andronicus, which were copied from the Grecian comedies.  It may possibly
+be so; but Dacier knows no more of it than I do.  And it seems to me the
+more probable opinion that he rather imitated the fine railleries of the
+Greeks, which he saw in the pieces of Andronicus, than the coarseness of
+his own countrymen in their clownish extemporary way of jeering.
+
+But besides this, it is universally granted that Ennius, though an
+Italian, was excellently learned in the Greek language.  His verses were
+stuffed with fragments of it, even to a fault; and he himself believed,
+according to the Pythagorean opinion, that the soul of Homer was
+transfused into him, which Persius observes in his sixth satire—_postquam
+destertuit esse Mæonides_.  But this being only the private opinion of so
+inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of
+the critics, if they think it worth their notice.  Most evident it is
+that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to
+be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly
+so called, and distinguished from any sort of stage-play.
+
+Of Pacuvius, who succeeded him, there is little to be said, because there
+is so little remaining of him; only that he is taken to be the nephew of
+Ennius, his sister’s son; that in probability he was instructed by his
+uncle in his way of satire, which we are told he has copied; but what
+advances he made, we know not.
+
+Lucilius came into the world when Pacuvius flourished most.  He also made
+satires after the manner of Ennius; but he gave them a more graceful
+turn, and endeavoured to imitate more closely the _vetus comædia_ of the
+Greeks, of the which the old original Roman satire had no idea till the
+time of Livius Andronicus.  And though Horace seems to have made Lucilius
+the first author of satire in verse amongst the Romans in these words—
+
+          “_Quid_? _cum est Lucilius auses_
+    _Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem_”—
+
+he is only thus to be understood—that Lucilius had given a more graceful
+turn to the satire of Ennius and Pacuvius, not that he invented a new
+satire of his own; and Quintilian seems to explain this passage of Horace
+in these words: _Satira quidem tota nostra est_; _in quâ primus insignem
+laudem adeptus est Luciluis_.
+
+Thus both Horace and Quintilian give a kind of primacy of honour to
+Lucilius amongst the Latin satirists; for as the Roman language grew more
+refined, so much more capable it was of receiving the Grecian beauties,
+in his time.  Horace and Quintilian could mean no more than that Lucilius
+writ better than Ennius and Pacuvius, and on the same account we prefer
+Horace to Lucilius.  Both of them imitated the old Greek comedy; and so
+did Ennius and Pacuvius before them.  The polishing of the Latin tongue,
+in the succession of times, made the only difference; and Horace himself
+in two of his satires, written purposely on this subject, thinks the
+Romans of his age were too partial in their commendations of Lucilius,
+who writ not only loosely and muddily, with little art and much less
+care, but also in a time when the Latin tongue was not yet sufficiently
+purged from the dregs of barbarism; and many significant and sounding
+words which the Romans wanted were not admitted even in the times of
+Lucretius and Cicero, of which both complain.
+
+But to proceed: Dacier justly taxes Casaubon for saying that the satires
+of Lucilius were wholly different in species from those of Ennius and
+Pacuvius, Casaubon was led into that mistake by Diomedes the grammarian,
+who in effect says this:—“Satire amongst the Romans but not amongst the
+Greeks, was a biting invective poem, made after the model of the ancient
+comedy, for the reprehension of vices; such as were the poems of
+Lucilius, of Horace, and of Persius.  But in former times the name of
+satire was given to poems which were composed of several sorts of verses,
+such as were made by Ennius and Pacuvius”—more fully expressing the
+etymology of the word satire from _satura_, which we have observed.  Here
+it is manifest that Diomedes makes a specifical distinction betwixt the
+satires of Ennius and those of Lucilius.  But this, as we say in English,
+is only a distinction without a difference; for the reason of it is
+ridiculous and absolutely false.  This was that which cozened honest
+Casaubon, who, relying on Diomedes, had not sufficiently examined the
+origin and nature of those two satires, which were entirely the same both
+in the matter and the form; for all that Lucilius performed beyond his
+predecessors, Ennius and Pacuvius, was only the adding of more politeness
+and more salt, without any change in the substance of the poem.  And
+though Lucilius put not together in the same satire several sorts of
+verses, as Ennius did, yet he composed several satires of several sorts
+of verses, and mingled them with Greek verses: one poem consisted only of
+hexameters, and another was entirely of iambics; a third of trochaics; as
+is visible by the fragments yet remaining of his works.  In short, if the
+satires of Lucilius are therefore said to be wholly different from those
+of Ennius because he added much more of beauty and polishing to his own
+poems than are to be found in those before him, it will follow from hence
+that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of Lucilius,
+because Horace has not less surpassed Lucilius in the elegancy of his
+writing than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his.
+This passage of Diomedes has also drawn Dousa the son into the same error
+of Casaubon, which I say, not to expose the little failings of those
+judicious men, but only to make it appear with how much diffidence and
+caution we are to read their works when they treat a subject of so much
+obscurity and so very ancient as is this of satire.
+
+Having thus brought down the history of satire from its original to the
+times of Horace, and shown the several changes of it, I should here
+discover some of those graces which Horace added to it, but that I think
+it will be more proper to defer that undertaking till I make the
+comparison betwixt him and Juvenal.  In the meanwhile, following the
+order of time, it will be necessary to say somewhat of another kind of
+satire which also was descended from the ancient; it is that which we
+call the Varronian satire (but which Varro himself calls the Menippean)
+because Varro, the most learned of the Romans, was the first author of
+it, who imitated in his works the manners of Menippus the Gadarenian, who
+professed the philosophy of the Cynics.
+
+This sort of satire was not only composed of several sorts of verse, like
+those of Ennius, but was also mixed with prose, and Greek was sprinkled
+amongst the Latin.  Quintilian, after he had spoken of the satire of
+Lucilius, adds what follows:—“There is another and former kind of satire,
+composed by Terentius Varro, the most learned of the Romans, in which he
+was not satisfied alone with mingling in it several sorts of verse.”  The
+only difficulty of this passage is that Quintilian tells us that this
+satire of Varro was of a former kind; for how can we possibly imagine
+this to be, since Varro, who was contemporary to Cicero, must
+consequently be after Lucilius?  But Quintilian meant not that the satire
+of Varro was in order of time before Lucilius; he would only give us to
+understand that the Varronian satire, with mixture of several sorts of
+verses, was more after the manner of Ennius and Pacuvius than that of
+Lucilius, who was more severe and more correct, and gave himself less
+liberty in the mixture of his verses in the same poem.
+
+We have nothing remaining of those Varronian satires excepting some
+inconsiderable fragments, and those for the most part much corrupted.
+The tithes of many of them are indeed preserved, and they are generally
+double; from whence, at least, we may understand how many various
+subjects were treated by that author.  Tully in his “Academics”
+introduces Varro himself giving us some light concerning the scope and
+design of those works; wherein, after he had shown his reasons why he did
+not _ex professo_ write of philosophy, he adds what
+follows:—“Notwithstanding,” says he, “that those pieces of mine wherein I
+have imitated Menippus, though I have not translated him, are sprinkled
+with a kind of mirth and gaiety, yet many things are there inserted which
+are drawn from the very entrails of philosophy, and many things severely
+argued which I have mingled with pleasantries on purpose that they may
+more easily go down with the common sort of unlearned readers.”  The rest
+of the sentence is so lame that we can only make thus much out of it—that
+in the composition of his satires he so tempered philology with
+philosophy that his work was a mixture of them both.  And Tully himself
+confirms us in this opinion when a little after he addresses himself to
+Varro in these words:—“And you yourself have composed a most elegant and
+complete poem; you have begun philosophy in many places; sufficient to
+incite us, though too little to instruct us.”  Thus it appears that Varro
+was one of those writers whom they called σπουδογελοῖοι (studious of
+laughter); and that, as learned as he was, his business was more to
+divert his reader than to teach him.  And he entitled his own satires
+Menippean; not that Menippus had written any satires (for his were either
+dialogues or epistles), but that Varro imitated his style, his manner,
+and his facetiousness.  All that we know further of Menippus and his
+writings, which are wholly lost, is that by some he is esteemed, as,
+amongst the rest, by Varro; by others he is noted of cynical impudence
+and obscenity; that he was much given to those parodies which I have
+already mentioned (that is, he often quoted the verses of Homer and the
+tragic poets, and turned their serious meaning into something that was
+ridiculous); whereas Varro’s satires are by Tully called absolute, and
+most elegant and various poems.  Lucian, who was emulous of this
+Menippus, seems to have imitated both his manners and his style in many
+of his dialogues, where Menippus himself is often introduced as a speaker
+in them and as a perpetual buffoon; particularly his character is
+expressed in the beginning of that dialogue which is called Νεκυομαντία.
+But Varro in imitating him avoids his impudence and filthiness, and only
+expresses his witty pleasantry.
+
+This we may believe for certain—that as his subjects were various, so
+most of them were tales or stories of his own invention; which is also
+manifest from antiquity by those authors who are acknowledged to have
+written Varronian satires in imitation of his—of whom the chief is
+Petronius Arbiter, whose satire, they say, is now printing in Holland,
+wholly recovered, and made complete; when it is made public, it will
+easily be seen by any one sentence whether it be supposititious or
+genuine.  Many of Lucian’s dialogues may also properly be called
+Varronian satires, particularly his true history; and consequently the
+“Golden Ass” of Apuleius, which is taken from him.  Of the same stamp is
+the mock deification of Claudius by Seneca, and the Symposium or “Cæsars”
+of Julian the Emperor.  Amongst the moderns we may reckon the “Encomium
+Moriæ” of Erasmus, Barclay’s “Euphormio,” and a volume of German authors
+which my ingenious friend Mr. Charles Killigrew once lent me.  In the
+English I remember none which are mixed with prose as Varro’s were; but
+of the same kind is “Mother Hubbard’s Tale” in Spenser, and (if it be not
+too vain to mention anything of my own) the poems of “Absalom” and
+“MacFlecnoe.”
+
+This is what I have to say in general of satire: only, as Dacier has
+observed before me, we may take notice that the word satire is of a more
+general signification in Latin than in French or English; for amongst the
+Romans it was not only used for those discourses which decried vice or
+exposed folly, but for others also, where virtue was recommended.  But in
+our modern languages we apply it only to invective poems, where the very
+name of satire is formidable to those persons who would appear to the
+world what they are not in themselves; for in English, to say satire is
+to mean reflection, as we use that word in the worst sense; or as the
+French call it, more properly, _médisance_.  In the criticism of
+spelling, it ought to be with _i_, and not with _y_, to distinguish its
+true derivation from _satura_, not from _Satyrus_; and if this be so,
+then it is false spelled throughout this book, for here it is written
+“satyr,” which having not considered at the first, I thought it not worth
+correcting afterwards.  But the French are more nice, and never spell it
+any otherwise than “satire.”
+
+I am now arrived at the most difficult part of my undertaking, which is
+to compare Horace with Juvenal and Persius.  It is observed by Rigaltius
+in his preface before Juvenal, written to Thuanus, that these three poets
+have all their particular partisans and favourers.  Every commentator, as
+he has taken pains with any of them, thinks himself obliged to prefer his
+author to the other two; to find out their failings, and decry them, that
+he may make room for his own darling.  Such is the partiality of mankind,
+to set up that interest which they have once espoused, though it be to
+the prejudice of truth, morality, and common justice, and especially in
+the productions of the brain.  As authors generally think themselves the
+best poets, because they cannot go out of themselves to judge sincerely
+of their betters, so it is with critics, who, having first taken a liking
+to one of these poets, proceed to comment on him and to illustrate him;
+after which they fall in love with their own labours to that degree of
+blind fondness that at length they defend and exalt their author, not so
+much for his sake as for their own.  It is a folly of the same nature
+with that of the Romans themselves in their games of the circus.  The
+spectators were divided in their factions betwixt the Veneti and the
+Prasini; some were for the charioteer in blue, and some for him in green.
+The colours themselves were but a fancy; but when once a man had taken
+pains to set out those of his party, and had been at the trouble of
+procuring voices for them, the case was altered: he was concerned for his
+own labour, and that so earnestly that disputes and quarrels,
+animosities, commotions, and bloodshed often happened; and in the
+declension of the Grecian empire, the very sovereigns themselves engaged
+in it, even when the barbarians were at their doors, and stickled for the
+preference of colours when the safety of their people was in question.  I
+am now myself on the brink of the same precipice; I have spent some time
+on the translation of Juvenal and Persius, and it behoves me to be wary,
+lest for that reason I should be partial to them, or take a prejudice
+against Horace.  Yet on the other side I would not be like some of our
+judges, who would give the cause for a poor man right or wrong; for
+though that be an error on the better hand, yet it is still a partiality,
+and a rich man unheard cannot be concluded an oppressor.  I remember a
+saying of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was doubtless an
+uncorrupt and upright man), that his servants were sure to be cast on any
+trial which was heard before him; not that he thought the judge was
+possibly to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too scrupulous,
+and that the causes of the Crown were always suspicious when the
+privileges of subjects were concerned.
+
+It had been much fairer if the modern critics who have embarked in the
+quarrels of their favourite authors had rather given to each his proper
+due without taking from another’s heap to raise their own.  There is
+praise enough for each of them in particular, without encroaching on his
+fellows, and detracting from them or enriching themselves with the spoils
+of others.  But to come to particulars: Heinsius and Dacier are the most
+principal of those who raise Horace above Juvenal and Persius.  Scaliger
+the father, Rigaltius, and many others debase Horace that they may set up
+Juvenal; and Casaubon, who is almost single, throws dirt on Juvenal and
+Horace that he may exalt Persius, whom he understood particularly well,
+and better than any of his former commentators, even Stelluti, who
+succeeded him.  I will begin with him who, in my opinion, defends the
+weakest cause, which is that of Persius; and labouring, as Tacitus
+professes of his own writing, to divest myself of partiality or
+prejudice, consider Persius, not as a poet whom I have wholly translated,
+and who has cost me more labour and time than Juvenal, but according to
+what I judge to be his own merit, which I think not equal in the main to
+that of Juvenal or Horace, and yet in some things to be preferred to both
+of them.
+
+First, then, for the verse; neither Casaubon himself, nor any for him,
+can defend either his numbers or the purity of his Latin.  Casaubon gives
+this point for lost, and pretends not to justify either the measures or
+the words of Persius; he is evidently beneath Horace and Juvenal in both.
+
+Then, as his verse is scabrous and hobbling, and his words not everywhere
+well chosen (the purity of Latin being more corrupted than in the time of
+Juvenal, and consequently of Horace, who wrote when the language was in
+the height of its perfection), so his diction is hard, his figures are
+generally too bold and daring, and his tropes, particularly his
+metaphors, insufferably strained.
+
+In the third place, notwithstanding all the diligence of Casaubon,
+Stelluti, and a Scotch gentleman whom I have heard extremely commended
+for his illustrations of him, yet he is still obscure; whether he
+affected not to be understood but with difficulty; or whether the fear of
+his safety under Nero compelled him to this darkness in some places, or
+that it was occasioned by his close way of thinking, and the brevity of
+his style and crowding of his figures; or lastly, whether after so long a
+time many of his words have been corrupted, and many customs and stories
+relating to them lost to us; whether some of these reasons, or all,
+concurred to render him so cloudy, we may be bold to affirm that the best
+of commentators can but guess at his meaning in many passages, and none
+can be certain that he has divined rightly.
+
+After all he was a young man, like his friend and contemporary Lucan—both
+of them men of extraordinary parts and great acquired knowledge,
+considering their youth; but neither of them had arrived to that maturity
+of judgment which is necessary to the accomplishing of a formed poet.
+And this consideration, as on the one hand it lays some imperfections to
+their charge, so on the other side it is a candid excuse for those
+failings which are incident to youth and inexperience; and we have more
+reason to wonder how they, who died before the thirtieth year of their
+age, could write so well and think so strongly, than to accuse them of
+those faults from which human nature (and more especially in youth) can
+never possibly be exempted.
+
+To consider Persius yet more closely: he rather insulted over vice and
+folly than exposed them like Juvenal and Horace; and as chaste and modest
+as he is esteemed, it cannot be denied but that in some places he is
+broad and fulsome, as the latter verses of the fourth satire and of the
+sixth sufficiently witness.  And it is to be believed that he who commits
+the same crime often and without necessity cannot but do it with some
+kind of pleasure.
+
+To come to a conclusion: he is manifestly below Horace because he borrows
+most of his greatest beauties from him; and Casaubon is so far from
+denying this that he has written a treatise purposely concerning it,
+wherein he shows a multitude of his translations from Horace, and his
+imitations of him, for the credit of his author, which he calls “Imitatio
+Horatiana.”
+
+To these defects (which I casually observed while I was translating this
+author) Scaliger has added others; he calls him in plain terms a silly
+writer and a trifler, full of ostentation of his learning, and, after
+all, unworthy to come into competition with Juvenal and Horace.
+
+After such terrible accusations, it is time to hear what his patron
+Casaubon can allege in his defence.  Instead of answering, he excuses for
+the most part; and when he cannot, accuses others of the same crimes.  He
+deals with Scaliger as a modest scholar with a master.  He compliments
+him with so much reverence that one would swear he feared him as much at
+least as he respected him.  Scaliger will not allow Persius to have any
+wit; Casaubon interprets this in the mildest sense, and confesses his
+author was not good at turning things into a pleasant ridicule, or, in
+other words, that he was not a laughable writer.  That he was _ineptus_,
+indeed, but that was _non aptissimus ad jocandum_; but that he was
+ostentatious of his learning, that by Scaliger’s good favour he denies.
+Persius showed his learning, but was no boaster of it; he did
+_ostendere_, but not _ostentare_; and so, he says, did Scaliger (where,
+methinks, Casaubon turns it handsomely upon that supercilious critic, and
+silently insinuates that he himself was sufficiently vain-glorious and a
+boaster of his own knowledge).  All the writings of this venerable
+censor, continues Casaubon, which are χρυσοῦ χρυσότερα (more golden than
+gold itself), are everywhere smelling of that thyme which, like a bee, he
+has gathered from ancient authors; but far be ostentation and vain-glory
+from a gentleman so well born and so nobly educated as Scaliger.  But,
+says Scaliger, he is so obscure that he has got himself the name of
+Scotinus—a dark writer.  “Now,” says Casaubon, “it is a wonder to me that
+anything could be obscure to the divine wit of Scaliger, from which
+nothing could be hidden.”  This is, indeed, a strong compliment, but no
+defence; and Casaubon, who could not but be sensible of his author’s
+blind side, thinks it time to abandon a post that was untenable.  He
+acknowledges that Persius is obscure in some places; but so is Plato, so
+is Thucydides; so are Pindar, Theocritus, and Aristophanes amongst the
+Greek poets; and even Horace and Juvenal, he might have added, amongst
+the Romans.  The truth is, Persius is not sometimes, but generally
+obscure; and therefore Casaubon at last is forced to excuse him by
+alleging that it was _se defendendo_, for fear of Nero, and that he was
+commanded to write so cloudily by Cornutus, in virtue of holy obedience
+to his master.  I cannot help my own opinion; I think Cornutus needed not
+to have read many lectures to him on that subject.  Persius was an apt
+scholar, and when he was bidden to be obscure in some places where his
+life and safety were in question, took the same counsel for all his book,
+and never afterwards wrote ten lines together clearly.  Casaubon, being
+upon this chapter, has not failed, we may be sure, of making a compliment
+to his own dear comment.  “If Persius,” says he, “be in himself obscure,
+yet my interpretation has made him intelligible.”  There is no question
+but he deserves that praise which he has given to himself; but the nature
+of the thing, as Lucretius says, will not admit of a perfect explanation.
+Besides many examples which I could urge, the very last verse of his last
+satire (upon which he particularly values himself in his preface) is not
+yet sufficiently explicated.  It is true, Holyday has endeavoured to
+justify his construction; but Stelluti is against it: and, for my part, I
+can have but a very dark notion of it.  As for the chastity of his
+thoughts, Casaubon denies not but that one particular passage in the
+fourth satire (_At_, _si unctus cesses_, &c.) is not only the most
+obscure, but the most obscene, of all his works.  I understood it, but
+for that reason turned it over.  In defence of his boisterous metaphors
+he quotes Longinus, who accounts them as instruments of the sublime, fit
+to move and stir up the affections, particularly in narration; to which
+it may be replied that where the trope is far-fetched and hard, it is fit
+for nothing but to puzzle the understanding, and may be reckoned amongst
+those things of Demosthenes which Æschines called θαύματα, not
+ῥήματα—that is, prodigies, not words.  It must be granted to Casaubon
+that the knowledge of many things is lost in our modern ages which were
+of familiar notice to the ancients, and that satire is a poem of a
+difficult nature in itself, and is not written to vulgar readers; and
+(through the relation which it has to comedy) the frequent change of
+persons makes the sense perplexed, when we can but divine who it is that
+speaks—whether Persius himself, or his friend and monitor, or, in some
+places, a third person.  But Casaubon comes back always to himself, and
+concludes that if Persius had not been obscure, there had been no need of
+him for an interpreter.  Yet when he had once enjoined himself so hard a
+task, he then considered the Greek proverb, that he must χελώνης φαγεῖν,
+ἢ μὴ φαγεῖν (either eat the whole snail or let it quite alone); and so he
+went through with his laborious task, as I have done with my difficult
+translation.
+
+Thus far, my lord, you see it has gone very hard with Persius.  I think
+he cannot be allowed to stand in competition either with Juvenal or
+Horace.  Yet, for once, I will venture to be so vain as to affirm that
+none of his hard metaphors or forced expressions are in my translation.
+But more of this in its proper place, where I shall say somewhat in
+particular of our general performance in making these two authors
+English.  In the meantime I think myself obliged to give Persius his
+undoubted due, and to acquaint the world, with Casaubon, in what he has
+equalled and in what excelled his two competitors.
+
+A man who is resolved to praise an author with any appearance of justice
+must be sure to take him on the strongest side, and where he is least
+liable to exceptions; he is therefore obliged to choose his mediums
+accordingly.  Casaubon (who saw that Persius could not laugh with a
+becoming grace, that he was not made for jesting, and that a merry
+conceit was not his talent) turned his feather, like an Indian, to
+another light, that he might give it the better gloss.  “Moral doctrine,”
+says he, “and urbanity or well-mannered wit are the two things which
+constitute the Roman satire; but of the two, that which is most essential
+to this poem, and is, as it were, the very soul which animates it, is the
+scourging of vice and exhortation to virtue.”  Thus wit, for a good
+reason, is already almost out of doors, and allowed only for an
+instrument—a kind of tool or a weapon, as he calls it—of which the
+satirist makes use in the compassing of his design.  The end and aim of
+our three rivals is consequently the same; but by what methods they have
+prosecuted their intention is further to be considered.  Satire is of the
+nature of moral philosophy, as being instructive; he therefore who
+instructs most usefully will carry the palm from his two antagonists.
+The philosophy in which Persius was educated, and which he professes
+through his whole book, is the Stoic—the most noble, most generous, most
+beneficial to humankind amongst all the sects who have given us the rules
+of ethics, thereby to form a severe virtue in the soul, to raise in us an
+undaunted courage against the assaults of fortune, to esteem as nothing
+the things that are without us, because they are not in our power; not to
+value riches, beauty, honours, fame, or health any farther than as
+conveniences and so many helps to living as we ought, and doing good in
+our generation.  In short, to be always happy while we possess our minds
+with a good conscience, are free from the slavery of vices, and conform
+our actions and conversation to the rules of right reason.  See here, my
+lord, an epitome of Epictetus, the doctrine of Zeno, and the education of
+our Persius; and this he expressed, not only in all his satires, but in
+the manner of his life.  I will not lessen this commendation of the Stoic
+philosophy by giving you an account of some absurdities in their
+doctrine, and some perhaps impieties (if we consider them by the standard
+of Christian faith).  Persius has fallen into none of them, and therefore
+is free from those imputations.  What he teaches might be taught from
+pulpits with more profit to the audience than all the nice speculations
+of divinity and controversies concerning faith, which are more for the
+profit of the shepherd than for the edification of the flock.  Passion,
+interest, ambition, and all their bloody consequences of discord and of
+war are banished from this doctrine.  Here is nothing proposed but the
+quiet and tranquillity of the mind; virtue lodged at home, and afterwards
+diffused in her general effects to the improvement and good of humankind.
+And therefore I wonder not that the present Bishop of Salisbury has
+recommended this our author and the tenth satire of Juvenal (in his
+pastoral letter) to the serious perusal and practice of the divines in
+his diocese as the best commonplaces for their sermons, as the
+storehouses and magazines of moral virtues, from whence they may draw
+out, as they have occasion, all manner of assistance for the
+accomplishment of a virtuous life, which the Stoics have assigned for the
+great end and perfection of mankind.  Herein, then, it is that Persius
+has excelled both Juvenal and Horace.  He sticks to his own philosophy;
+he shifts not sides, like Horace (who is sometimes an Epicurean,
+sometimes a Stoic, sometimes an Eclectic, as his present humour leads
+him), nor declaims, like Juvenal, against vices more like an orator than
+a philosopher.  Persius is everywhere the same—true to the dogmas of his
+master.  What he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches,
+that he practises himself.  There is a spirit of sincerity in all he
+says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded of
+that truth which he inculcates.  In this I am of opinion that he excels
+Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he instructs; and is
+equal to Juvenal, who was as honest and serious as Persius, and more he
+could not be.
+
+Hitherto I have followed Casaubon, and enlarged upon him, because I am
+satisfied that he says no more than truth; the rest is almost all
+frivolous.  For he says that Horace, being the son of a tax-gatherer (or
+a collector, as we call it) smells everywhere of the meanness of his
+birth and education; his conceits are vulgar, like the subjects of his
+satires; that he does _plebeium sepere_, and writes not with that
+elevation which becomes a satirist; that Persius, being nobly born and of
+an opulent family, had likewise the advantage of a better master
+(Cornutus being the most learned of his time, a man of a most holy life,
+the chief of the Stoic sect at Rome, and not only a great philosopher,
+but a poet himself, and in probability a coadjutor of Persius): that as
+for Juvenal, he was long a declaimer, came late to poetry, and had not
+been much conversant in philosophy.
+
+It is granted that the father of Horace was _libertinus_—that is, one
+degree removed from his grandfather, who had been once a slave.  But
+Horace, speaking of him, gives him the best character of a father which I
+ever read in history; and I wish a witty friend of mine, now living, had
+such another.  He bred him in the best school, and with the best company
+of young noblemen; and Horace, by his gratitude to his memory, gives a
+certain testimony that his education was ingenuous.  After this he formed
+himself abroad by the conversation of great men.  Brutus found him at
+Athens, and was so pleased with him that he took him thence into the
+army, and made him _Tribunus Militum_ (a colonel in a legion), which was
+the preferment of an old soldier.  All this was before his acquaintance
+with Mæcenas, and his introduction into the court of Augustus, and the
+familiarity of that great emperor; which, had he not been well bred
+before, had been enough to civilise his conversation, and render him
+accomplished and knowing in all the arts of complacency and good
+behaviour; and, in short, an agreeable companion for the retired hours
+and privacies of a favourite who was first minister.  So that upon the
+whole matter Persius may be acknowledged to be equal with him in those
+respects, though better born, and Juvenal inferior to both.  If the
+advantage be anywhere, it is on the side of Horace, as much as the court
+of Augustus Cæsar was superior to that of Nero.  As for the subjects
+which they treated, it will appear hereafter that Horace wrote not
+vulgarly on vulgar subjects, nor always chose them.  His style is
+constantly accommodated to his subject, either high or low.  If his fault
+be too much lowness, that of Persius is the fault of the hardness of his
+metaphors and obscurity; and so they are equal in the failings of their
+style, where Juvenal manifestly triumphs over both of them.
+
+The comparison betwixt Horace and Juvenal is more difficult, because
+their forces were more equal.  A dispute has always been, and ever will
+continue, betwixt the favourers of the two poets.  _Non nostrum est
+tantas componere lites_.  I shall only venture to give my own opinion,
+and leave it for better judges to determine.  If it be only argued in
+general which of them was the better poet, the victory is already gained
+on the side of Horace.  Virgil himself must yield to him in the delicacy
+of his turns, his choice of words, and perhaps the purity of his Latin.
+He who says that Pindar is inimitable, is himself inimitable in his odes;
+but the contention betwixt these two great masters is for the prize of
+satire, in which controversy all the odes and epodes of Horace are to
+stand excluded.  I say this because Horace has written many of them
+satirically against his private enemies; yet these, if justly considered,
+are somewhat of the nature of the Greek _silli_, which were invectives
+against particular sects and persons.  But Horace had purged himself of
+this choler before he entered on those discourses which are more properly
+called the Roman satire.  He has not now to do with a Lyce, a Canidia, a
+Cassius Severus, or a Menas; but is to correct the vices and the follies
+of his time, and to give the rules of a happy and virtuous life.  In a
+word, that former sort of satire which is known in England by the name of
+lampoon is a dangerous sort of weapon, and for the most part unlawful.
+We have no moral right on the reputation of other men; it is taking from
+them what we cannot restore to them.  There are only two reasons for
+which we may be permitted to write lampoons, and I will not promise that
+they can always justify us.  The first is revenge, when we have been
+affronted in the same nature, or have been anywise notoriously abused,
+and can make ourselves no other reparation.  And yet we know that in
+Christian charity all offences are to be forgiven, as we expect the like
+pardon for those which we daily commit against Almighty God.  And this
+consideration has often made me tremble when I was saying our Saviour’s
+prayer, for the plain condition of the forgiveness which we beg is the
+pardoning of others the offences which they have done to us; for which
+reason I have many times avoided the commission of that fault, even when
+I have been notoriously provoked.  Let not this, my lord, pass for vanity
+in me; for it is truth.  More libels have been written against me than
+almost any man now living; and I had reason on my side to have defended
+my own innocence.  I speak not of my poetry, which I have wholly given up
+to the critics—let them use it as they please—posterity, perhaps, may be
+more favourable to me; for interest and passion will lie buried in
+another age, and partiality and prejudice be forgotten.  I speak of my
+morals, which have been sufficiently aspersed—that only sort of
+reputation ought to be dear to every honest man, and is to me.  But let
+the world witness for me that I have been often wanting to myself in that
+particular; I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon when it was in
+my power to have exposed my enemies; and, being naturally vindicative,
+have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.
+
+Anything, though never so little, which a man speaks of himself, in my
+opinion, is still too much; and therefore I will waive this subject, and
+proceed to give the second reason which may justify a poet when he writes
+against a particular person, and that is when he is become a public
+nuisance.  All those whom Horace in his satires, and Persius and Juvenal
+have mentioned in theirs with a brand of infamy, are wholly such.  It is
+an action of virtue to make examples of vicious men.  They may and ought
+to be upbraided with their crimes and follies, both for their own
+amendment (if they are not yet incorrigible), and for the terror of
+others, to hinder them from falling into those enormities, which they see
+are so severely punished in the persons of others.  The first reason was
+only an excuse for revenge; but this second is absolutely of a poet’s
+office to perform.  But how few lampooners are there now living who are
+capable of this duty!  When they come in my way, it is impossible
+sometimes to avoid reading them.  But, good God! how remote they are in
+common justice from the choice of such persons as are the proper subject
+of satire, and how little wit they bring for the support of their
+injustice!  The weaker sex is their most ordinary theme; and the best and
+fairest are sure to be the most severely handled.  Amongst men, those who
+are prosperously unjust are entitled to a panegyric, but afflicted virtue
+is insolently stabbed with all manner of reproaches; no decency is
+considered, no fulsomeness omitted; no venom is wanting, as far as
+dulness can supply it, for there is a perpetual dearth of wit, a
+barrenness of good sense and entertainment.  The neglect of the readers
+will soon put an end to this sort of scribbling.  There can be no
+pleasantry where there is no wit, no impression can be made where there
+is no truth for the foundation.  To conclude: they are like the fruits of
+the earth in this unnatural season; the corn which held up its head is
+spoiled with rankness, but the greater part of the harvest is laid along,
+and little of good income and wholesome nourishment is received into the
+barns.  This is almost a digression, I confess to your lordship; but a
+just indignation forced it from me.  Now I have removed this rubbish I
+will return to the comparison of Juvenal and Horace.
+
+I would willingly divide the palm betwixt them upon the two heads of
+profit and delight, which are the two ends of poetry in general.  It must
+be granted by the favourers of Juvenal that Horace is the more copious
+and more profitable in his instructions of human life; but in my
+particular opinion, which I set not up for a standard to better
+judgments, Juvenal is the more delightful author.  I am profited by both,
+I am pleased with both; but I owe more to Horace for my instruction, and
+more to Juvenal for my pleasure.  This, as I said, is my particular taste
+of these two authors.  They who will have either of them to excel the
+other in both qualities, can scarce give better reasons for their opinion
+than I for mine.  But all unbiassed readers will conclude that my
+moderation is not to be condemned; to such impartial men I must appeal,
+for they who have already formed their judgment may justly stand
+suspected of prejudice; and though all who are my readers will set up to
+be my judges, I enter my caveat against them, that they ought not so much
+as to be of my jury; or; if they be admitted, it is but reason that they
+should first hear what I have to urge in the defence of my opinion.
+
+That Horace is somewhat the better instructor of the two is proved from
+hence—that his instructions are more general, Juvenal’s more limited.  So
+that, granting that the counsels which they give are equally good for
+moral use, Horace, who gives the most various advice, and most applicable
+to all occasions which can occur to us in the course of our lives—as
+including in his discourses not only all the rules of morality, but also
+of civil conversation—is undoubtedly to be preferred to him, who is more
+circumscribed in his instructions, makes them to fewer people, and on
+fewer occasions, than the other.  I may be pardoned for using an old
+saying, since it is true and to the purpose: _Bonum quò communius_, _eò
+melius_.  Juvenal, excepting only his first satire, is in all the rest
+confined to the exposing of some particular vice; that he lashes, and
+there he sticks.  His sentences are truly shining and instructive; but
+they are sprinkled here and there.  Horace is teaching us in every line,
+and is perpetually moral; he had found out the skill of Virgil to hide
+his sentences, to give you the virtue of them without showing them in
+their full extent, which is the ostentation of a poet, and not his art.
+And this Petronius charges on the authors of his time as a vice of
+writing, which was then growing on the age: _ne sententiæ extra corpus
+orationis emineant_; he would have them weaved into the body of the work,
+and not appear embossed upon it, and striking directly on the reader’s
+view.  Folly was the proper quarry of Horace, and not vice; and as there
+are but few notoriously wicked men in comparison with a shoal of fools
+and fops, so it is a harder thing to make a man wise than to make him
+honest; for the will is only to be reclaimed in the one, but the
+understanding is to be informed in the other.  There are blind sides and
+follies even in the professors of moral philosophy, and there is not any
+one sect of them that Horace has not exposed; which, as it was not the
+design of Juvenal, who was wholly employed in lashing vices (some of them
+the most enormous that can be imagined), so perhaps it was not so much
+his talent.
+
+    “_Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico_
+    _Tangit_, _et admissus circum præcordia ludit_.”
+
+This was the commendation which Persius gave him; where by _vitium_ he
+means those little vices which we call follies, the defects of human
+understanding, or at most the peccadilloes of life, rather than the
+tragical vices to which men are hurried by their unruly passions and
+exorbitant desires.  But in the word _omne_, which is universal, he
+concludes with me that the divine wit of Horace left nothing untouched;
+that he entered into the inmost recesses of nature; found out the
+imperfections even of the most wise and grave, as well as of the common
+people; discovering even in the great Trebatius (to whom he addresses the
+first satire) his hunting after business and following the court, as well
+as in the prosecutor Crispinus, his impertinence and importunity.  It is
+true, he exposes Crispinus openly as a common nuisance; but he rallies
+the other, as a friend, more finely.  The exhortations of Persius are
+confined to noblemen, and the Stoic philosophy is that alone which he
+recommends to them; Juvenal exhorts to particular virtues, as they are
+opposed to those vices against which he declaims; but Horace laughs to
+shame all follies, and insinuates virtue rather by familiar examples than
+by the severity of precepts.
+
+This last consideration seems to incline the balance on the side of
+Horace, and to give him the preference to Juvenal, not only in profit,
+but in pleasure.  But, after all, I must confess that the delight which
+Horace gives me is but languishing (be pleased still to understand that I
+speak of my own taste only); he may ravish other men, but I am too stupid
+and insensible to be tickled.  Where he barely grins himself, and, as
+Scaliger says, only shows his white teeth, he cannot provoke me to any
+laughter.  His urbanity—that is, his good manners—are to be commended;
+but his wit is faint, and his salt (if I may dare to say so) almost
+insipid.  Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as
+much pleasure as I can bear; he fully satisfies my expectation; he treats
+his subject home; his spleen is raised, and he raises mine.  I have the
+pleasure of concernment in all he says; he drives his reader along with
+him, and when he is at the end of his way, I willingly stop with him.  If
+he went another stage, it would be too far; it would make a journey of a
+progress, and turn delight into fatigue.  When he gives over, it is a
+sign the subject is exhausted, and the wit of man can carry it no
+farther.  If a fault can be justly found in him, it is that he is
+sometimes too luxuriant, too redundant; says more than he needs, like my
+friend “the Plain Dealer,” but never more than pleases.  Add to this that
+his thoughts are as just as those of Horace, and much more elevated; his
+expressions are sonorous and more noble; his verse more numerous; and his
+words are suitable to his thoughts, sublime and lofty.  All these
+contribute to the pleasure of the reader; and the greater the soul of him
+who reads, his transports are the greater.  Horace is always on the
+amble, Juvenal on the gallop, but his way is perpetually on
+carpet-ground.  He goes with more impetuosity than Horace, but as
+securely; and the swiftness adds a more lively agitation to the spirits.
+The low style of Horace is according to his subject—that is, generally
+grovelling.  I question not but he could have raised it, for the first
+epistle of the second book, which he writes to Augustus (a most
+instructive satire concerning poetry), is of so much dignity in the
+words, and of so much elegancy in the numbers, that the author plainly
+shows the _sermo pedestris_ in his other satires was rather his choice
+than his necessity.  He was a rival to Lucilius, his predecessor, and was
+resolved to surpass him in his own manner.  Lucilius, as we see by his
+remaining fragments, minded neither his style, nor his numbers, nor his
+purity of words, nor his run of verse.  Horace therefore copes with him
+in that humble way of satire, writes under his own force, and carries a
+dead weight, that he may match his competitor in the race.  This, I
+imagine, was the chief reason why he minded only the clearness of his
+satire, and the cleanness of expression, without ascending to those
+heights to which his own vigour might have carried him.  But limiting his
+desires only to the conquest of Lucilius, he had his ends of his rival,
+who lived before him, but made way for a new conquest over himself by
+Juvenal his successor.  He could not give an equal pleasure to his
+reader, because he used not equal instruments.  The fault was in the
+tools, and not in the workman.  But versification and numbers are the
+greatest pleasures of poetry.  Virgil knew it, and practised both so
+happily that, for aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his
+diction.  In all other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he
+placed his chief perfection.  And give me leave, my lord, since I have
+here an apt occasion, to say that Virgil could have written sharper
+satires than either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his
+talent that way.  I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his
+Eclogues, to justify my opinion, and with commas after every word, to
+show that he has given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables.
+It is against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:—
+
+          “_Non tu_, _in triviis indocte_, _solebas_
+    _Stridenti_, _miserum_, _stipulâ_, _disperdere carmen_?”
+
+But to return to my purpose.  When there is anything deficient in numbers
+and sound, the reader is uneasy and unsatisfied; he wants something of
+his complement, desires somewhat which he finds not: and this being the
+manifest defect of Horace, it is no wonder that, finding it supplied in
+Juvenal, we are more delighted with him.  And besides this, the sauce of
+Juvenal is more poignant, to create in us an appetite of reading him.
+The meat of Horace is more nourishing, but the cookery of Juvenal more
+exquisite; so that, granting Horace to be the more general philosopher,
+we cannot deny that Juvenal was the greater poet—I mean, in satire.  His
+thoughts are sharper, his indignation against vice is more vehement, his
+spirit has more of the commonwealth genius; he treats tyranny, and all
+the vices attending it, as they deserve, with the utmost rigour; and
+consequently a noble soul is better pleased with a zealous vindicator of
+Roman liberty than with a temporising poet, a well-mannered court slave,
+and a man who is often afraid of laughing in the right place—who is ever
+decent, because he is naturally servile.
+
+After all, Horace had the disadvantage of the times in which he lived;
+they were better for the man, but worse for the satirist.  It is
+generally said that those enormous vices which were practised under the
+reign of Domitian were unknown in the time of Augustus Cæsar; that
+therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace.  Little follies were
+out of doors when oppression was to be scourged instead of avarice; it
+was no longer time to turn into ridicule the false opinions of
+philosophers when the Roman liberty was to be asserted.  There was more
+need of a Brutus in Domitian’s days to redeem or mend, than of a Horace,
+if he had then been living, to laugh at a fly-catcher.  This reflection
+at the same time excuses Horace, but exalts Juvenal.  I have ended,
+before I was aware, the comparison of Horace and Juvenal upon the topics
+of instruction and delight; and indeed I may safely here conclude that
+commonplace: for if we make Horace our minister of state in satire, and
+Juvenal of our private pleasures, I think the latter has no ill bargain
+of it.  Let profit have the pre-eminence of honour in the end of poetry;
+pleasure, though but the second in degree, is the first in favour.  And
+who would not choose to be loved better rather than to be more esteemed!
+But I am entered already upon another topic, which concerns the
+particular merits of these two satirists.  However, I will pursue my
+business where I left it, and carry it farther than that common
+observation of the several ages in which these authors flourished.
+
+When Horace writ his satires, the monarchy of his Cæsar was in its
+newness, and the government but just made easy to the conquered people.
+They could not possibly have forgotten the usurpation of that prince upon
+their freedom, nor the violent methods which he had used in the
+compassing of that vast design; they yet remembered his proscriptions,
+and the slaughter of so many noble Romans their defenders—amongst the
+rest, that horrible action of his when he forced Livia from the arms of
+her husband (who was constrained to see her married, as Dion relates the
+story), and, big with child as she was, conveyed to the bed of his
+insulting rival.  The same Dion Cassius gives us another instance of the
+crime before mentioned—that Cornelius Sisenna, being reproached in full
+senate with the licentious conduct of his wife, returned this answer:
+that he had married her by the counsel of Augustus (intimating, says my
+author, that Augustus had obliged him to that marriage, that he might
+under that covert have the more free access to her).  His adulteries were
+still before their eyes, but they must be patient where they had not
+power.  In other things that emperor was moderate enough; propriety was
+generally secured, and the people entertained with public shows and
+donatives, to make them more easily digest their lost liberty.  But
+Augustus, who was conscious to himself of so many crimes which he had
+committed, thought in the first place to provide for his own reputation
+by making an edict against lampoons and satires, and the authors of those
+defamatory writings, which my author Tacitus, from the law-term, calls
+_famosos libellos_.
+
+In the first book of his Annals he gives the following account of it in
+these words:—_Primus Augustus cognitionem de famosis libellis_, _specie
+legis ejus_, _tractavit_; _commotus Cassii Severi libidine_, _quâ viros
+fæminasque illustres procacibus scriptis diffamaverat_.  Thus in
+English:—“Augustus was the first who, under the colour of that law, took
+cognisance of lampoons, being provoked to it by the petulancy of Cassius
+Severus, who had defamed many illustrious persons of both sexes in his
+writings.”  The law to which Tacitus refers was _Lex læsæ majestatis_;
+commonly called, for the sake of brevity, _majestas_; or, as we say,
+high-treason.  He means not that this law had not been enacted formerly
+(for it had been made by the Decemviri, and was inscribed amongst the
+rest in the Twelve Tables, to prevent the aspersion of the Roman majesty,
+either of the people themselves, or their religion, or their magistrates;
+and the infringement of it was capital—that is, the offender was whipped
+to death with the fasces which were borne before their chief officers of
+Rome), but Augustus was the first who restored that intermitted law.  By
+the words “under colour of that law” he insinuates that Augustus caused
+it to be executed on pretence of those libels which were written by
+Cassius Severus against the nobility, but in truth to save himself from
+such defamatory verses.  Suetonius likewise makes mention of it
+thus:—_Sparsos de se in curiâ famosos libellos_, _nec exparit_, _et magnâ
+curâ redarguit_.  _Ac ne requisitis quidem auctoribus_, _id modo
+censuit_, _cognoscendum posthac de iis qui libellos aut carmina ad
+infamiam cujuspiam sub alieno nomine edant_.  “Augustus was not afraid of
+libels,” says that author, “yet he took all care imaginable to have them
+answered, and then decreed that for the time to come the authors of them
+should be punished.”  But Aurelius makes it yet more clear, according to
+my sense, that this emperor for his own sake durst not permit
+them:—_Fecit id Augustus in speciem_, _et quasi gratificaretur populo
+Romano_, _et primoribus urbis_; _sed revera ut sibi consuleret_: _nam
+habuit in animo comprimere nimiam quorundam procacitatem in loquendo_, _à
+quâ nec ipse exemptus fuit_.  _Nam suo nomine compescere erat
+invidiosum_, _sub alieno facile et utile_.  _Ergo specie legis
+tractavit_, _quasi populi Romani majestas infamaretur_.  This, I think,
+is a sufficient comment on that passage of Tacitus.  I will add only by
+the way that the whole family of the Cæsars and all their relations were
+included in the law, because the majesty of the Romans in the time of the
+Empire was wholly in that house: _Omnia Cæsar erat_; they were all
+accounted sacred who belonged to him.  As for Cassius Severus, he was
+contemporary with Horace, and was the same poet against whom he writes in
+his epodes under this title, _In Cassium Severum_, _maledicum
+poctam_—perhaps intending to kill two crows, according to our proverb,
+with one stone, and revenge both himself and his emperor together.
+
+From hence I may reasonably conclude that Augustus, who was not
+altogether so good as he was wise, had some by-respect in the enacting of
+this law; for to do anything for nothing was not his maxim.  Horace, as
+he was a courtier, complied with the interest of his master; and,
+avoiding the lashing of greater crimes, confined himself to the
+ridiculing of petty vices and common follies, excepting only some
+reserved cases in his odes and epodes of his own particular quarrels
+(which either with permission of the magistrate or without it, every man
+will revenge, though I say not that he should; for _prior læsit_ is a
+good excuse in the civil law if Christianity had not taught us to
+forgive).  However, he was not the proper man to arraign great vices; at
+least, if the stories which we hear of him are true—that he practised
+some which I will not here mention, out of honour to him.  It was not for
+a Clodius to accuse adulterers, especially when Augustus was of that
+number.  So that, though his age was not exempted from the worst of
+villainies, there was no freedom left to reprehend them by reason of the
+edict; and our poet was not fit to represent them in an odious character,
+because himself was dipped in the same actions.  Upon this account,
+without further insisting on the different tempers of Juvenal and Horace,
+I conclude that the subjects which Horace chose for satire are of a lower
+nature than those of which Juvenal has written.
+
+Thus I have treated, in a new method, the comparison betwixt Horace,
+Juvenal, and Persius.  Somewhat of their particular manner, belonging to
+all of them, is yet remaining to be considered.  Persius was grave, and
+particularly opposed his gravity to lewdness, which was the predominant
+vice in Nero’s court at the time when he published his satires, which was
+before that emperor fell into the excess of cruelty.  Horace was a mild
+admonisher, a court satirist, fit for the gentle times of Augustus, and
+more fit for the reasons which I have already given.  Juvenal was as
+proper for his times as they for theirs; his was an age that deserved a
+more severe chastisement; vices were more gross and open, more
+flagitious, more encouraged by the example of a tyrant, and more
+protected by his authority.  Therefore, wheresoever Juvenal mentions
+Nero, he means Domitian, whom he dares not attack in his own person, but
+scourges him by proxy.  Heinsius urges in praise of Horace that,
+according to the ancient art and law of satire, it should be nearer to
+comedy than to tragedy; not declaiming against vice, but only laughing at
+it.  Neither Persius nor Juvenal was ignorant of this, for they had both
+studied Horace.  And the thing itself is plainly true.  But as they had
+read Horace, they had likewise read Lucilius, of whom Persius says,
+_Secuit urbem_; . . . _et genuinum fregit in illis_; meaning Mutius and
+Lupus; and Juvenal also mentions him in these words:—
+
+    “_Ense velut stricto_, _quoties Lucilius ardens_
+    _Infremuit_, _rubet auditor_, _cui frigida mens est_
+    _Criminibus_, _tacitá sulant præcordia culpâ_.”
+
+So that they thought the imitation of Lucilius was more proper to their
+purpose than that of Horace.  “They changed satire,” says Holyday, “but
+they changed it for the better; for the business being to reform great
+vices, chastisement goes farther than admonition; whereas a perpetual
+grin, like that of Horace, does rather anger than amend a man.”
+
+Thus far that learned critic Barten Holyday, whose interpretation and
+illustrations of Juvenal are as excellent as the verse of his translation
+and his English are lame and pitiful; for it is not enough to give us the
+meaning of a poet (which I acknowledge him to have performed most
+faithfully) but he must also imitate his genius and his numbers as far as
+the English will come up to the elegance of the original.  In few words,
+it is only for a poet to translate a poet.  Holyday and Stapleton had not
+enough considered this when they attempted Juvenal; but I forbear
+reflections: only I beg leave to take notice of this sentence, where
+Holyday says, “a perpetual grin, like that of Horace, rather angers than
+amends a man.”  I cannot give him up the manner of Horace in low satire
+so easily.  Let the chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for
+his new kind of satire, let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he
+pleases, yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist
+in fine raillery.  This, my lord, is your particular talent, to which
+even Juvenal could not arrive.  It is not reading, it is not imitation
+of, an author which can produce this fineness; it must be inborn; it must
+proceed from a genius, and particular way of thinking, which is not to be
+taught, and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from
+nature.  How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but
+how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without
+using any of those opprobrious terms!  To spare the grossness of the
+names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and
+to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of
+shadowing.  This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master
+can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is
+never the nearer in his practice.  Neither is it true that this fineness
+of raillery is offensive; a witty man is tickled, while he is hurt in
+this manner; and a fool feels it not.  The occasion of an offence may
+possibly be given, but he cannot take it.  If it be granted that in
+effect this way does more mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and
+though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it
+for him; yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly
+butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head
+from the body and leaves it standing in its place.  A man may be capable,
+as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a
+bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to
+her husband.  I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be
+kind enough to think it belongs to me.  The character of Zimri, in my
+“Absalom” is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem; it is not bloody, but
+it is ridiculous enough; and he for whom it was intended was too witty to
+resent it as an injury.  If I had railed, I might have suffered for it
+justly; but I managed my own work more happily, perhaps more dexterously.
+I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the
+representing of blind-sides and little extravagances; to which the
+wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious.  It succeeded as I
+wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began
+the frolic.
+
+And thus, my lord, you see I have preferred the manner of Horace and of
+your lordship in this kind of satire to that of Juvenal, and, I think,
+reasonably.  Holyday ought not to have arraigned so great an author for
+that which was his excellency and his merit; or, if he did, on such a
+palpable mistake he might expect that some one might possibly arise
+(either in his own time, or after him) to rectify his error, and restore
+to Horace that commendation of which he has so unjustly robbed him.  And
+let the manes of Juvenal forgive me if I say that this way of Horace was
+the best for amending manners, as it is the most difficult.  His was an
+_ense rescindendum_; but that of Horace was a pleasant cure, with all the
+limbs preserved entire, and, as our mountebanks tell us in their bills,
+without keeping the patient within doors for a day.  What they promise
+only, Horace has effectually performed.  Yet I contradict not the
+proposition which I formerly advanced.  Juvenal’s times required a more
+painful kind of operation; but if he had lived in the age of Horace, I
+must needs affirm that he had it not about him.  He took the method which
+was prescribed him by his own genius, which was sharp and eager; he could
+not railly, but he could declaim: and as his provocations were great, he
+has revenged them tragically.  This, notwithstanding I am to say another
+word which, as true as it is, will yet displease the partial admirers of
+our Horace; I have hinted it before, but it is time for me now to speak
+more plainly.
+
+This manner of Horace is indeed the best; but Horace has not executed it
+altogether so happily—at least, not often.  The manner of Juvenal is
+confessed to be inferior to the former; but Juvenal has excelled him in
+his performance.  Juvenal has railed more wittily than Horace has
+rallied.  Horace means to make his reader laugh, but he is not sure of
+his experiment.  Juvenal always intends to move your indignation, and he
+always brings about his purpose.  Horace, for aught I know, might have
+tickled the people of his age, but amongst the moderns he is not so
+successful.  They who say he entertains so pleasantly, may perhaps value
+themselves on the quickness of their own understandings, that they can
+see a jest farther off than other men; they may find occasion of laughter
+in the wit-battle of the two buffoons Sarmentus and Cicerrus, and hold
+their sides for fear of bursting when Rupilius and Persius are scolding.
+For my own part, I can only like the characters of all four, which are
+judiciously given; but for my heart I cannot so much as smile at their
+insipid raillery.  I see not why Persius should call upon Brutus to
+revenge him on his adversary; and that because he had killed Julius Cæsar
+for endeavouring to be a king, therefore he should be desired to murder
+Rupilius, only because his name was Mr. King.  A miserable clench, in my
+opinion, for Horace to record; I have heard honest Mr. Swan make many a
+better, and yet have had the grace to hold my countenance.  But it may be
+puns were then in fashion, as they were wit in the sermons of the last
+age, and in the court of King Charles the Second.  I am sorry to say it,
+for the sake of Horace; but certain it is, he has no fine palate who can
+feed so heartily on garbage.
+
+But I have already wearied myself, and doubt not but I have tired your
+lordship’s patience, with this long, rambling, and, I fear, trivial
+discourse.  Upon the one-half of the merits, that is, pleasure, I cannot
+but conclude that Juvenal was the better satirist.  They who will descend
+into his particular praises may find them at large in the dissertation of
+the learned Rigaltius to Thuanus.  As for Persius, I have given the
+reasons why I think him inferior to both of them; yet I have one thing to
+add on that subject.
+
+Barten Holyday, who translated both Juvenal and Persius, has made this
+distinction betwixt them, which is no less true than witty—that in
+Persius, the difficulty is to find a meaning; in Juvenal, to choose a
+meaning; so crabbed is Persius, and so copious is Juvenal; so much the
+understanding is employed in one, and so much the judgment in the other;
+so difficult is it to find any sense in the former, and the best sense of
+the latter.
+
+If, on the other side, any one suppose I have commended Horace below his
+merit, when I have allowed him but the second place, I desire him to
+consider if Juvenal (a man of excellent natural endowments, besides the
+advantages of diligence and study, and coming after him and building upon
+his foundations) might not probably, with all these helps, surpass him;
+and whether it be any dishonour to Horace to be thus surpassed, since no
+art or science is at once begun and perfected but that it must pass first
+through many hands and even through several ages.  If Lucilius could add
+to Ennius and Horace to Lucilius, why, without any diminution to the fame
+of Horace, might not Juvenal give the last perfection to that work?  Or
+rather, what disreputation is it to Horace that Juvenal excels in the
+tragical satire, as Horace does in the comical?  I have read over
+attentively both Heinsius and Dacier in their commendations of Horace,
+but I can find no more in either of them for the preference of him to
+Juvenal than the instructive part (the part of wisdom, and not that of
+pleasure), which therefore is here allowed him, notwithstanding what
+Scaliger and Rigaltius have pleaded to the contrary for Juvenal.  And to
+show I am impartial I will here translate what Dacier has said on that
+subject:—
+
+    “I cannot give a more just idea of the two books of satires made by
+    Horace than by comparing them to the statues of the Sileni, to which
+    Alcibiades compares Socrates in the Symposium.  They were figures
+    which had nothing of agreeable, nothing of beauty on their outside;
+    but when any one took the pains to open them and search into them, he
+    there found the figures of all the deities.  So in the shape that
+    Horace presents himself to us in his satires we see nothing at the
+    first view which deserves our attention; it seems that he is rather
+    an amusement for children than for the serious consideration of men.
+    But when we take away his crust, and that which hides him from our
+    sight, when we discover him to the bottom, then we find all the
+    divinities in a full assembly—that is to say, all the virtues which
+    ought to be the continual exercise of those who seriously endeavour
+    to correct their vices.”
+
+It is easy to observe that Dacier, in this noble similitude, has confined
+the praise of his author wholly to the instructive part the commendation
+turns on this, and so does that which follows:—
+
+    “In these two books of satire it is the business of Horace to
+    instruct us how to combat our vices, to regulate our passions, to
+    follow nature, to give bounds to our desires, to distinguish betwixt
+    truth and falsehood, and betwixt our conceptions of things and things
+    themselves; to come back from our prejudicate opinions, to understand
+    exactly the principles and motives of all our actions; and to avoid
+    the ridicule into which all men necessarily fall who are intoxicated
+    with those notions which they have received from their masters, and
+    which they obstinately retain without examining whether or no they be
+    founded on right reason.
+
+    “In a word, he labours to render us happy in relation to ourselves;
+    agreeable and faithful to our friends; and discreet, serviceable, and
+    well-bred in relation to those with whom we are obliged to live and
+    to converse.  To make his figures intelligible, to conduct his
+    readers through the labyrinth of some perplexed sentence or obscure
+    parenthesis, is no great matter; and, as Epictetus says, there is
+    nothing of beauty in all this, or what is worthy of a prudent man.
+    The principal business, and which is of most importance to us, is to
+    show the use, the reason, and the proof of his precepts.
+
+    “They who endeavour not to correct themselves according to so exact a
+    model are just like the patients who have open before them a book of
+    admirable receipts for their diseases, and please themselves with
+    reading it without comprehending the nature of the remedies or how to
+    apply them to their cure.”
+
+Let Horace go off with these encomiums, which he has so well deserved.
+
+To conclude the contention betwixt our three poets I will use the words
+of Virgil in his fifth Æneid, where Æneas proposes the rewards of the
+foot-race to the three first who should reach the goal:—
+
+             “_Tres præmia primi_ . . .
+    _Accipient_, _flauâque caput nectentur olivâ_.”
+
+Let these three ancients be preferred to all the moderns as first
+arriving at the goal; let them all be crowned 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 gemmâ_.”
+
+Let Horace, who is the second (and but just the second), carry off the
+quiver 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 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 famâ tot ferre per annos_, . . .
+    _Tithoni primâ 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 conditâ_ 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 conditæ_ 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 _archæa 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 Æneis?  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 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
+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.  Will
+your lordship be pleased 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 discovered to us this important
+secret in the designing of a perfect satire—that it ought only to treat
+of one subject; to be confined 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 lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to
+make the design double.  As in a play of the English fashion which we
+call a tragicomedy, there is to be but one main design, and though there
+be an under-plot 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 moved 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,
+called _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.  It is certain that the divine wit of Horace was
+not ignorant of this rule—that a play, though 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 quod vis 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 observed this before me in
+his preference of Persius to Horace, and will have his own beloved author
+to be the first who found out and introduced this method of confining
+himself to one subject.
+
+I know it may be urged in defence of Horace that this unity is not
+necessary, because the very word _satura_ signifies a dish plentifully
+stored 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 confined 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 all
+together may complete that _olla_ or hotch-potch 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 scourged, 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 showing how very few
+who are virtuous and good are to be found amongst them.  But this, though
+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 up 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 even there he forgets not the precepts of the “porch.”  In
+general, all virtues are everywhere to be praised 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 declared who are the only persons that are the adequate
+object of private satire, and who they are that may properly be exposed
+by name for public examples of vices and follies, and therefore I will
+trouble your lordship no further with them.  Of the best and finest
+manner of satire, I have said enough in the comparison betwixt Juvenal
+and Horace; it is that sharp well-mannered 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 called “burlesque,” consisting of eight syllables or four feet,
+is that which our excellent Hudibras has chosen.  I ought to have
+mentioned 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, though unmixed with prose.  The choice of his numbers is
+suitable enough to his design as he has managed it; but in any other hand
+the shortness of his verse, and the quick returns of rhyme, had debased
+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 pleased 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 makes us
+grin with the excrescence of a word of two or three syllables in the
+close.  It is, indeed, below so great a master to make use of such a
+little instrument.  But his good sense is perpetually shining through all
+he writes; it affords us not the time of finding faults: we pass through
+the levity of his rhyme, and are immediately 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
+excelled; as we say of a court favourite, 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 employed 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, it is more easily purchased in ten
+syllables than in eight.  In both occasions it 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 “Seechia Rapita” and the “Lutrin,” and next them Merlin
+Cocaius 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.  It is 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
+deceived, has modelled 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
+parodies, as particularly this passage in the fourth of the Æneids—
+
+    “_Nec tibi diva parens_, _generis nec Dardanus auctor_,
+    _Perfide_; _sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens_
+    _Caucasus_, _Hyrrcanæque admôrunt 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_, _l’horloger_;
+    _Ta mère ne fut point la maîtresse d’un coche_;
+    _Caucase dans ses flancs te forma d’une roché_;
+    _Une tigresse affreuse_, _en quelque antre écarté_,
+    _Te fit_, _avec son lait_, _succer 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—
+
+    “_At genus immortale manet_, _multosque per annos_
+    _Stat fortuna domûs_, _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 mixed
+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 it 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 be best managed.  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 the 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
+asked 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 considered 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 designed.  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 looked 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” (an 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 offence to the manes of that
+noble author)—I mean Milton; but as he endeavours everywhere to express
+Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true
+sublimity, lofty thoughts which were clothed with admirable Grecisms and
+ancient words, which he had been digging from the minds of Chaucer and
+Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable
+in them.  But I found not there neither that for which I looked.  At last
+I had recourse to his master, Spenser, the author of that immortal poem
+called the “Faerie 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
+excellences 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 observed.  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; _delicate_, _et bien tourné_, are the highest commendations
+which they bestow on somewhat which they think a masterpiece.
+
+An example of the turn of 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 formâ 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 through 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, though 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, though not the greater, part being the work of some
+gentlemen who have succeeded very happily in their undertaking, let their
+excellences atone for my imperfections and those of my sons.  I have
+perused some of the Satires which are done by other hands, and they seem
+to me as perfect in their kind as anything I have seen in English verse.
+The common way which we have taken is not a literal translation, but a
+kind of paraphrase; or somewhat which is yet more loose, betwixt a
+paraphrase and imitation.  It was not possible for us, or any men, to
+have made it pleasant any other way.  If rendering the exact sense of
+these authors, almost line for line, had been our business, Barten
+Holyday had done it already to our hands; and by the help of his learned
+notes and illustrations, not only Juvenal and Persius, but, what yet is
+more obscure, his own verses might be understood.
+
+But he wrote for fame, and wrote to scholars; we write only for the
+pleasure and entertainment of those gentlemen and ladies who, though they
+are not scholars, are not ignorant—persons of understanding and good
+sense, who, not having been conversant in the original (or, at least, not
+having made Latin verse so much their business as to be critics in it),
+would be glad to find if the wit of our two great authors be answerable
+to their fame and reputation in the world.  We have therefore endeavoured
+to give the public all the satisfaction we are able in this kind.
+
+And if we are not altogether so faithful to our author as our
+predecessors Holyday and Stapleton, yet we may challenge to ourselves
+this praise—that we shall be far more pleasing to our readers.  We have
+followed our authors at greater distance, though not step by step as they
+have done; for oftentimes they have gone so close that they have trod on
+the heels of Juvenal and Persius, and hurt them by their too near
+approach.  A noble author would not be pursued too close by a translator.
+We lose his spirit when we think to take his body.  The grosser part
+remains with us, but the soul is flown away in some noble expression, or
+some delicate turn of words or thought.  Thus Holyday, who made this way
+his choice, seized the meaning of Juvenal, but the poetry has always
+escaped him.
+
+They who will not grant me that pleasure is one of the ends of poetry,
+but that it is only a means of compassing the only end (which is
+instruction), must yet allow that without the means of pleasure the
+instruction is but a bare and dry philosophy, a crude preparation of
+morals which we may have from Aristotle and Epictetus with more profit
+than from any poet.  Neither Holyday nor Stapleton have imitated Juvenal
+in the poetical part of him, his diction, and his elocution.  Nor, had
+they been poets (as neither of them were), yet in the way they took, it
+was impossible for them to have succeeded in the poetic part.
+
+The English verse which we call heroic consists of no more than ten
+syllables; the Latin hexameter sometimes rises to seventeen; as, for
+example, this verse in Virgil:—
+
+    “Pulverulenta putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.”
+
+Here is the difference of no less than seven syllables in a line betwixt
+the English and the Latin.  Now the medium of these is about fourteen
+syllables, because the dactyl is a more frequent foot in hexameters than
+the spondee.  But Holyday (without considering that he writ with the
+disadvantage of four syllables less in every verse) endeavours to make
+one of his lines to comprehend the sense of one of Juvenal’s.  According
+to the falsity of the proposition was the success.  He was forced to
+crowd his verse with ill-sounding monosyllables (of which our barbarous
+language affords him a wild plenty), and by that means he arrived at his
+pedantic end, which was to make a literal translation.  His verses have
+nothing of verse in them, but only the worst part of it—the rhyme; and
+that, into the bargain, is far from good.  But, which is more
+intolerable, by cramming his ill-chosen and worse-sounding monosyllables
+so close together, the very sense which he endeavours to explain is
+become more obscure than that of his author; so that Holyday himself
+cannot be understood without as large a commentary as that which he makes
+on his two authors.  For my own part, I can make a shift to find the
+meaning of Juvenal without his notes, but his translation is more
+difficult than his author.  And I find beauties in the Latin to
+recompense my pains; but in Holyday and Stapleton my ears, in the first
+place, are mortally offended, and then their sense is so perplexed that I
+return to the original as the more pleasing task as well as the more
+easy.
+
+This must be said for our translation—that if we give not the whole sense
+of Juvenal, yet we give the most considerable part of it; we give it, in
+general, so clearly that few notes are sufficient to make us
+intelligible.  We make our author at least appear in a poetic dress.  We
+have actually made him more sounding and more elegant than he was before
+in English, and have endeavoured to make him speak that kind of English
+which he would have spoken had he lived in England and had written to
+this age.  If sometimes any of us (and it is but seldom) make him express
+the customs and manners of our native country rather than of Rome, it is
+either when there was some kind of analogy betwixt their customs and
+ours, or when (to make him more easy to vulgar understandings) we gave
+him those manners which are familiar to us.  But I defend not this
+innovation; it is enough if I can excuse it.  For (to speak sincerely)
+the 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 shown 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 acknowledgments,
+prayers, and perpetual good wishes of,
+
+My Lord,
+
+                             Your Lordship’s
+
+                                            Most obliged, most humble, and
+                                                    Most obedient servant,
+
+                                                              JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE ON EPIC POETRY.
+
+
+                     ADDRESSED TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
+
+                     JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY,
+
+EARL OF MULGRAVE, ETC., AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.
+
+AN HEROIC poem (truly such) is undoubtedly the greatest work which the
+soul of man is capable to perform.  The design of it is to form the mind
+to heroic virtue by example; it is conveyed in verse that it may delight
+while it instructs.  The action of it is always one, entire, and great.
+The least and most trivial episodes or under-actions which are interwoven
+in it are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main
+design—either so necessary that without them the poem must be imperfect,
+or so convenient that no others can be imagined more suitable to the
+place in which they are.  There is nothing to be left void in a firm
+building; even the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish which is
+of a perishable kind—destructive to the strength—but with brick or stone
+(though of less pieces, yet of the same nature), and fitted to the
+crannies.  Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind; all
+things must be grave, majestical, and sublime; nothing of a foreign
+nature, like the trifling novels which Ariosto and others have inserted
+in their poems, by which the reader is misled into another sort of
+pleasure, opposite to that which is designed in an epic poem.  One raises
+the soul and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again and unbends
+it into vice.  One conduces to the poet’s aim (the completing of his
+work), which he is driving on, labouring, and hastening in every line;
+the other slackens his pace, diverts him from his way, and locks him up
+like a knight-errant in an enchanted castle when he should be pursuing
+his first adventure.  Statius (as Bossu has well observed) was ambitions
+of trying his strength with his master, Virgil, as Virgil had before
+tried his with Homer.  The Grecian gave the two Romans an example in the
+games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus.  Virgil
+imitated the invention of Homer, but changed the sports.  But both the
+Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the subject, though (to
+confess the truth) they were both ornamental, or, at best, convenient
+parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it.  Statius (who
+through his whole poem is noted for want of conduct and judgment),
+instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus,
+Hippomedon, Tydeus, or some other of his Seven Champions (who are heroes
+all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the two brothers
+whose exequies the next successor had leisure to perform when the siege
+was raised, and in the interval betwixt the poet’s first action and his
+second, went out of his way—as it were, on prepense malice—to commit a
+fault; for he took his opportunity to kill a royal infant by the means of
+a serpent (that author of all evil) to make way for those funeral honours
+which he intended for him.  Now if this innocent had been of any relation
+to his Thebais, if he had either farthered or hindered the taking of the
+town, the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least for detaining
+the reader from the promised siege.  On these terms this Capaneus of a
+poet engaged his two immortal predecessors, and his success was
+answerable to his enterprise.
+
+If this economy must be observed in the minutest parts of an epic poem,
+which to a common reader seem to be detached from the body, and almost
+independent of it, what soul, though sent into the world with great
+advantages of nature, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences,
+conversant with histories of the dead, and enriched with observations on
+the living, can be sufficient to inform the whole body of so great a
+work?  I touch here but transiently, without any strict method, on some
+few of those many rules of imitating nature which Aristotle drew from
+Homer’s “Iliads” and “Odysses,” and which he fitted to the
+drama—furnishing himself also with observations from the practice of the
+theatre when it flourished under Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles (for
+the original of the stage was from the epic poem).  Narration, doubtless,
+preceded acting, and gave laws to it.  What at first was told artfully
+was in process of time represented gracefully to the sight and hearing.
+Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets
+amplified each into an action.  Out of his limbs they formed their
+bodies; what he had contracted, they enlarged; out of one Hercules were
+made infinity of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from him,
+their great creator, they have each of them the _divinæ particulam auræ_.
+They flowed from him at first, and are at last resolved into him.  Nor
+were they only animated by him, but their measure and symmetry was owing
+to him.  His one, entire, and great action was copied by them, according
+to the proportions of the drama.  If he finished his orb within the year,
+it sufficed to teach them that their action being less, and being also
+less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be
+circumscribed in a less compass, which they reduced within the limits
+either of a natural or an artificial day.  So that, as he taught them to
+amplify what he had shortened, by the same rule applied the contrary way
+he taught them to shorten what he had amplified.  Tragedy is the
+miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draft at length.  Here, my
+lord, I must contract also, for before I was aware I was almost running
+into a long digression to prove that there is no such absolute necessity
+that the time of a stage-action should so strictly be confined to
+twenty-four hours as never to exceed them (for which Aristotle contends,
+and the Grecian stage has practised).  Some longer space on some
+occasions, I think, may be allowed, especially for the English theatre,
+which requires more variety of incidents than the French.  Corneille
+himself, after long practice, was inclined to think that the time
+allotted by the ancients was too short to raise and finish a great
+action; and better a mechanic rule were stretched or broken than a great
+beauty were omitted.  To raise, and afterwards to calm, the passions; to
+purge the soul from pride by the examples of human miseries which befall
+the greatest; in few words, to expel arrogance and introduce compassion,
+are the great effects of tragedy—great, I must confess, if they were
+altogether as true as they are pompous.  But are habits to be introduced
+at three hours’ warning?  Are radical diseases so suddenly removed?  A
+mountebank may promise such a cure, but a skilful physician will not
+undertake it.  An epic poem is not in so much haste; it works leisurely:
+the changes which it makes are slow, but the cure is likely to be more
+perfect.  The effects of tragedy, as I said, are too violent to be
+lasting.  If it be answered, that for this reason tragedies are often to
+be seen, and the dose to be repeated, this is tacitly to confess that
+there is more virtue in one heroic poem than in many tragedies.  A man is
+humbled one day, and his pride returns the next.  Chemical medicines are
+observed to relieve oftener than to cure; for it is the nature of spirits
+to make swift impressions, but not deep.  Galenical decoctions, to which
+I may properly compare an epic poem, have more of body in them; they work
+by their substance and their weight.
+
+It is one reason of Aristotle’s to prove that tragedy is the more noble,
+because it turns in a shorter compass—the whole action being
+circumscribed within the space of four-and-twenty hours.  He might prove
+as well that a mushroom is to be preferred before a peach, because it
+shoots up in the compass of a night.  A chariot may be driven round the
+pillar in less space than a large machine, because the bulk is not so
+great.  Is the moon a more noble planet than Saturn, because she makes
+her revolution in less than thirty days, and he in little less than
+thirty years?  Both their orbs are in proportion to their several
+magnitudes; and consequently the quickness or slowness of their motion,
+and the time of their circumvolutions, is no argument of the greater or
+less perfection.  And besides, what virtue is there in a tragedy which is
+not contained in an epic poem, where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded,
+and vice punished, and those more amply treated than the narrowness of
+the drama can admit?  The shining quality of an epic hero, his
+magnanimity, his constancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever
+characteristical virtue his poet gives him, raises first our admiration;
+we are naturally prone to imitate what we admire, and frequent acts
+produce a habit.  If the hero’s chief quality be vicious—as, for example,
+the choler and obstinate desire of vengeance in Achilles—yet the moral is
+instructive; and besides, we are informed in the very proposition of the
+“Iliads” that this anger was pernicious, that it brought a thousand ills
+on the Grecian camp.  The courage of Achilles is proposed to imitation,
+not his pride and disobedience to his general; nor his brutal cruelty to
+his dead enemy, nor the selling his body to his father.  We abhor these
+actions while we read them, and what we abhor we never imitate; the poet
+only shows them, like rocks or quicksands to be shunned.
+
+By this example the critics have concluded that it is not necessary the
+manners of the hero should be virtuous (they are poetically good if they
+are of a piece); though where a character of perfect virtue is set before
+us, it is more lovely; for there the whole hero is to be imitated.  This
+is the Æneas of our author; this is that idea of perfection in an epic
+poem which painters and statuaries have only in their minds, and which no
+hands are able to express.  These are the beauties of a God in a human
+body.  When the picture of Achilles is drawn in tragedy, he is taken with
+those warts and moles and hard features by those who represent him on the
+stage, or he is no more Achilles; for his creator, Homer, has so
+described him.  Yet even thus he appears a perfect hero, though an
+imperfect character of virtue.  Horace paints him after Homer, and
+delivers him to be copied on the stage with all those imperfections.
+Therefore they are either not faults in an heroic poem, or faults common
+to the drama.
+
+After all, on the whole merits of the cause, it must be acknowledged that
+the epic poem is more for the manners, and tragedy for the passions.  The
+passions, as I have said, are violent; and acute distempers require
+medicines of a strong and speedy operation.  Ill habits of the mind are,
+like chronical diseases, to be corrected by degrees, and cured by
+alteratives; wherein, though purges are sometimes necessary, yet diet,
+good air, and moderate exercise have the greatest part.  The matter being
+thus stated, it will appear that both sorts of poetry are of use for
+their proper ends.  The stage is more active, the epic poem works at
+greater leisure; yet is active too when need requires, for dialogue is
+imitated by the drama from the more active parts of it.  One puts off a
+fit, like the quinquina, and relieves us only for a time; the other roots
+out the distemper, and gives a healthful habit.  The sun enlightens and
+cheers us, dispels fogs, and warms the ground with his daily beams; but
+the corn is sowed, increases, is ripened, and is reaped for use in
+process of time and in its proper season.
+
+I proceed from the greatness of the action to the dignity of the actors—I
+mean, to the persons employed in both poems.  There likewise tragedy will
+be seen to borrow from the epopee; and that which borrows is always of
+less dignity, because it has not of its own.  A subject, it is true, may
+lend to his sovereign; but the act of borrowing makes the king inferior,
+because he wants and the subject supplies.  And suppose the persons of
+the drama wholly fabulous, or of the poet’s invention, yet heroic poetry
+gave him the examples of that invention, because it was first, and Homer
+the common father of the stage.  I know not of any one advantage which
+tragedy can boast above heroic poetry but that it is represented to the
+view as well as read, and instructs in the closet as well as on the
+theatre.  This is an uncontended excellence, and a chief branch of its
+prerogative; yet I may be allowed to say without partiality that herein
+the actors share the poet’s praise.  Your lordship knows some modern
+tragedies which are beautiful on the stage, and yet I am confident you
+would not read them.  Tryphon the stationer complains they are seldom
+asked for in his shop.  The poet who flourished in the scene is damned in
+the _ruelle_; nay, more, he is not esteemed a good poet by those who see
+and hear his extravagances with delight.  They are a sort of stately
+fustian and lofty childishness.  Nothing but nature can give a sincere
+pleasure; where that is not imitated, it is grotesque painting; the fine
+woman ends in a fish’s tail.
+
+I might also add that many things which not only please, but are real
+beauties in the reading, would appear absurd upon the stage; and those
+not only the _speciosa miracula_, as Horace calls them, of
+transformations of Scylla, Antiphates, and the Læstrygons (which cannot
+be represented even in operas), but the prowess of Achilles or Æneas
+would appear ridiculous in our dwarf-heroes of the theatre.  We can
+believe they routed armies in Homer or in Virgil, but _ne Hercules contra
+duos_ in the drama.  I forbear to instance in many things which the stage
+cannot or ought not to represent; for I have said already more than I
+intended on this subject, and should fear it might be turned against me
+that I plead for the pre-eminence of epic poetry because I have taken
+some pains in translating Virgil, if this were the first time that I had
+delivered my opinion in this dispute; but I have more than once already
+maintained the rights of my two masters against their rivals of the
+scene, even while I wrote tragedies myself and had no thoughts of this
+present undertaking.  I submit my opinion to your judgment, who are
+better qualified than any man I know to decide this controversy.  You
+come, my lord, instructed in the cause, and needed not that I should open
+it.  Your “Essay of Poetry,” which was published without a name, and of
+which I was not honoured with the confidence, I read over and over with
+much delight and as much instruction, and without flattering you, or
+making myself more moral than I am, not without some envy.  I was loth to
+be informed how an epic poem should be written, or how a tragedy should
+be contrived and managed, in better verse and with more judgment than I
+could teach others.  A native of Parnassus, and bred up in the studies of
+its fundamental laws, may receive new lights from his contemporaries, but
+it is a grudging kind of praise which he gives his benefactors.  He is
+more obliged than he is willing to acknowledge; there is a tincture of
+malice in his commendations: for where I own I am taught, I confess my
+want of knowledge.  A judge upon the bench may, out of good nature, or,
+at least, interest, encourage the pleadings of a puny counsellor, but he
+does not willingly commend his brother-serjeant at the bar, especially
+when he controls his law, and exposes that ignorance which is made sacred
+by his place.  I gave the unknown author his due commendation, I must
+confess; but who can answer for me, and for the rest of the poets who
+heard me read the poem, whether we should not have been better pleased to
+have seen our own names at the bottom of the title-page?  Perhaps we
+commended it the more that we might seem to be above the censure.  We are
+naturally displeased with an unknown critic, as the ladies are with a
+lampooner, because we are bitten in the dark, and know not where to
+fasten our revenge; but great excellences will work their way through all
+sorts of opposition.  I applauded rather out of decency than affection;
+and was ambitious, as some yet can witness, to be acquainted with a man
+with whom I had the honour to converse, and that almost daily, for so
+many years together.  Heaven knows if I have heartily forgiven you this
+deceit.  You extorted a praise, which I should willingly have given had I
+known you.  Nothing had been more easy than to commend a patron of a long
+standing.  The world would join with me if the encomiums were just, and
+if unjust would excuse a grateful flatterer.  But to come anonymous upon
+me, and force me to commend you against my interest, was not altogether
+so fair, give me leave to say, as it was politic; for by concealing your
+quality you might clearly understand how your work succeeded, and that
+the general approbation was given to your merit, not your titles.  Thus,
+like Apelles, you stood unseen behind your own Venus, and received the
+praises of the passing multitude.  The work was commended, not the
+author; and, I doubt not, this was one of the most pleasing adventures of
+your life.
+
+I have detained your lordship longer than I intended in this dispute of
+preference betwixt the epic poem and the drama, and yet have not formally
+answered any of the arguments which are brought by Aristotle on the other
+side, and set in the fairest light by Dacier.  But I suppose without
+looking on the book, I may have touched on some of the objections; for in
+this address to your lordship I design not a treatise of heroic poetry,
+but write in a loose epistolary way somewhat tending to that subject,
+after the example of Horace in his first epistle of the second book to
+Augustus Cæsar, and of that to the Pisos, which we call his “Art of
+Poetry,” in both of which he observes no method that I can trace,
+whatever Scaliger the father, or Heinsius may have seen, or rather think
+they had seen.  I have taken up, laid down, and resumed, as often as I
+pleased, the same subject, and this loose proceeding I shall use through
+all this prefatory dedication.  Yet all this while I have been sailing
+with some side-wind or other toward the point I proposed in the
+beginning—the greatness and excellence of an heroic poem, with some of
+the difficulties which attend that work.  The comparison therefore which
+I made betwixt the epopee and the tragedy was not altogether a
+digression, for it is concluded on all hands that they are both the
+masterpieces of human wit.
+
+In the meantime I may be bold to draw this corollary from what has been
+already said—that the file of heroic poets is very short; all are not
+such who have assumed that lofty title in ancient or modern ages, or have
+been so esteemed by their partial and ignorant admirers.
+
+There have been but one great “Ilias” and one “Æneis” in so many ages;
+the next (but the next with a long interval betwixt) was the
+“Jerusalem”—I mean, not so much in distance of time as in excellence.
+After these three are entered, some Lord Chamberlain should be appointed,
+some critic of authority should be set before the door to keep out a
+crowd of little poets who press for admission, and are not of quality.
+Mævius would be deafening your lordship’s ears with his
+
+    “_Fortunam Priami cantabo_, _et nobile bellum_.”
+
+Mere fustian (as Horace would tell you from behind, without pressing
+forward), and more smoke than fire.  Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto would
+cry out, “Make room for the Italian poets, the descendants of Virgil in a
+right line.”  Father Le Moine with his “Saint Louis,” and Scudery with
+his “Alaric” (for a godly king and a Gothic conqueror); and Chapelain
+would take it ill that his “Maid” should be refused a place with Helen
+and Lavinia.  Spenser has a better plea for his “Faerie Queen,” had his
+action been finished, or had been one; and Milton, if the devil had not
+been his hero instead of Adam; if the giant had not foiled the knight,
+and driven him out of his stronghold to wander through the world with his
+lady-errant; and if there had not been more machining persons than human
+in his poem.  After these the rest of our English poets shall not be
+mentioned; I have that honour for them which I ought to have; but if they
+are worthies, they are not to be ranked amongst the three whom I have
+named, and who are established in their reputation.
+
+Before I quitted the comparison betwixt epic poetry and tragedy I should
+have acquainted my judge with one advantage of the former over the
+latter, which I now casually remember out of the preface of Segrais
+before his translation of the “Æneis,” or out of Bossu—no matter which:
+“The style of the heroic poem is, and ought to be, more lofty than that
+of the drama.”  The critic is certainly in the right, for the reason
+already urged—the work of tragedy is on the passions, and in dialogue;
+both of them abhor strong metaphors, in which the epopee delights.  A
+poet cannot speak too plainly on the stage, for _volat irrevocabile
+verbum_ (the sense is lost if it be not taken flying) but what we read
+alone we have leisure to digest.  There an author may beautify his sense
+by the boldness of his expression, which if we understand not fully at
+the first we may dwell upon it till we find the secret force and
+excellence.  That which cures the manners by alterative physic, as I said
+before, must proceed by insensible degrees; but that which purges the
+passions must do its business all at once, or wholly fail of its
+effect—at least, in the present operation—and without repeated doses.  We
+must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
+Thus, my lord, you pay the fine of my forgetfulness; and yet the merits
+of both causes are where they were, and undecided, till you declare
+whether it be more for the benefit of mankind to have their manners in
+general corrected, or their pride and hard-heartedness removed.
+
+I must now come closer to my present business, and not think of making
+more invasive wars abroad, when, like Hannibal, I am called back to the
+defence of my own country.  Virgil is attacked by many enemies; he has a
+whole confederacy against him; and I must endeavour to defend him as well
+as I am able.  But their principal objections being against his moral,
+the duration or length of time taken up in the action of the poem, and
+what they have to urge against the manners of his hero, I shall omit the
+rest as mere cavils of grammarians—at the worst but casual slips of a
+great man’s pen, or inconsiderable faults of an admirable poem, which the
+author had not leisure to review before his death.  Macrobius has
+answered what the ancients could urge against him, and some things I have
+lately read in Tannegui le Febvre, Valois, and another whom I name not,
+which are scarce worth answering.  They begin with the moral of his poem,
+which I have elsewhere confessed, and still must own, not to be so noble
+as that of Homer.  But let both be fairly stated, and without
+contradicting my first opinion I can show that Virgil’s was as useful to
+the Romans of his age as Homer’s was to the Grecians of his, in what time
+soever he may be supposed to have lived and flourished.  Homer’s moral
+was to urge the necessity of union, and of a good understanding betwixt
+confederate states and princes engaged in a war with a mighty monarch; as
+also of discipline in an army, and obedience in the several chiefs to the
+supreme commander of the joint forces.  To inculcate this, he sets forth
+the ruinous effects of discord in the camp of those allies, occasioned by
+the quarrel betwixt the general and one of the next in office under him.
+Agamemnon gives the provocation, and Achilles resents the injury.  Both
+parties are faulty in the quarrel, and accordingly they are both
+punished; the aggressor is forced to sue for peace to his inferior on
+dishonourable conditions; the deserter refuses the satisfaction offered,
+and his obstinacy costs him his best friend.  This works the natural
+effect of choler, and turns his rage against him by whom he was last
+affronted, and most sensibly.  The greater anger expels the less, but his
+character is still preserved.  In the meantime the Grecian army receives
+loss on loss, and is half destroyed by a pestilence into the bargain:—
+
+    “_Quicquid delirant reges_, _plectuntur Achivi_.”
+
+As the poet in the first part of the example had shown the bad effects of
+discord, so after the reconcilement he gives the good effects of unity;
+for Hector is slain, and then Troy must fall.  By this it is probable
+that Homer lived when the Median monarchy was grown formidable to the
+Grecians, and that the joint endeavours of his countrymen were little
+enough to preserve their common freedom from an encroaching enemy.  Such
+was his moral, which all critics have allowed to be more noble than that
+of Virgil, though not adapted to the times in which the Roman poet lived.
+Had Virgil flourished in the age of Ennius and addressed to Scipio, he
+had probably taken the same moral, or some other not unlike it; for then
+the Romans were in as much danger from the Carthaginian commonwealth as
+the Grecians were from the Assyrian or Median monarchy.  But we are to
+consider him as writing his poem in a time when the old form of
+government was subverted, and a new one just established by Octavius
+Cæsar—in effect, by force of arms, but seemingly by the consent of the
+Roman people.  The commonwealth had received a deadly wound in the former
+civil wars betwixt Marius and Sylla.  The commons, while the first
+prevailed, had almost shaken off the yoke of the nobility; and Marius and
+Cinna (like the captains of the mob), under the specious pretence of the
+public good and of doing justice on the oppressors of their liberty,
+revenged themselves without form of law on their private enemies.  Sylla,
+in his turn, proscribed the heads of the adverse party.  He, too, had
+nothing but liberty and reformation in his mouth; for the cause of
+religion is but a modern motive to rebellion, invented by the Christian
+priesthood refining on the heathen.  Sylla, to be sure, meant no more
+good to the Roman people than Marius before him, whatever he declared;
+but sacrificed the lives and took the estates of all his enemies to
+gratify those who brought him into power.  Such was the reformation of
+the government by both parties.  The senate and the commons were the two
+bases on which it stood, and the two champions of either faction each
+destroyed the foundations of the other side; so the fabric, of
+consequence, must fall betwixt them, and tyranny must be built upon their
+ruins.  _This comes of altering fundamental laws and constitutions_; like
+him who, being in good health, lodged himself in a physician’s house, and
+was over-persuaded by his landlord to take physic (of which be died) for
+the benefit of his doctor.  “_Stavo ben_,” was written on his monument,
+“_ma_, _per star meglio_, _sto qui_.”
+
+After the death of those two usurpers the commonwealth seemed to recover,
+and held up its head for a little time, but it was all the while in a
+deep consumption, which is a flattering disease.  Pompey, Crassus, and
+Cæsar had found the sweets of arbitrary power, and each being a check to
+the other’s growth, struck up a false friendship amongst themselves and
+divided the government betwixt them, which none of them was able to
+assume alone.  These were the public-spirited men of their age—that is,
+patriots for their own interest.  The commonwealth looked with a florid
+countenance in their management; spread in bulk, and all the while was
+wasting in the vitals.  Not to trouble your lordship with the repetition
+of what you know, after the death of Crassus Pompey found himself
+outwitted by Cæsar, broke with him, overpowered him in the senate, and
+caused many unjust decrees to pass against him.  Cæsar thus injured, and
+unable to resist the faction of the nobles which was now uppermost (for
+he was a Marian), had recourse to arms, and his cause was just against
+Pompey, but not against his country, whose constitution ought to have
+been sacred to him, and never to have been violated on the account of any
+private wrong.  But he prevailed, and Heaven declaring for him, he became
+a providential monarch under the title of Perpetual Dictator.  He being
+murdered by his own son (whom I neither dare commend nor can justly
+blame, though Dante in his “Inferno” has put him and Cassius, and Judas
+Iscariot betwixt them, into the great devil’s mouth), the commonwealth
+popped up its head for the third time under Brutus and Cassius, and then
+sank for ever.
+
+Thus the Roman people were grossly gulled twice or thrice over, and as
+often enslaved, in one century, and under the same pretence of
+reformation.  At last the two battles of Philippi gave the decisive
+stroke against liberty, and not long after the commonwealth was turned
+into a monarchy by the conduct and good fortune of Augustus.  It is true
+that the despotic power could not have fallen into better hands than
+those of the first and second Cæsar.  Your lordship well knows what
+obligations Virgil had to the latter of them.  He saw, beside, that the
+commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroyed; the
+senate, new moulded, grown degenerate, and either bought off or thrusting
+their own necks into the yoke out of fear of being forced.  Yet I may
+safely affirm for our great author (as men of good sense are generally
+honest) that he was still of republican principles in heart.
+
+    “_Secretosque pios_; _his dantem jura Catonem_.”
+
+I think I need use no other argument to justify my opinion than that of
+this one line taken from the eighth book of the Æneis.  If he had not
+well studied his patron’s temper it might have ruined him with another
+prince.  But Augustus was not discontented (at least, that we can find)
+that Cato was placed by his own poet in Elysium, and there giving laws to
+the holy souls who deserved to be separated from the vulgar sort of good
+spirits; for his conscience could not but whisper to the arbitrary
+monarch that the kings of Rome were at first elective, and governed not
+without a senate; that Romulus was no hereditary prince, and though after
+his death he received divine honours for the good he did on earth, yet he
+was but a god of their own making; that the last Tarquin was expelled
+justly for overt acts of tyranny and mal-administration (for such are the
+conditions of an elective kingdom, and I meddle not with others, being,
+for my own opinion, of Montange’s principles—that an honest man ought to
+be contented with that form of government, and with those fundamental
+constitutions of it, which he received from his ancestors, and under
+which himself was born, though at the same time he confessed freely that
+if he could have chosen his place of birth it should have been at Venice,
+which for many reasons I dislike, and am better pleased to have been born
+an Englishman).
+
+But to return from my long rambling; I say that Virgil having maturely
+weighed the condition of the times in which he lived; that an entire
+liberty was not to be retrieved; that the present settlement had the
+prospect of a long continuance in the same family or those adopted into
+it; that he held his paternal estate from the bounty of the conqueror, by
+whom he was likewise enriched, esteemed, and cherished; that this
+conqueror, though of a bad kind, was the very best of it; that the arts
+of peace flourished under him; that all men might be happy if they would
+be quiet; that now he was in possession of the whole, yet he shared a
+great part of his authority with the senate; that he would be chosen into
+the ancient offices of the commonwealth, and ruled by the power which he
+derived from them, and prorogued his government from time to time, still,
+as it were, threatening to dismiss himself from public cares, which he
+exercised more for the common good than for any delight he took in
+greatness—these things, I say, being considered by the poet, he concluded
+it to be the interest of his country to be so governed, to infuse an
+awful respect into the people towards such a prince, by that respect to
+confirm their obedience to him, and by that obedience to make them happy.
+This was the moral of his divine poem; honest in the poet, honourable to
+the emperor (whom he derives from a divine extraction), and reflecting
+part of that honour on the Roman people (whom he derives also from the
+Trojans), and not only profitable, but necessary, to the present age, and
+likely to be such to their posterity.  That it was the received opinion
+that the Romans were descended from the Trojans, and Julius Cæsar from
+Iulus, the son of Æneas, was enough for Virgil, though perhaps he thought
+not so himself, or that Æneas ever was in Italy, which Bochartus
+manifestly proves.  And Homer (where he says that Jupiter hated the house
+of Priam, and was resolved to transfer the kingdom to the family of
+Æneas) yet mentions nothing of his leading a colony into a foreign
+country and settling there.  But that the Romans valued themselves on
+their Trojan ancestry is so undoubted a truth that I need not prove it.
+Even the seals which we have remaining of Julius Cæsar (which we know to
+be antique) have the star of Venus over them—though they were all graven
+after his death—as a note that he was deified.  I doubt not but one
+reason why Augustus should be so passionately concerned for the
+preservation of the “Æneis,” which its author had condemned to be burnt
+as an imperfect poem by his last will and testament, was because it did
+him a real service as well as an honour; that a work should not be lost
+where his divine original was celebrated in verse which had the character
+of immortality stamped upon it.
+
+Neither were the great Roman families which flourished in his time less
+obliged by him than the emperor.  Your lordship knows with what address
+he makes mention of them as captains of ships or leaders in the war; and
+even some of Italian extraction are not forgotten.  These are the single
+stars which are sprinkled through the “Æneis,” but there are whole
+constellations of them in the fifth book; and I could not but take
+notice, when I translated it, of some favourite families to which he
+gives the victory and awards the prizes, in the person of his hero, at
+the funeral games which were celebrated in honour of Anchises.  I insist
+not on their names, but am pleased to find the Memmii amongst them,
+derived from Mnestheus, because Lucretius dedicates to one of that
+family, a branch of which destroyed Corinth.  I likewise either found or
+formed an image to myself of the contrary kind—that those who lost the
+prizes were such as had disobliged the poet, or were in disgrace with
+Augustus, or enemies to Mæcenas; and this was the poetical revenge he
+took, for _genus irritabile vatum_, as Horace says.  When a poet is
+thoroughly provoked, he will do himself justice, how ever dear it cost
+him, _animamque in vulnere ponit_.  I think these are not bare
+imaginations of my own, though I find no trace of them in the
+commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself.  The
+vengeance we defer is not forgotten.  I hinted before that the whole
+Roman people were obliged by Virgil in deriving them from Troy, an
+ancestry which they affected.  We and the French are of the same humour:
+they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of Hector; and we
+would have our Britain both named and planted by a descendant of Æneas.
+Spenser favours this opinion what he can.  His Prince Arthur, or whoever
+he intends by him, is a Trojan.  Thus the hero of Homer was a Grecian; of
+Virgil, a Roman; of Tasso, an Italian.
+
+I have transgressed my bounds and gone farther than the moral led me; but
+if your lordship is not tired, I am safe enough.
+
+Thus far, I think, my author is defended.  But as Augustus is still
+shadowed in the person of Æneas (of which I shall say more when I come to
+the manners which the poet gives his hero), I must prepare that subject
+by showing how dexterously he managed both the prince and people, so as
+to displease neither, and to do good to both—which is the part of a wise
+and an honest man, and proves that it is possible for a courtier not to
+be a knave.  I shall continue still to speak my thoughts like a free-born
+subject, as I am, though such things perhaps as no Dutch commentator
+could, and I am sure no Frenchman durst.  I have already told your
+lordship my opinion of Virgil—that he was no arbitrary man.  Obliged he
+was to his master for his bounty, and he repays him with good counsel how
+to behave himself in his new monarchy so as to gain the affections of his
+subjects, and deserve to be called the “Father of His Country.”  From
+this consideration it is that he chose for the groundwork of his poem one
+empire destroyed, and another raised from the ruins of it.  This was just
+the parallel.  Æneas could not pretend to be Priam’s heir in a lineal
+succession, for Anchises, the hero’s father, was only of the second
+branch of the royal family, and Helenus, a son of Priam, was yet
+surviving, and might lawfully claim before him.  It may be, Virgil
+mentions him on that account.  Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the
+fifth of his “Æneis,” the son of Polites, youngest son to Priam, who was
+slain by Pyrrhus in the second book.  Æneas had only married Creusa,
+Priam’s daughter, and by her could have no title while any of the male
+issue were remaining.  In this case the poet gave him the next title,
+which is that of an Elective King.  The remaining Trojans chose him to
+lead them forth and settle them in some foreign country.  Ilioneus in his
+speech to Dido calls him expressly by the name of king.  Our poet, who
+all this while had Augustus in his eye, had no desire he should seem to
+succeed by any right of inheritance derived from Julius Cæsar, such a
+title being but one degree removed from conquest: for what was introduced
+by force, by force may be removed.  It was better for the people that
+they should give than he should take, since that gift was indeed no more
+at bottom than a trust.  Virgil gives us an example of this in the person
+of Mezentius.  He governed arbitrarily; he was expelled and came to the
+deserved end of all tyrants.  Our author shows us another sort of
+kingship in the person of Latinus.  He was descended from Saturn, and, as
+I remember, in the third degree.  He is described a just and a gracious
+prince, solicitous for the welfare of his people, always consulting with
+his senate to promote the common good.  We find him at the head of them
+when he enters into the council-hall—speaking first, but still demanding
+their advice, and steering by it, as far as the iniquity of the times
+would suffer him.  And this is the proper character of a king by
+inheritance, who is born a father of his country.  Æneas, though he
+married the heiress of the crown, yet claimed no title to it during the
+life of his father-in-law.  _Socer arma Latinus hebeto_, &c., are
+Virgil’s words.  As for himself, he was contented to take care of his
+country gods, who were not those of Latium; wherein our divine author
+seems to relate to the after-practice of the Romans, which was to adopt
+the gods of those they conquered or received as members of their
+commonwealth.  Yet, withal, he plainly touches at the office of the
+high-priesthood, with which Augustus was invested and which made his
+person more sacred and inviolable than even the tribunitial power.  It
+was not therefore for nothing that the most judicious of all poets made
+that office vacant by the death of Pantheus, in the second book of the
+“Æneis,” for his hero to succeed in it, and consequently for Augustus to
+enjoy.  I know not that any of the commentators have taken notice of that
+passage.  If they have not, I am sure they ought; and if they have, I am
+not indebted to them for the observation.  The words of Virgil are very
+plain:—
+
+    “_Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troja Penates_.”
+
+As for Augustus or his uncle Julius claiming by descent from Æneas, that
+title is already out of doors.  Æneas succeeded not, but was elected.
+Troy was fore-doomed to fall for ever:—
+
+    “_Postquam res Asiæ_, _Priamique evertere gentem_,
+    _Immeritam visum superis_.”—ÆNEIS, I. iii., line 1.
+
+Augustus, it is true, had once resolved to rebuild that city, and there
+to make the seat of the Empire; but Horace writes an ode on purpose to
+deter him from that thought, declaring the place to be accursed, and that
+the gods would as often destroy it as it should be raised.  Hereupon the
+emperor laid aside a project so ungrateful to the Roman people.  But by
+this, my lord, we may conclude that he had still his pedigree in his
+head, and had an itch of being thought a divine king if his poets had not
+given him better counsel.
+
+I will pass by many less material objections for want of room to answer
+them.  What follows next is of great importance, if the critics can make
+out their charge, for it is levelled at the manners which our poet gives
+his hero, and which are the same which were eminently seen in his
+Augustus.  Those manners were piety to the gods and a dutiful affection
+to his father, love to his relations, care of his people, courage and
+conduct in the wars, gratitude to those who had obliged him, and justice
+in general to mankind.
+
+Piety, as your lordship sees, takes place of all as the chief part of his
+character; and the word in Latin is more full than it can possibly be
+expressed in any modern language, for there it comprehends not only
+devotion to the gods, but filial love and tender affection to relations
+of all sorts.  As instances of this the deities of Troy and his own
+Penates are made the companions of his flight; they appear to him in his
+voyage and advise him, and at last he replaces them in Italy, their
+native country.  For his father, he takes him on his back.  He leads his
+little son, his wife follows him; but losing his footsteps through fear
+or ignorance he goes back into the midst of his enemies to find her, and
+leaves not his pursuit till her ghost appears to forbid his farther
+search.  I will say nothing of his duty to his father while he lived, his
+sorrow for his death, of the games instituted in honour of his memory, or
+seeking him by his command even after death in the Elysian fields.  I
+will not mention his tenderness for his son, which everywhere is visible;
+of his raising a tomb for Polydorus; the obsequies for Misenus; his pious
+remembrance of Deiphobus; the funerals of his nurse; his grief for
+Pallas, and his revenge taken on his murderer, whom otherwise, by his
+natural compassion, he had forgiven: and then the poem had been left
+imperfect, for we could have had no certain prospect of his happiness
+while the last obstacle to it was unremoved.
+
+Of the other parts which compose his character as a king or as a general
+I need say nothing; the whole “Æneis” is one continued instance of some
+one or other of them; and where I find anything of them taxed, it shall
+suffice me (as briefly as I can) to vindicate my divine master to your
+lordship, and by you to the reader.  But herein Segrais, in his admirable
+preface to his translation of the “Æneis,” as the author of the Dauphin’s
+“Virgil” justly calls it, has prevented me.  Him I follow, and what I
+borrow from him am ready to acknowledge to him, for, impartially
+speaking, the French are as much better critics than the English as they
+are worse poets.  Thus we generally allow that they better understand the
+management of a war than our islanders, but we know we are superior to
+them in the day of battle; they value themselves on their generals, we on
+our soldiers.  But this is not the proper place to decide that question,
+if they make it one.  I shall say perhaps as much of other nations and
+their poets (excepting only Tasso), and hope to make my assertion good,
+which is but doing justice to my country—part of which honour will
+reflect on your lordship, whose thoughts are always just, your numbers
+harmonious, your words chosen, your expressions strong and manly, your
+verse flowing, and your turns as happy as they are easy.  If you would
+set us more copies, your example would make all precepts needless.  In
+the meantime that little you have written is owned, and that particularly
+by the poets (who are a nation not over-lavish of praise to their
+contemporaries), as a principal ornament of our language; but the
+sweetest essences are always confined in the smallest glasses.
+
+When I speak of your lordship, it is never a digression, and therefore I
+need beg no pardon for it, but take up Segrais where I left him, and
+shall use him less often than I have occasion for him.  For his preface
+is a perfect piece of criticism, full and clear, and digested into an
+exact method; mine is loose and, as I intended it, epistolary.  Yet I
+dwell on many things which he durst not touch, for it is dangerous to
+offend an arbitrary master, and every patron who has the power of
+Augustus has not his clemency.  In short, my lord, I would not translate
+him because I would bring you somewhat of my own.  His notes and
+observations on every book are of the same excellency, and for the same
+reason I omit the greater part.
+
+He takes no notice that Virgil is arraigned for placing piety before
+valour, and making that piety the chief character of his hero.  I have
+said already from Bossu, that a poet is not obliged to make his hero a
+virtuous man; therefore neither Homer nor Tasso are to be blamed for
+giving what predominant quality they pleased to their first character.
+But Virgil, who designed to form a perfect prince, and would insinuate
+that Augustus (whom he calls Æneas in his poem) was truly such, found
+himself obliged to make him without blemish—thoroughly virtuous; and a
+thorough virtue both begins and ends in piety.  Tasso without question
+observed this before me, and therefore split his hero in two; he gave
+Godfrey piety, and Rinaldo fortitude, for their chief qualities or
+manners.  Homer, who had chosen another moral, makes both Agamemnon and
+Achilles vicious; for his design was to instruct in virtue by showing the
+deformity of vice.  I avoid repetition of that I have said above.  What
+follows is translated literally from Segrais:—
+
+“Virgil had considered that the greatest virtues of Augustus consisted in
+the perfect art of governing his people, which caused him to reign for
+more than forty years in great felicity.  He considered that his emperor
+was valiant, civil, popular, eloquent, politic, and religious; he has
+given all these qualities to Æneas.  But knowing that piety alone
+comprehends the whole duty of man towards the gods, towards his country,
+and towards his relations, he judged that this ought to be his first
+character whom he would set for a pattern of perfection.  In reality,
+they who believe that the praises which arise from valour are superior to
+those which proceed from any other virtues, have not considered, as they
+ought, that valour, destitute of other virtues, cannot render a man
+worthy of any true esteem.  That quality, which signifies no more than an
+intrepid courage, may he separated from many others which are good, and
+accompanied with many which are ill.  A man may be very valiant, and yet
+impious and vicious; but the same cannot be said of piety, which excludes
+all ill qualities, and comprehends even valour itself, with all other
+qualities which are good.  Can we, for example, give the praise of valour
+to a man who should see his gods profaned, and should want the courage to
+defend them? to a man who should abandon his father, or desert his king,
+in his last necessity?”
+
+Thus far Segrais, in giving the preference to piety before valour; I will
+now follow him where he considers this valour or intrepid courage singly
+in itself; and this also Virgil gives to his Æneas, and that in a
+heroical degree.
+
+Having first concluded that our poet did for the best in taking the first
+character of his hero from that essential virtue on which the rest
+depend, he proceeds to tell us that in the ten years’ war of Troy he was
+considered as the second champion of his country, allowing Hector the
+first place; and this even by the confession of Homer, who took all
+occasions of setting up his own countrymen the Grecians, and of
+undervaluing the Trojan chiefs.  But Virgil (whom Segrais forgot to cite)
+makes Diomede give him a higher character for strength and courage.  His
+testimony is this, in the eleventh book:—
+
+             “_Stetimus tela aspera contra_,
+    _Contulimusque manus_: _experto credite_, _quantus_
+    _In clypeum adsurgat_, _quo turbine torqueat hastam_.
+    _Si duo præterea tales Inachias venisset ad urbes_
+    _Dardanus_, _et versis lugeret Græcia fatis_.
+    _Quicquid apud duræ cessatum est mænia Trojæ_,
+    _Hectoris Æneæque manu victoria Grajûm_
+    _Hæsit_, _et in decumum vestigia retulit annum_.
+    _Ambo animis_, _ambo insignes præstantibus armis_:
+    _Hic pietate prior_.”
+
+I give not here my translation of these verses, though I think I have not
+ill succeeded in them, because your lordship is so great a master of the
+original that I have no reason to desire you should see Virgil and me so
+near together.  But you may please, my lord, to take notice that the
+Latin author refines upon the Greek, and insinuates that Homer had done
+his hero wrong in giving the advantage of the duel to his own countryman,
+though Diomedes was manifestly the second champion of the Grecians; and
+Ulysses preferred him before Ajax when he chose him for the companion of
+his nightly expedition, for he had a headpiece of his own, and wanted
+only the fortitude of another to bring him off with safety, and that he
+might compass his design with honour.
+
+The French translator thus proceeds:—“They who accuse Æneas for want of
+courage, either understand not Virgil or have read him slightly;
+otherwise they would not raise an objection so easy to be answered.”
+Hereupon he gives so many instances of the hero’s valour that to repeat
+them after him would tire your lordship, and put me to the unnecessary
+trouble of transcribing the greatest part of the three last Æneids.  In
+short, more could not be expected from an Amadis, a Sir Lancelot, or the
+whole Round Table than he performs.  _Proxima quæque metit galdio_ is the
+perfect account of a knight-errant.  If it be replied, continues Segrais,
+that it was not difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy
+enterprises because he wore enchanted arms, that accusation in the first
+place must fall on Homer ere it can reach Virgil.  Achilles was as well
+provided with them as Æneas, though he was invulnerable without them; and
+Ariosto, the two Tassos (Bernardo and Torquato), even our own Spenser—in
+a word, all modern poets—have copied Homer, as well as Virgil; he is
+neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them, and therefore is
+safe if they are so.  Who knows, says Segrais, but that his fated armour
+was only an allegorical defence, and signified no more than that he was
+under the peculiar protection of the gods? born, as the astrologers will
+tell us out of Virgil (who was well versed in the Chaldean mysteries),
+under the favourable influence of Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun?  But I
+insist not on this because I know you believe not there is such an art;
+though not only Horace and Persius, but Augustus himself, thought
+otherwise.  But in defence of Virgil, I dare positively say that he has
+been more cautious in this particular than either his predecessor or his
+descendants; for Æneas was actually wounded in the twelfth of the
+“Æneis,” though he had the same godsmith to forge his arms as had
+Achilles.  It seems he was no “war-luck,” as the Scots commonly call such
+men, who, they say, are iron-free or lead-free.  Yet after this
+experiment that his arms were not impenetrable (when he was cured indeed
+by his mother’s help, because he was that day to conclude the war by the
+death of Turnus), the poet durst not carry the miracle too far and
+restore him wholly to his former vigour; he was still too weak to
+overtake his enemy, yet we see with what courage he attacks Turnus when
+he faces and renews the combat.  I need say no more, for Virgil defends
+himself without needing my assistance, and proves his hero truly to
+deserve that name.  He was not, then, a second-rate champion, as they
+would have him who think fortitude the first virtue in a hero.
+
+But being beaten from this hold, they will not yet allow him to be
+valiant, because he wept more often, as they think, than well becomes a
+man of courage.
+
+In the first place, if tears are arguments of cowardice, what shall I say
+of Homer’s hero?  Shall Achilles pass for timorous because he wept, and
+wept on less occasions than Æneas?  Herein Virgil must be granted to have
+excelled his master; for once both heroes are described lamenting their
+lost loves: Briseis was taken away by force from the Grecians, Creusa was
+lost for ever to her husband.  But Achilles went roaring along the salt
+sea-shore, and, like a booby, was complaining to his mother when he
+should have revenged his injury by arms: Æneas took a nobler course; for,
+having secured his father and his son, he repeated all his former dangers
+to have found his wife, if she had been above ground.  And here your
+lordship may observe the address of Virgil; it was not for nothing that
+this passage was related, with all these tender circumstances.  Æneas
+told it, Dido heard it.  That he had been so affectionate a husband was
+no ill argument to the coming dowager that he might prove as kind to her.
+Virgil has a thousand secret beauties, though I have not leisure to
+remark them.
+
+Segrais, on this subject of a hero’s shedding tears, observes that
+historians commend Alexander for weeping when he read the mighty actions
+of Achilles; and Julius Cæsar is likewise praised when out of the same
+noble envy, he wept at the victories of Alexander.  But if we observe
+more closely, we shall find that the tears of Æneas were always on a
+laudable occasion.  Thus he weeps out of compassion and tenderness of
+nature when in the temple of Carthage he beholds the pictures of his
+friends who sacrificed their lives in defence of their country.  He
+deplores the lamentable end of his pilot Palinurus, the untimely death of
+young Pallas his confederate, and the rest which I omit.  Yet even for
+these tears his wretched critics dare condemn him; they make Æneas little
+better than a kind of St. Swithin hero, always raining.  One of these
+censors was bold enough to argue him of cowardice, when in the beginning
+of the first book he not only weeps, but trembles, at an approaching
+storm:—
+
+    “_Extemplo Æneæ solvuntur frigore membra_:
+    _Ingemit_, _et duplices tendens ad sidera palmas_,” &c.
+
+But to this I have answered formerly that his fear was not for himself,
+but for his people.  And who can give a sovereign a better commendation,
+or recommend a hero more to the affection of the reader?  They were
+threatened with a tempest, and he wept; he was promised Italy, and
+therefore he prayed for the accomplishment of that promise;—all this in
+the beginning of a storm; therefore he showed the more early piety and
+the quicker sense of compassion.  Thus much I have urged elsewhere in the
+defence of Virgil: and since, I have been informed by Mr. Moyle, a young
+gentleman whom I can never sufficiently commend, that the ancients
+accounted drowning an accursed death.  So that if we grant him to have
+been afraid, he had just occasion for that fear, both in relation to
+himself and to his subjects.  I think our adversaries can carry this
+argument no farther, unless they tell us that he ought to have had more
+confidence in the promise of the gods.  But how was he assured that he
+had understood their oracles aright?  Helenus might be mistaken; Phoebus
+might speak doubtfully; even his mother might flatter him that he might
+prosecute his voyage, which if it succeeded happily he should be the
+founder of an empire: for that she herself was doubtful of his fortune is
+apparent by the address she made to Jupiter on his behalf; to which the
+god makes answer in these words:—
+
+    “_Parce metu_, _Cytherea_, _manent immota tuorum_
+    _Fata tibi_,” &c.
+
+Notwithstanding which the goddess, though comforted, was not assured; for
+even after this, through the course of the whole “Æneis,” she still
+apprehends the interest which Juno might make with Jupiter against her
+son.  For it was a moot point in heaven whether he could alter fate or
+not; and indeed some passages in Virgil would make us suspect that he was
+of opinion Jupiter might defer fate, though he could not alter it; for in
+the latter end of the tenth book he introduces Juno begging for the life
+of Turnus, and flattering her husband with the power of changing destiny,
+_tua_, _qui potes_, _orsa reflectas_!  To which he graciously answers—
+
+    “_Si mora præsentis leti_, _tempusque caduco_
+    _Oratur juveni_, _meque hoc ita ponere sentis_,
+    _Tolle fugâ Turnum_, _atquc instantibus eripe fatis_.
+    _Hactenus indulsisse vacat_.  _Sin altior istis_
+    _Sub precibus venia ulla latet_, _totumque moveri_
+    _Mutarive putas bellum_, _spes pascis inanis_.”
+
+But that he could not alter those decrees the king of gods himself
+confesses in the book above cited, when he comforts Hercules for the
+death of Pallas, who had invoked his aid before he threw his lance at
+Turnus:—
+
+             “_Trojæ sub mænibus altis_
+    _Tot nati cecidere deûm_; _quin occidit unà_
+    _Sarpedon_, _mea progenies_; _etiam sua Turnum_
+    _Fata vocant_, _metasque dati pervenit ad ævi_.”
+
+Where he plainly acknowledges that he could not save his own son, or
+prevent the death which he foresaw.  Of his power to defer the blow, I
+once occasionally discoursed with that excellent person Sir Robert
+Howard, who is better conversant than any man that I know in the doctrine
+of the Stoics, and he set me right, from the concurrent testimony of
+philosophers and poets, that Jupiter could not retard the effects of
+fate, even for a moment; for when I cited Virgil as favouring the
+contrary opinion in that verse—
+
+    “_Tolle fugâ Turnum_, _atque instantibus eripe fatis_”—
+
+he replied, and I think with exact judgment, that when Jupiter gave Juno
+leave to withdraw Turnus from the present danger, it was because he
+certainly foreknew that his fatal hour was not come, that it was in
+destiny for Juno at that time to save him, and that himself obeyed
+destiny in giving her that leave.
+
+I need say no more in justification of our hero’s courage, and am much
+deceived if he ever be attacked on this side of his character again.  But
+he is arraigned with more show of reason by the ladies, who will make a
+numerous party against him, for being false to love in forsaking Dido;
+and I cannot much blame them, for, to say the truth, it is an ill
+precedent for their gallants to follow.  Yet if I can bring him off with
+flying colours, they may learn experience at her cost; and for her sake
+avoid a cave as the worse shelter they can choose from a shower of rain,
+especially when they have a lover in their company.
+
+In the first place, Segrais observes with much acuteness that they who
+blame Æneas for his insensibility of love when he left Carthage,
+contradict their former accusation of him for being always crying,
+compassionate, and effeminately sensible of those misfortunes which
+befell others.  They give him two contrary characters; but Virgil makes
+him of a piece, always grateful, always tender-hearted.  But they are
+impudent enough to discharge themselves of this blunder by laying the
+contradiction at Virgil’s door.  He, they say, has shown his hero with
+these inconsistent characters—acknowledging and ungrateful, compassionate
+and hard-hearted, but at the bottom fickle and self-interested; for Dido
+had not only received his weather-beaten troops before she saw him, and
+given them her protection, but had also offered them an equal share in
+her dominion:—
+
+    “_Vultis et his mecum pariter considere regnis_?
+    _Urbem quam statuo_, _vesra est_.”
+
+This was an obligement never to be forgotten, and the more to be
+considered because antecedent to her love.  That passion, it is true,
+produced the usual effects of generosity, gallantry, and care to please,
+and thither we refer them; but when she had made all these advances, it
+was still in his power to have refused them.  After the intrigue of the
+cave—call it marriage, or enjoyment only—he was no longer free to take or
+leave; he had accepted the favour, and was obliged to be constant, if he
+would be grateful.
+
+My lord, I have set this argument in the best light I can, that the
+ladies may not think I write booty; and perhaps it may happen to me, as
+it did to Doctor Cudworth, who has raised such strong objections against
+the being of a God and Providence, that many think he has not answered
+them.  You may please at least to hear the adverse party.  Segrais pleads
+for Virgil that no less than an absolute command from Jupiter could
+excuse this insensibility of the hero, and this abrupt departure, which
+looks so like extreme ingratitude; but at the same time he does wisely to
+remember you that Virgil had made piety the first character of Æneas; and
+this being allowed, as I am afraid it must, he was obliged, antecedent to
+all other considerations, to search an asylum for his gods in Italy—for
+those very gods, I say, who had promised to his race the universal
+empire.  Could a pious man dispense with the commands of Jupiter to
+satisfy his passion, or—take it in the strongest sense—to comply with the
+obligations of his gratitude?  Religion, it is true, must have moral
+honesty for its groundwork, or we shall be apt to suspect its truth; but
+an immediate revelation dispenses with all duties of morality.  All
+casuists agree that theft is a breach of the moral law; yet if I might
+presume to mingle things sacred with profane, the Israelites only spoiled
+the Egyptians, not robbed them, because the propriety was transferred by
+a revelation to their lawgiver.  I confess Dido was a very infidel in
+this point; for she would not believe, as Virgil makes her say, that ever
+Jupiter would send Mercury on such an immoral errand.  But this needs no
+answer—at least, no more than Virgil gives it:—
+
+    “_Fata obstant_, _placidasque viri Deus obstruit aures_.”
+
+This notwithstanding, as Segrais confesses, he might have shown a little
+more sensibility when he left her, for that had been according to his
+character.
+
+But let Virgil answer for himself.  He still loved her, and struggled
+with his inclinations to obey the gods:—
+
+          “_Curam sub corde premebat_,
+    _Multa gemens_, _magnoque animum labefactus amore_.”
+
+Upon the whole matter, and humanly speaking, I doubt there was a fault
+somewhere, and Jupiter is better able to bear the blame than either
+Virgil or Æneas.  The poet, it seems, had found it out, and therefore
+brings the deserting hero and the forsaken lady to meet together in the
+lower regions, where he excuses himself when it is too late, and
+accordingly she will take no satisfaction, nor so much as hear him.  Now
+Segrais is forced to abandon his defence, and excuses his author by
+saying that the “Æneis” is an imperfect work, and that death prevented
+the divine poet from reviewing it, and for that reason he had condemned
+it to the fire, though at the same time his two translators must
+acknowledge that the sixth book is the most correct of the whole “Æneis.”
+Oh, how convenient is a machine sometimes in a heroic poem!  This of
+Mercury is plainly one; and Virgil was constrained to use it here, or the
+honesty of his hero would be ill defended; and the fair sex, however, if
+they had the deserter in their power, would certainly have shown him no
+more mercy than the Bacchanals did Orpheus: for if too much constancy may
+be a fault sometimes, then want of constancy, and ingratitude after the
+last favour, is a crime that never will be forgiven.  But of machines,
+more in their proper place, where I shall show with how much judgment
+they have been used by Virgil; and in the meantime pass to another
+article of his defence on the present subject, where, if I cannot clear
+the hero, I hope at least to bring off the poet, for here I must divide
+their causes.  Let Æneas trust to his machine, which will only help to
+break his fall; but the address is incomparable.  Plato, who borrowed so
+much from Homer, and yet concluded for the banishment of all poets, would
+at least have rewarded Virgil before he sent him into exile; but I go
+farther, and say that he ought to be acquitted, and deserved, beside, the
+bounty of Augustus and the gratitude of the Roman people.  If after this
+the ladies will stand out, let them remember that the jury is not all
+agreed; for Octavia was of his party, and was of the first quality in
+Rome: she was also present at the reading of the sixth Æneid, and we know
+not that she condemned Æneas, but we are sure she presented the poet for
+his admirable elegy on her son Marcellus.
+
+But let us consider the secret reasons which Virgil had for thus framing
+this noble episode, wherein the whole passion of love is more exactly
+described than in any other poet.  Love was the theme of his fourth book;
+and though it is the shortest of the whole “Æneis,” yet there he has
+given its beginning, its progress, its traverses, and its conclusion; and
+had exhausted so entirely this subject that he could resume it but very
+slightly in the eight ensuing books.
+
+She was warmed with the graceful appearance of the hero; she smothered
+those sparkles out of decency, but conversation blew them up into a
+flame.  Then she was forced to make a confidante of her whom she best
+might trust, her own sister, who approves the passion, and thereby
+augments it; then succeeds her public owning it; and after that the
+consummation.  Of Venus and Juno, Jupiter and Mercury, I say nothing (for
+they were all machining work); but possession having cooled his love, as
+it increased hers, she soon perceived the change, or at least grew
+suspicious of a change.  This suspicion soon turned to jealousy, and
+jealousy to rage; then she disdains and threatens, and again is humble
+and entreats: and, nothing availing, despairs, curses, and at last
+becomes her own executioner.  See here the whole process of that passion,
+to which nothing can be added.  I dare go no farther, lest I should lose
+the connection of my discourse.
+
+To love our native country, and to study its benefit and its glory; to be
+interested in its concerns, is natural to all men, and is indeed our
+common duty.  A poet makes a farther step for endeavouring to do honour
+to it.  It is allowable in him even to be partial in its cause; for he is
+not tied to truth, or fettered by the laws of history.  Homer and Tasso
+are justly praised for choosing their heroes out of Greece and Italy;
+Virgil, indeed, made his a Trojan, but it was to derive the Romans and
+his own Augustus from him; but all the three poets are manifestly partial
+to their heroes in favour of their country.  For Dares Phrygius reports
+of Hector that he was slain cowardly; Æneas, according to the best
+account, slew not Mezentius, but was slain by him; and the chronicles of
+Italy tell us little of that Rinaldo d’Este who conquers Jerusalem in
+Tasso.  He might be a champion of the Church, but we know not that he was
+so much as present at the siege.  To apply this to Virgil, he thought
+himself engaged in honour to espouse the cause and quarrel of his country
+against Carthage.  He knew he could not please the Romans better, or
+oblige them more to patronise his poem, than by disgracing the foundress
+of that city.  He shows her ungrateful to the memory of her first
+husband, doting on a stranger, enjoyed and afterwards forsaken by him.
+This was the original, says he, of the immortal hatred betwixt the two
+rival nations.  It is true, he colours the falsehood of Æneas by an
+express command from Jupiter to forsake the queen who had obliged him;
+but he knew the Romans were to be his readers, and them he bribed—perhaps
+at the expense of his hero’s honesty; but he gained his cause, however,
+as pleading before corrupt judges.  They were content to see their
+founder false to love, for still he had the advantage of the amour.  It
+was their enemy whom he forsook, and she might have forsaken him if he
+had not got the start of her.  She had already forgotten her vows to her
+Sichæus, and _varium et nutabile semper femina_ is the sharpest satire in
+the fewest words that ever was made on womankind; for both the adjectives
+are neuter, and _animal_ must be understood to make them grammar.  Virgil
+does well to put those words into the mouth of Mercury.  If a god had not
+spoken them, neither durst he have written them, nor I translated them.
+Yet the deity was forced to come twice on the same errand; and the second
+time, as much a hero as Æneas was, he frighted him.  It seems he feared
+not Jupiter so much as Dido; for your lordship may observe that, as much
+intent as he was upon his voyage, yet he still delayed it, till the
+messenger was obliged to tell him plainly that if he weighed not anchor
+in the night the queen would be with him in the morning, _notumque furens
+quid femina possit_: she was injured, she was revengeful, she was
+powerful.  The poet had likewise before hinted that the people were
+naturally perfidious, for he gives their character in the queen, and
+makes a proverb of _Punica fides_ many ages before it was invented.
+
+Thus I hope, my lord, that I have made good my promise, and justified the
+poet, whatever becomes of the false knight.  And, sure, a poet is as much
+privileged to lie as an ambassador for the honour and interest of his
+country—at least, as Sir Henry Wotton has defined.
+
+This naturally leads me to the defence of the famous anachronism in
+making Æneas and Dido contemporaries, for it is certain that the hero
+lived almost two hundred years before the building of Carthage.  One who
+imitates Boccalini says that Virgil was accused before Apollo for this
+error.  The god soon found that he was not able to defend his favourite
+by reason, for the case was clear; he therefore gave this middle
+sentence: that anything might be allowed to his son Virgil on the account
+of his other merits; that, being a monarch, he had a dispensing power,
+and pardoned him.  But that this special act of grace might never be
+drawn into example, or pleaded by his puny successors in justification of
+their ignorance, he decreed for the future—no poet should presume to make
+a lady die for love two hundred years before her birth.  To moralise this
+story, Virgil is the Apollo who has this dispensing power.  His great
+judgment made the laws of poetry, but he never made himself a slave to
+them; chronology at best is but a cobweb law, and he broke through it
+with his weight.  They who will imitate him wisely must choose, as he
+did, an obscure and a remote era, where they may invent at pleasure, and
+not be easily contradicted.  Neither he nor the Romans had ever read the
+Bible, by which only his false computation of times can be made out
+against him.  This Segrais says in his defence, and proves it from his
+learned friend Bochartus, whose letter on this subject he has printed at
+the end of the fourth Æneid, to which I refer your lordship and the
+reader.  Yet the credit of Virgil was so great that he made this fable of
+his own invention pass for an authentic history, or at least as credible
+as anything in Homer.  Ovid takes it up after him even in the same age,
+and makes an ancient heroine of Virgil’s new-created Dido; dictates a
+letter for her, just before her death, to the ingrateful fugitive; and,
+very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much
+superior in force to him on the same subject.  I think I may be judge of
+this, because I have translated both.  The famous author of “The Art of
+Love” has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in his
+own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which he finds.
+Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old shift, he has recourse to
+witticism.  This passes, indeed, with his soft admirers, and gives him
+the preference to Virgil in their esteem; but let them like for
+themselves, and not prescribe to others, for our author needs not their
+admiration.
+
+The motive that induced Virgil to coin this fable I have showed already,
+and have also begun to show that he might make this anachronism, by
+superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the same reason that a
+monarch may dispense with or suspend his own laws when he finds it
+necessary so to do, especially if those laws are not altogether
+fundamental.  Nothing is to be called a fault in poetry, says Aristotle,
+but what is against the art; therefore a man may be an admirable poet
+without being an exact chronologer.  Shall we dare, continues Segrais, to
+condemn Virgil for having made a fiction against the order of time, when
+we commend Ovid and other poets who have made many of their fictions
+against the order of nature?  For what else are the splendid miracles of
+the “Metamorphoses?”  Yet these are beautiful as they are related, and
+have also deep learning and instructive mythologies couched under them.
+But to give, as Virgil does in this episode, the original cause of the
+long wars betwixt Rome and Carthage; to draw truth out of fiction after
+so probable a manner, with so much beauty, and so much for the honour of
+his country, was proper only to the divine wit of Maro; and Tasso, in one
+of his discourses, admires him for this particularly.  It is not lawful
+indeed to contradict a point of history which is known to all the
+world—as, for example, to make Hannibal and Scipio contemporaries with
+Alexander—but in the dark recesses of antiquity a great poet may and
+ought to feign such things as he finds not there, if they can be brought
+to embellish that subject which he treats.  On the other side, the pains
+and diligence of ill poets is but thrown away when they want the genius
+to invent and feign agreeably.  But if the fictions be delightful (which
+they always are if they be natural) if they be of a piece; if the
+beginning, the middle, and the end be in their due places, and artfully
+united to each other, such works can never fail of their deserved
+success.  And such is Virgil’s episode of Dido and Æneas, where the
+sourest critic must acknowledge that if he had deprived his “Æneis” of so
+great an ornament, because he found no traces of it in antiquity, he had
+avoided their unjust censure, but had wanted one of the greatest beauties
+of his poem.
+
+I shall say more of this in the next article of their charge against him,
+which is—want of invention.  In the meantime I may affirm, in honour of
+this episode, that it is not only now esteemed the most pleasing
+entertainment of the “Æneis,” but was so accounted in his own age, and
+before it was mellowed into that reputation which time has given it; for
+which I need produce no other testimony than that of Ovid, his
+contemporary:—
+
+    “_Nec pars ulla magis legitur de corpore toto_,
+    _Quam non legitimo fædere junctus amor_.”
+
+Where, by the way, you may observe, my lord, that Ovid in those words,
+_non legitimo fædere junctus amor_, will by no means allow it to be a
+lawful marriage betwixt Dido and Æneas.  He was in banishment when he
+wrote those verses, which I cite from his letter to Augustus.  “You,
+sir,” saith he, “have sent me into exile for writing my ‘Art of Love’ and
+my wanton elegies; yet your own poet was happy in your good graces,
+though he brought Dido and Æneas into a cave, and left them there not
+over-honestly together: may I be so bold to ask your majesty is it a
+greater fault to teach the art of unlawful love than to show it in the
+action?”  But was Ovid the court-poet so bad a courtier as to find no
+other plea to excuse himself than by a plain accusation of his master?
+Virgil confessed it was a lawful marriage betwixt the lovers; that Juno,
+the goddess of matrimony, had ratified it by her presence (for it was her
+business to bring matters to that issue): that the ceremonies were short
+we may believe, for Dido was not only amorous, but a widow.  Mercury
+himself, though employed on a quite contrary errand, yet owns it a
+marriage by an innuendo—_pulchramque uxorius urbem extruis_.  He calls
+Æneas not only a husband, but upbraids him for being a fond husband, as
+the word _uxorius_ implies.  Now mark a little, if your lordship pleases,
+why Virgil is so much concerned to make this marriage (for he seems to be
+the father of the bride himself, and to give her to the bridegroom); it
+was to make way for the divorce which he intended afterwards, for he was
+a finer flatterer than Ovid, and I more than conjecture that he had in
+his eye the divorce which not long before had passed betwixt the emperor
+and Scribonia.  He drew this dimple in the cheek of Æneas to prove
+Augustus of the same family by so remarkable a feature in the same place.
+Thus, as we say in our home-spun English proverb, he killed two birds
+with one stone—pleased the emperor by giving him the resemblance of his
+ancestor, and gave him such a resemblance as was not scandalous in that
+age (for to leave one wife and take another was but a matter of gallantry
+at that time of day among the Romans).  _Neque hæc in fædera veni_ is the
+very excuse which Æneas makes when he leaves his lady.  “I made no such
+bargain with you at our marriage to live always drudging on at Carthage;
+my business was Italy, and I never made a secret of it.  If I took my
+pleasure, had not you your share of it?  I leave you free at my departure
+to comfort yourself with the next stranger who happens to be shipwrecked
+on your coast; be as kind an hostess as you have been to me, and you can
+never fail of another husband.  In the meantime I call the gods to
+witness that I leave your shore unwillingly; for though Juno made the
+marriage, yet Jupiter commands me to forsake you.”  This is the effect of
+what he saith when it is dishonoured out of Latin verse into English
+prose.  If the poet argued not aright, we must pardon him for a poor
+blind heathen, who knew no better morals.
+
+I have detained your lordship longer than I intended on this objection,
+which would indeed weigh something in a Spiritual Court;—but I am not to
+defend our poet there.  The next, I think, is but a cavil, though the cry
+is great against him, and hath continued from the time of Macrobius to
+this present age; I hinted it before.  They lay no less than want of
+invention to his charge—a capital charge, I must acknowledge; for a poet
+is a maker, as the word signifies; and who cannot make—that is,
+invent—hath his name for nothing.  That which makes this accusation look
+so strong at the first sight is that he has borrowed so many things from
+Homer, Apollonius Rhodius, and others who preceded him.  But in the first
+place, if invention is to be taken in so strict a sense that the matter
+of a poem must be wholly new, and that in all its parts, then Scaliger
+hath made out, saith Segrais, that the history of Troy was no more the
+invention of Homer than of Virgil.  There was not an old woman or almost
+a child, but had it in their mouths before the Greek poet or his friends
+digested it into this admirable order in which we read it.  At this rate,
+as Solomon hath told us, there is nothing new beneath the sun.  Who,
+then, can pass for an inventor if Homer as well as Virgil must be
+deprived of that glory!  Is Versailles the less a new building because
+the architect of that palace hath imitated others which were built before
+it?  Walls, doors and windows, apartments, offices, rooms of convenience
+and magnificence, are in all great houses.  So descriptions, figures,
+fables, and the rest, must be in all heroic poems; they are the common
+materials of poetry, furnished from the magazine of nature: every poet
+hath as much right to them as every man hath to air or water:
+
+    “_Quid prohibetis aquas_?  _Usus communis aquarum est_.”
+
+But the argument of the work (that is to say, its principal action), the
+economy and disposition of it—these are the things which distinguish
+copies from originals.  The Poet who borrows nothing from others is yet
+to be born; he and the Jews’ Messias will come together.  There are parts
+of the “Æneis” which resemble some parts both of the “Ilias” and of the
+“Odysses;” as, for example, Æneas descended into hell, and Ulysses had
+been there before him; Æneas loved Dido, and Ulysses loved Calypso: in
+few words, Virgil hath imitated Homer’s “Odysses” in his first six books,
+and in his six last the “Ilias.”  But from hence can we infer that the
+two poets write the same history?  Is there no invention in some other
+parts of Virgil’s “Æneis?”  The disposition of so many various matters,
+is not that his own?  From what book of Homer had Virgil his episode of
+Nysus and Euryalus, of Mezentius and Lausus?  From whence did he borrow
+his design of bringing Æneas into Italy? of establishing the Roman Empire
+on the foundations of a Trojan colony? to say nothing of the honour he
+did his patron, not only in his descent from Venus, but in making him so
+like her in his best features that the goddess might have mistaken
+Augustus for her son.  He had indeed the story from common fame, as Homer
+had his from the Egyptian priestess.  _Æneadum genetriæ_ was no more
+unknown to Lucretius than to him; but Lucretius taught him not to form
+his hero, to give him piety or valour for his manners—and both in so
+eminent a degree that, having done what was possible for man to save his
+king and country, his mother was forced to appear to him and restrain his
+fury, which hurried him to death in their revenge.  But the poet made his
+piety more successful; he brought off his father and his son; and his
+gods witnessed to his devotion by putting themselves under his
+protection, to be replaced by him in their promised Italy.  Neither the
+invention nor the conduct of this great action were owing to Homer or any
+other poet; it is one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from
+nature.  The copier is that servile imitator to whom Horace gives no
+better a name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be
+a man.  Raffaelle imitated nature; they who copy one of Raffaelle’s
+pieces, imitate but him, for his work is their original.  They translate
+him, as I do Virgil; and fall as short of him as I of Virgil.  There is a
+kind of invention in the imitation of Raffaelle; for though the thing was
+in nature, yet the idea of it was his own.  Ulysses travelled, so did
+Æneas; but neither of them were the first travellers: for Cain went into
+the land of Nod before they were born, and neither of the poets ever
+heard of such a man.  If Ulysses had been killed at Troy, yet Æneas must
+have gone to sea, or he could never have arrived in Italy; but the
+designs of the two poets were as different as the courses of their
+heroes—one went home, and the other sought a home.
+
+To return to my first similitude.  Suppose Apelles and Raffaelle had each
+of them painted a burning Troy, might not the modern painter have
+succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the
+town on fire?  For the drafts of both were taken from the ideas which
+they had of nature.  Cities have been burnt before either of them were in
+being.  But to close the simile as I began it: they would not have
+designed it after the same manner; Apelles would have distinguished
+Pyrrhus from the rest of all the Grecians, and showed him forcing his
+entrance into Priam’s palace; there he had set him in the fairest light,
+and given him the chief place of all his figures, because he was a
+Grecian and he would do honour to his country.  Raffaelle, who was an
+Italian, and descended from the Trojans, would have made Æneas the hero
+of his piece, and perhaps not with his father on his back, his son in one
+hand, his bundle of gods in the other, and his wife following (for an act
+of piety is not half so graceful in a picture as an act of courage); he
+would rather have drawn him killing Androgeus or some other hand to hand,
+and the blaze of the fires should have darted full upon his face, to make
+him conspicuous amongst his Trojans.  This, I think, is a just comparison
+betwixt the two poets in the conduct of their several designs.  Virgil
+cannot be said to copy Homer; the Grecian had only the advantage of
+writing first.  If it be urged that I have granted a resemblance in some
+parts, yet therein Virgil has excelled him; for what are the tears of
+Calypso for being left, to the fury and death of Dido?  Where is there
+the whole process of her passion and all its violent effects to be found
+in the languishing episode of the “Odysses”?  If this be to copy, let the
+critics show us the same disposition, features, or colouring in their
+original.  The like may be said of the descent to hell, which was not of
+Homer’s invention either; he had it from the story of Orpheus and
+Eurydice.  But to what end did Ulysses make that journey?  Æneas
+undertook it by the express commandment of his father’s ghost.  There he
+was to show him all the succeeding heroes of his race, and next to
+Romulus (mark, if you please the address of Virgil) his own patron,
+Augustus Cæsar.  Anchises was likewise to instruct him how to manage the
+Italian war, and how to conclude it with his honour—that is, in other
+words, to lay the foundations of that empire which Augustus was to
+govern.  This is the noble invention of our author, but it hath been
+copied by so many sign-post daubers that now it is grown fulsome, rather
+by their want of skill than by the commonness.
+
+In the last place.  I may safely grant that by reading Homer, Virgil was
+taught to imitate his invention—that is to imitate like him (which is no
+more than if a painter studied Raffaelle that he might learn to design
+after his manner).  And thus I might imitate Virgil if I were capable of
+writing an heroic poem, and yet the invention be my own; but I should
+endeavour to avoid a servile copying.  I would not give the same story
+under other names, with the same characters, in the same order, and with
+the same sequel, for every common reader to find me out at the first
+sight for a plagiary, and cry, “This I read before in Virgil in a better
+language and in better verse.”  This is like Merry-Andrew on the low rope
+copying lubberly the same tricks which his master is so dexterously
+performing on the high.
+
+I will trouble your lordship but with one objection more, which I know
+not whether I found in Le Febvre or Valois, but I am sure I have read it
+in another French critic, whom I will not name because I think it is not
+much for his reputation.  Virgil in the heat of action—suppose, for
+example, in describing the fury of his hero in a battle (when he is
+endeavouring to raise our concernments to the highest pitch)—turns short
+on the sudden into some similitude which diverts, say they, your
+attention from the main subject, and misspends it on some trivial image.
+He pours cold water into the caldron when his business is to make it
+boil.
+
+This accusation is general against all who would be thought heroic poets,
+but I think it touches Virgil less than any; he is too great a master of
+his art to make a blot which may so easily be hit.  Similitudes (as I
+have said) are not for tragedy, which is all violent, and where the
+passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden, where they
+should animate; they are not of the nature of dialogue unless in comedy.
+A metaphor is almost all the stage can suffer, which is a kind of
+similitude comprehended in a word.  But this figure has a contrary effect
+in heroic poetry; there it is employed to raise the admiration, which is
+its proper business; and admiration is not of so violent a nature as fear
+or hope, compassion or horror, or any concernment we can have for such or
+such a person on the stage.  Not but I confess that similitudes and
+descriptions when drawn into an unreasonable length must needs nauseate
+the reader.  Once I remember (and but once) Virgil makes a similitude of
+fourteen lines, and his description of Fame is about the same number.  He
+is blamed for both, and I doubt not but he would have contracted them had
+be lived to have reviewed his work; but faults are no precedents.  This I
+have observed of his similitudes in general—that they are not placed (as
+our unobserving critics tell us) in the heat of any action, but commonly
+in its declining; when he has warmed us in his description as much as
+possibly he can, then (lest that warmth should languish) he renews it by
+some apt similitude which illustrates his subject and yet palls not his
+audience.  I need give your lordship but one example of this kind, and
+leave the rest to your observation when next you review the whole “Æneis”
+in the original, unblemished by my rude translation; it is in the first
+hook, where the poet describes Neptune composing the ocean, on which
+Æolus had raised a tempest without his permission.  He had already
+chidden the rebellious winds for obeying the commands of their usurping
+master; he had warned them from the seas; he had beaten down the billows
+with his mace; dispelled the clouds, restored the sunshine, while Triton
+and Cymothoe were heaving the ships from off the quicksands, before the
+poet would offer at a similitude for illustration:—
+
+    “_Ac_, _veluti magno in populo cum sæpe coorta est_
+    _Seditio_, _sævitque animis ignobile vulgus_;
+    _Jamque faces_, _et saxa volant_; _furor arma ministrat_;
+    _Tum_, _pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
+    _Conspexere_, _silent_, _arrectisque auribus adstant_:
+    _Ille regit dictis animos_, _et pectora mulcet_:
+    _Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor_, _æquora postquam_
+    _Prospiciens genitor_, _coeloque invectus aperto_
+    _Flectit equos_, _curruque volans dat lora secundo_.”
+
+This is the first similitude which Virgil makes in this poem, and one of
+the longest in the whole, for which reason I the rather cite it.  While
+the storm was in its fury, any allusion had been improper; for the poet
+could have compared it to nothing more impetuous than itself;
+consequently he could have made no illustration.  If he could have
+illustrated, it had been an ambitious ornament out of season, and would
+have diverted our concernment (_nunc non erat his locus_), and therefore
+he deferred it to its proper place.
+
+These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the
+“Æneis” by the ancients or moderns.  As for the particular exceptions
+against this or that passage, Macrobius and Pontanus have answered them
+already.  If I desired to appear more learned than I am, it had been as
+easy for me to have taken their objections and solutions as it is for a
+country parson to take the expositions of the Fathers out of Junius and
+Tremellius, or not to have named the authors from whence I had them; for
+so Ruæus (otherwise a most judicious commentator on Virgil’s works) has
+used Pontanus, his greatest benefactor, of whom he is very silent, and I
+do not remember that he once cites him.
+
+What follows next is no objection; for that implies a fault, and it had
+been none in Virgil if he had extended the time of his action beyond a
+year—at least, Aristotle has set no precise limits to it.  Homer’s, we
+know, was within two months; Tasso; I am sure, exceeds not a summer, and
+if I examined him perhaps he might be reduced into a much less compass.
+Bossu leaves it doubtful whether Virgil’s action were within the year, or
+took up some months beyond it.  Indeed, the whole dispute is of no more
+concernment to the common reader than it is to a ploughman whether
+February this year had twenty-eight or twenty-nine days in it; but for
+the satisfaction of the more curious (of which number I am sure your
+lordship is one) I will translate what I think convenient out of Segrais,
+whom perhaps you have not read, for he has made it highly probable that
+the action of the “Æneis” began in the spring, and was not extended
+beyond the autumn; and we have known campaigns that have begun sooner and
+have ended later.
+
+Ronsard and the rest whom Segrais names, who are of opinion that the
+action of this poem takes up almost a year and half, ground their
+calculation thus:—Anchises died in Sicily at the end of winter or
+beginning of the spring.  Æneas, immediately after the interment of his
+father, puts to sea for Italy; he is surprised by the tempest described
+in the beginning of the first book; and there it is that the scene of the
+poem opens, and where the action must commence.  He is driven by this
+storm on the coasts of Africa; he stays at Carthage all that summer, and
+almost all the winter following; sets sail again for Italy just before
+the beginning of the spring; meets with contrary winds, and makes Sicily
+the second time.  This part of the action completes the year.  Then he
+celebrates the anniversary of his father’s funerals, and shortly after
+arrives at Cumes.  And from thence his time is taken up in his first
+treaty with Latinus; the overture of the war; the siege of his camp by
+Turnus; his going for succours to relieve it; his return; the raising of
+the siege by the first battle; the twelve days’ truce; the second battle;
+the assault of Laurentum, and the single fight with Turnus—all which,
+they say, cannot take up less than four or five months more, by which
+account we cannot suppose the entire action to be contained in a much
+less compass than a year and half.
+
+Segrais reckons another way, and his computation is not condemned by the
+learned Ruæus, who compiled and published the commentaries on our poet
+which we call the “Dauphin’s Virgil.”  He allows the time of year when
+Anchises died to be in the latter end of winter or the beginning of the
+spring; he acknowledges that when Æneas is first seen at sea afterwards,
+and is driven by the tempest on the coast of Africa, is the time when the
+action is naturally to begin; he confesses farther, that Æneas left
+Carthage in the latter end of winter, for Dido tells him in express
+terms, as an argument for his longer stay—
+
+    “_Quin etiam hiberno moliris sidere classem_.”
+
+But whereas Ronsard’s followers suppose that when Æneas had buried his
+father he set sail immediately for Italy (though the tempest drove him on
+the coast of Carthage), Segrais will by no means allow that supposition,
+but thinks it much more probable that he remained in Sicily till the
+midst of July or the beginning of August, at which time he places the
+first appearance of his hero on the sea, and there opens the action of
+the poem.  From which beginning, to the death of Turnus, which concludes
+the action, there need not be supposed above ten months of intermediate
+time; for arriving at Carthage in the latter end of summer, staying there
+the winter following, departing thence in the very beginning of the
+spring, making a short abode in Sicily the second time, landing in Italy,
+and making the war, may be reasonably judged the business but of ten
+months.  To this the Ronsardians reply that, having been for seven years
+before in quest of Italy, and having no more to do in Sicily than to
+inter his father—after that office was performed, what remained for him
+but without delay to pursue his first adventure?  To which Segrais
+answers that the obsequies of his father, according to the rites of the
+Greeks and Romans, would detain him for many days; that a longer time
+must be taken up in the re-fitting of his ships after so tedious a
+voyage, and in refreshing his weather-beaten soldiers on a friendly
+coast.  These indeed are but suppositions on both sides, yet those of
+Segrais seem better grounded; for the feast of Dido, when she entertained
+Æneas first, has the appearance of a summer’s night, which seems already
+almost ended, when he begins his story.  Therefore the love was made in
+autumn; the hunting followed properly, when the heats of that scorching
+country were declining.  The winter was passed in jollity, as the season
+and their love required; and he left her in the latter end of winter, as
+is already proved.  This opinion is fortified by the arrival of Æneas at
+the mouth of Tiber, which marks the season of the spring, that season
+being perfectly described by the singing of the birds saluting the dawn,
+and by the beauty of the place, which the poet seems to have painted
+expressly in the seventh Æneid:—
+
+    “_Aurora in roseis fulgebat lutea bigis_,
+    _Cùm venti posuere_ . . .
+    . . . _variæ circumque supraque_
+    _Assuetæ ripis volucres_, _et fluminis alveo_,
+    _Æthera mulcebant cantu_.”
+
+The remainder of the action required but three months more; for when
+Æneas went for succour to the Tuscans, he found their army in a readiness
+to march and wanting only a commander: so that, according to this
+calculation, the “Æneas” takes not up above a year complete, and may be
+comprehended in less compass.
+
+This, amongst other circumstances treated more at large by Segrais,
+agrees with the rising of Orion, which caused the tempest described in
+the beginning of the first book.  By some passages in the “Pastorals,”
+but more particularly in the “Georgics,” our poet is found to be an exact
+astronomer, according to the knowledge of that age.  Now Ilioneus, whom
+Virgil twice employs in embassies as the best speaker of the Trojans,
+attributes that tempest to Orion in his speech to Dido:—
+
+    “Cum subito assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion.”
+
+He must mean either the heliacal or achronical rising of that sign.  The
+heliacal rising of a constellation is when it comes from under the rays
+of the sun, and begins to appear before daylight.  The achronical rising,
+on the contrary, is when it appears at the close of day, and in
+opposition of the sun’s diurnal course.  The heliacal rising of Orion is
+at present computed to be about the 6th of July; and about that time it
+is that he either causes or presages tempests on the seas.
+
+Segrais has observed farther, that when Anna counsels Dido to stay Æneas
+during the winter, she speaks also of Orion:—
+
+    “_Dum pelago desævit hiems_, _et aquosus Orion_.”
+
+If therefore Ilioneus, according to our supposition, understand the
+heliacal rising of Orion, Anna must mean the achronical, which the
+different epithets given to that constellation seem to manifest.
+Ilioneus calls him _nimbosus_, Anna, _aquosus_.  He is tempestuous in the
+summer, when he rises heliacally; and rainy in the winter, when he rises
+achronically.  Your lordship will pardon me for the frequent repetition
+of these cant words, which I could not avoid in this abbreviation of
+Segrais, who, I think, deserves no little commendation in this new
+criticism.
+
+I have yet a word or two to say of Virgil’s machines, from my own
+observation of them.  He has imitated those of Homer, but not copied
+them.  It was established long before this time, in the Roman religion as
+well as in the Greek, that there were gods, and both nations for the most
+part worshipped the same deities, as did also the Trojans (from whom the
+Romans, I suppose, would rather be thought to derive the rites of their
+religion than from the Grecians, because they thought themselves
+descended from them).  Each of those gods had his proper office, and the
+chief of them their particular attendants.  Thus Jupiter had in propriety
+Ganymede and Mercury, and Juno had Iris.  It was not for Virgil, then, to
+Create new ministers; he must take what he found in his religion.  It
+cannot therefore be said that he borrowed them from Homer, any more than
+from Apollo, Diana, and the rest, whom he uses as he finds occasion for
+them, as the Grecian poet did; but he invents the occasions for which he
+uses them.  Venus, after the destruction of Troy, had gained Neptune
+entirely to her party; therefore we find him busy in the beginning of the
+“Æneis” to calm the tempest raised by Æolus, and afterwards conducting
+the Trojan fleet to Cumes in safety, with the loss only of their pilot,
+for whom he bargains.  I name those two examples—amongst a hundred which
+I omit—to prove that Virgil, generally speaking, employed his machines in
+performing those things which might possibly have been done without them.
+What more frequent than a storm at sea upon the rising of Orion?  What
+wonder if amongst so many ships there should one be overset, which was
+commanded by Orontes, though half the winds had not been there which
+Æolus employed?  Might not Palinurus, without a miracle, fall asleep and
+drop into the sea, having been over-wearied with watching, and secure of
+a quiet passage by his observation of the skies?  At least Æneas, who
+knew nothing of the machine of Somnus, takes it plainly in this sense:—
+
+    “_O nimium coelo et pelago confise sereno_,
+    _Nudus in ignotâ_, _Palinure_, _jacebis arenâ_.”
+
+But machines sometimes are specious things to amuse the reader, and give
+a colour of probability to things otherwise incredible; and, besides, it
+soothed the vanity of the Romans to find the gods so visibly concerned in
+all the actions of their predecessors.  We who are better taught by our
+religion, yet own every wonderful accident which befalls us for the best,
+to be brought to pass by some special providence of Almighty God, and by
+the care of guardian angels; and from hence I might infer that no heroic
+poem can be writ on the Epicurean principles, which I could easily
+demonstrate if there were need to prove it or I had leisure.
+
+When Venus opens the eyes of her son Æneas to behold the gods who
+combated against Troy in that fatal night when it was surprised, we share
+the pleasure of that glorious vision (which Tasso has not ill copied in
+the sacking of Jerusalem).  But the Greeks had done their business though
+neither Neptune, Juno, or Pallas had given them their divine assistance.
+The most crude machine which Virgil uses is in the episode of Camilla,
+where Opis by the command of her mistress kills Aruns.  The next is in
+the twelfth Æneid, where Venus cures her son Æneas.  But in the last of
+these the poet was driven to a necessity, for Turnus was to be slain that
+very day; and Æneas, wounded as he was, could not have engaged him in
+single combat unless his hurt had been miraculously healed and the poet
+had considered that the dittany which she brought from Crete could not
+have wrought so speedy an effect without the juice of ambrosia which she
+mingled with it.  After all, that his machine might not seem too violent,
+we see the hero limping after Turnus; the wound was skinned, but the
+strength of his thigh was not restored.  But what reason had our author
+to wound Æneas at so critical a time?  And how came the cuishes to be
+worse tempered than the rest of his armour, which was all wrought by
+Vulcan and his journeymen?  These difficulties are not easily to be
+solved without confessing that Virgil had not life enough to correct his
+work, though he had reviewed it and found those errors, which he resolved
+to mend; but being prevented by death, and not willing to leave an
+imperfect work behind him, he ordained by his last testament that his
+“Æneis” should be burned.  As for the death of Aruns, who was shot by a
+goddess, the machine was not altogether so outrageous as the wounding
+Mars and Venus by the sword of Diomede.  Two divinities, one would have
+thought, might have pleaded their prerogative of impassibility, or at
+least not have been wounded by any mortal hand.  Beside that, the ἴχωρ
+which they shed was so very like our common blood that it was not to be
+distinguished from it but only by the name and colour.  As for what
+Horace says in his “Art of Poetry,” that no machines are to be used
+unless on some extraordinary occasion—
+
+    “_Nec deus intersit_, _nisi dignus vindice nodus_”—
+
+that rule is to be applied to the theatre, of which he is then speaking,
+and means no more than this—that when the knot of the play is to be
+untied, and no other way is left for making the discovery, then, and not
+otherwise, let a god descend upon a rope, and clear the business to the
+audience.  But this has no relation to the machines which are used in an
+epic poem.
+
+In the last place, for the dira, or flying pest which, flapping on the
+shield of Turnus and fluttering about his head, disheartened him in the
+duel, and presaged to him his approaching death—I might have placed it
+more properly amongst the objections, for the critics who lay want of
+courage to the charge of Virgil’s hero quote this passage as a main proof
+of their assertion.  They say our author had not only secured him before
+the duel, but also in the beginning of it had given him the advantage in
+impenetrable arms and in his sword; for that of Turnus was not his own
+(which was forged by Vulcan for his father), but a weapon which he had
+snatched in haste, and by mistake, belonging to his charioteer Metiscus.
+That after all this Jupiter, who was partial to the Trojan, and
+distrustful of the event, though he had hung the balance and given it a
+jog of his hand to weigh down Turnus, thought convenient to give the
+Fates a collateral security by sending the screech-owl to discourage him;
+for which they quote these words of Virgil:—
+
+          “_Non me tua turbida virtus_
+    _Terret_, _ait_; _dii me terrent_, _et Jupiter hostis_.”
+
+In answer to which, I say that this machine is one of those which the
+poet uses only for ornament, and not out of necessity.  Nothing can be
+more beautiful or more poetical than his description of the three Diræ,
+or the setting of the balance, which our Milton has borrowed from him,
+but employed to a different end; for, first, he makes God Almighty set
+the scales for St. Gabriel and Satan, when he knew no combat was to
+follow; then he makes the good angel’s scale descend, and the devil’s
+mount—quite contrary to Virgil, if I have translated the three verses
+according to my author’s sense:—
+
+    “_Jupiter ipse duas æquota examine lances_
+    _Sustinet_, _et fata imponit diversa duorum_;
+    _Quem damnet labor_, _et quo vergat pondere letum_.”
+
+For I have taken these words _Quem damnet labor_ in the sense which
+Virgil gives them in another place (_Damnabis tu quoque votis_), to
+signify a prosperous event.  Yet I dare not condemn so great a genius as
+Milton; for I am much mistaken if he alludes not to the text in Daniel
+where Belshazzar was put into the balance and found too light.  This is
+digression, and I return to my subject.  I said above that these two
+machines of the balance and the Dira were only ornamental, and that the
+success of the duel had been the same without them; for when Æneas and
+Turnus stood fronting each other before the altar, Turnus looked
+dejected, and his colour faded in his face, as if he desponded of the
+victory before the fight; and not only he, but all his party, when the
+strength of the two champions was judged by the proportion of their
+limbs, concluded it was _impar pugna_, and that their chief was
+overmatched.  Whereupon Juturna, who was of the same opinion, took this
+opportunity to break the treaty and renew the war.  Juno herself had
+plainly told the nymph beforehand that her brother was to fight
+
+    “_Imparibus fatis_; _nec diis_, _nec viribus æquis_;”
+
+so that there was no need of an apparition to fright Turnus, he had the
+presage within himself of his impending destiny.  The Dira only served to
+confirm him in his first opinion, that it was his destiny to die in the
+ensuing combat.  And in this sense are those words of Virgil to be taken—
+
+          “_Non me tua turbida virtus_
+    _Terret_, _ait_; _dii me terrent_, _et Jupiter hostis_.”
+
+I doubt not but the adverb _solum_ is to be understood (“It is not your
+valour only that gives me this concernment, but I find also by this
+portent that Jupiter is my enemy”); for Turnus fled before, when his
+first sword was broken, till his sister supplied him with a better, which
+indeed he could not use because Æneas kept him at a distance with his
+spear.  I wonder Ruæus saw not this, where he charges his author so
+unjustly for giving Turnus a second sword to no purpose.  How could he
+fasten a blow or make a thrust, when he was not suffered to approach?
+Besides, the chief errand of the Dira was to warn Juturna from the field,
+for she could have brought the chariot again when she saw her brother
+worsted in the duel.  I might farther add that Æneas was so eager of the
+fight that he left the city, now almost in his possession, to decide his
+quarrel with Turnus by the sword; whereas Turnus had manifestly declined
+the combat, and suffered his sister to convey him as far from the reach
+of his enemy as she could.  I say, not only suffered her, but consented
+to it; for it is plain he knew her by these words:—
+
+    “_O soror_, _et dudum agnovi_, _cum prima per artem_
+    _Fædera turbasti_, _teque hæc in bella dedisti_;
+    _Et tunc necquicquam fallis dea_.”
+
+I have dwelt so long on this subject that I must contract what I have to
+say in reference to my translation, unless I would swell my preface into
+a volume, and make it formidable to your lordship, when you see so many
+pages yet behind.  And, indeed, what I have already written, either in
+justification or praise of Virgil, is against myself for presuming to
+copy in my coarse English the thoughts and beautiful expressions of this
+inimitable poet, who flourished in an age when his language was brought
+to its last perfection, for which it was particularly owing to him and
+Horace.  I will give your lordship my opinion that those two friends had
+consulted each other’s judgment wherein they should endeavour to excel;
+and they seem to have pitched on propriety of thought, elegance of words,
+and harmony of numbers.  According to this model, Horace wrote his odes
+and epodes; for his satires and epistles, being intended wholly for
+instruction, required another style—
+
+    “Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri”—
+
+and therefore, as he himself professes, are _sermoni propriora_ (nearer
+prose than verse).  But Virgil, who never attempted the lyric verse, is
+everywhere elegant, sweet, and flowing in his hexameters.  His words are
+not only chosen, but the places in which he ranks them for the sound; he
+who removes them from the station wherein their master sets them spoils
+the harmony.  What he says of the Sibyl’s prophecies may be as properly
+applied to every word of his—they must be read in order as they lie; the
+least breath discomposes them, and somewhat of their divinity is lost.  I
+cannot boast that I have been thus exact in my verses; but I have
+endeavoured to follow the example of my master, and am the first
+Englishman perhaps who made it his design to copy him in his numbers, his
+choice of words, and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound.  On
+this last consideration I have shunned the cæsura as much as possibly I
+could; for wherever that is used, it gives a roughness to the verse, of
+which we can have little need in a language which is overstocked with
+consonants.  Such is not the Latin where the vowels and consonants are
+mixed in proportion to each other; yet Virgil judged the vowels to have
+somewhat of an over-balance, and therefore tempers their sweetness with
+cæsuras.  Such difference there is in tongues that the same figure which
+roughens one, gives majesty to another; and that was it which Virgil
+studied in his verses.  Ovid uses it but rarely; and hence it is that his
+versification cannot so properly be called sweet as luscious.  The
+Italians are forced upon it once or twice in every line, because they
+have a redundancy of vowels in their language; their metal is so soft
+that it will not coin without alloy to harden it.  On the other side, for
+the reason already named, it is all we can do to give sufficient
+sweetness to our language; we must not only choose our words for
+elegance, but for sound—to perform which a mastery in the language is
+required; the poet must have a magazine of words, and have the art to
+manage his few vowels to the best advantage, that they may go the
+farther.  He must also know the nature of the vowels—which are more
+sonorous, and which more soft and sweet—and so dispose them as his
+present occasions require; all which, and a thousand secrets of
+versification beside, he may learn from Virgil, if he will take him for
+his guide.  If he be above Virgil, and is resolved to follow his own
+_verve_ (as the French call it), the proverb will fall heavily upon him:
+“Who teaches himself has a fool for his master.”
+
+Virgil employed eleven years upon his “Æneis,” yet he left it, as he
+thought himself, imperfect; which, when I seriously consider, I wish
+that, instead of three years which I have spent in the translation of his
+works, I had four years more allowed me to correct my errors, that I
+might make my version somewhat more tolerable than it is; for a poet
+cannot have too great a reverence for his readers if he expects his
+labours should survive him.  Yet I will neither plead my age nor sickness
+in excuse of the faults which I have made.  That I wanted time is all I
+have to say; for some of my subscribers grew so clamorous that I could no
+longer defer the publication.  I hope, from the candour of your lordship,
+and your often-experienced goodness to me, that if the faults are not too
+many you will make allowances, with Horace:—
+
+    “_Si plura nitent in carmine_, _non ego paucis_
+    _Offendar maculis_, _quas aut incuria fudit_,
+    _Aut humana parùm cavit natura_.”
+
+You may please also to observe that there is not, to the best of my
+remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a cæsura in this
+whole poem.  But where a vowel ends a word the next begins either with a
+consonant or what is its equivalent; for our _w_ and _h_ aspirate, and
+our diphthongs, are plainly such.  The greatest latitude I take is in the
+letter _y_ when it concludes a word and the first syllable of the next
+begins with a vowel.  Neither need I have called this a latitude, which
+is only an explanation of this general rule—that no vowel can be cut off
+before another when we cannot sink the pronunciation of it, as _he_,
+_she_, _me_, _I_, &c.  Virgil thinks it sometimes a beauty to imitate the
+licence of the Greeks, and leave two vowels opening on each other, as in
+that verse of the third pastoral—
+
+    “_Et succus pecori_, _et lac subducitur agnis_.”
+
+But _nobis non licet esse tam disertis_—at least, if we study to refine
+our numbers.  I have long had by me the materials of an English
+“Prosodia,” containing all the mechanical rules of versification, wherein
+I have treated with some exactness of the feet, the quantities, and the
+pauses.  The French and Italians know nothing of the two first—at least,
+their best poets have not practised them.  As for the pauses, Malherbe
+first brought them into France within this last century, and we see how
+they adorn their Alexandrines.  But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he
+leaves unsolved—
+
+    “_Dic quibus in terris_, _inscripti nomina regum_
+    _Nascantur flores_, _et Phyllida solus habeto_”—
+
+so I will give your lordship another, and leave the exposition of it to
+your acute judgment.  I am sure there are few who make verses have
+observed the sweetness of these two lines in “Cooper’s Hill”—
+
+    “Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
+    Strong without rage; without o’erflowing, full”—
+
+and there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness.  I
+have given it to some of my friends in conversation, and they have
+allowed the criticism to be just.  But since the evil of false quantities
+is difficult to be cured in any modern language; since the French and the
+Italians, as well as we, are yet ignorant what feet are to be used in
+heroic poetry; since I have not strictly observed those rules myself
+which I can teach others; since I pretend to no dictatorship among my
+fellow-poets; since, if I should instruct some of them to make
+well-running verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as
+sweetness; and, above all, since your lordship has advised me not to
+publish that little which I know, I look on your counsel as your command,
+which I shall observe inviolably till you shall please to revoke it and
+leave me at liberty to make my thoughts public.  In the meantime, that I
+may arrogate nothing to myself, I must acknowledge that Virgil in Latin
+and Spenser in English have been my masters.  Spenser has also given me
+the boldness to make use sometimes of his Alexandrine line, which we
+call, though improperly, the Pindaric, because Mr. Cowley has often
+employed it in his odes.  It adds a certain majesty to the verse when it
+is used with judgment, and stops the sense from overflowing into another
+line.  Formerly the French, like us and the Italians, had but five feet
+or ten syllables in their heroic verse; but since Ronsard’s time, as I
+suppose, they found their tongue too weak to support their epic poetry
+without the addition of another foot.  That indeed has given it somewhat
+of the run and measure of a trimetre, but it runs with more activity than
+strength.  Their language is not strong with sinews, like our English; it
+has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a
+mastiff.  Our men and our verses overbear them by their weight; and
+_pondere_, _non numero_ is the British motto.  The French have set up
+purity for the standard of their language; and a masculine vigour is that
+of ours.  Like their tongue is the genius of their poets, light and
+trifling in comparison of the English—more proper for sonnets, madrigals,
+and elegies than heroic poetry.  The turn on thoughts and words is their
+chief talent: but the epic poem is too stately to receive those little
+ornaments.  The painters draw their nymphs in thin and airy habits, but
+the weight of gold and of embroideries is reserved for queens and
+goddesses.  Virgil is never frequent in those turns, like Ovid, but much
+more sparing of them in his “Æneis” than in his Pastorals and Georgics.
+
+    “_Ignoscenda quidem_, _scirent si ignoscere manes_.”
+
+That turn is beautiful indeed; but he employs it in the story of Orpheus
+and Eurydice, not in his great poem.  I have used that licence in his
+“Æneis” sometimes, but I own it as my fault; it was given to those who
+understand no better.  It is like Ovid’s
+
+    “_Semivirumque bovem_, _semibovemque virum_.”
+
+The poet found it before his critics, but it was a darling sin which he
+would not be persuaded to reform.
+
+The want of genius, of which I have accused the French, is laid to their
+charge by one of their own great authors, though I have forgotten his
+name, and where I read it.  If rewards could make good poets, their great
+master has not been wanting on his part in his bountiful encouragements;
+for he is wise enough to imitate Augustus if he had a Maro.  The Triumvir
+and Proscriber had descended to us in a more hideous form than they now
+appear, if the emperor had not taken care to make friends of him and
+Horace.  I confess the banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon;
+yet he was only banished, and who knows but his crime was capital?  And
+then his exile was a favour.  Ariosto, who, with all his faults, must be
+acknowledged a great poet, has put these words into the mouth of an
+Evangelist; but whether they will pass for gospel now I cannot tell:—
+
+    “Non fu si santo ni benigno Augusto,
+    Come la tuba di Virgilio suona;
+    L’haver havuto in poesia buon gusto,
+    La proscrittione iniqua gli pardona.”
+
+But heroic poetry is not of the growth of France, as it might be of
+England if it were cultivated.  Spenser wanted only to have read the
+rules of Bossu, for no man was ever born with a greater genius or had
+more knowledge to support it.  But the performance of the French is not
+equal to their skill; and hitherto we have wanted skill to perform
+better.  Segrais, whose preface is so wonderfully good, yet is wholly
+destitute of elevation; though his version is much better than that of
+the two brothers, or any of the rest who have attempted Virgil.  Annibale
+Caro is a great name amongst the Italians, yet his translation of the
+“Æneis” is most scandalously mean, though he has taken the advantage of
+writing in blank verse, and freed himself from the shackles of modern
+rhyme—if it be modern; for Le Clerc has told us lately, and I believe has
+made it out, that David’s Psalms were written in as errant rhyme as they
+are translated.  Now if a Muse cannot run when she is unfettered, it is a
+sign she has but little speed.  I will not make a digression here, though
+I am strangely tempted to it, but will only say that he who can write
+well in rhyme may write better in blank verse.  Rhyme is certainly a
+constraint even to the best poets, and those who make it with most ease;
+though perhaps I have as little reason to complain of that hardship as
+any man, excepting Quarles and Withers.  What it adds to sweetness, it
+takes away from sense; and he who loses the least by it may be called a
+gainer; it often makes us swerve from an author’s meaning.  As if a mark
+he set up for an archer at a great distance, let him aim as exactly as he
+can, the least wind will take his arrow and divert it from the white.
+
+I return to our Italian translator of the “Æneis;” he is a foot-poet; he
+lackeys by the side of Virgil at the best, but never mounts behind him.
+Doctor Morelli, who is no mean critic in our poetry, and therefore may be
+presumed to be a better in his own language, has confirmed me in this
+opinion by his judgment, and thinks withal that he has often mistaken his
+master’s sense.  I would say so if I durst, but am afraid I have
+committed the same fault more often and more grossly; for I have forsaken
+Ruæus (whom generally I follow) in many places, and made expositions of
+my own in some, quite contrary to him, of which I will give but two
+examples, because they are so near each other in the tenth Æneid:—
+
+    “_Sorti pater æquus utrique_.”
+
+Pallas says it to Turnus just before they fight.  Ruæus thinks that the
+word _pater_ is to be referred to Evander, the father of Pallas; but how
+could he imagine that it was the same thing to Evander if his son were
+slain, or if he overcame?  The poet certainly intended Jupiter, the
+common father of mankind, who, as Pallas hoped, would stand an impartial
+spectator of the combat, and not be more favourable to Turnus than to
+him.  The second is not long after it, and both before the duel is begun.
+They are the words of Jupiter, who comforts Hercules for the death of
+Pallas, which was immediately to ensue, and which Hercules could not
+hinder, though the young hero had addressed his prayers to him for his
+assistance, because the gods cannot control destiny.  The verse follows—
+
+    “_Sic ait_; _atque oculos Rutulorum rejicit arvis_”—
+
+which the same Ruæus thus construes: “Jupiter, after he had said this,
+immediately turns his eyes to the Rutulian fields and beholds the duel.”
+I have given this place another exposition—that he turned his eyes from
+the field of combat that he might not behold a sight so unpleasing to
+him.  The word _rejicit_, I know, will admit of both senses; but Jupiter
+having confessed that he could not alter fate, and being grieved he could
+not in consideration of Hercules, it seems to me that he should avert his
+eyes rather than take pleasure in the spectacle.  But of this I am not so
+confident as the other, though I think I have followed Virgil’s sense.
+
+What I have said, though it has the face of arrogance, yet is intended
+for the honour of my country, and therefore I will boldly own that this
+English translation has more of Virgil’s spirit in it than either the
+French or the Italian.  Some of our countrymen have translated episodes
+and other parts of Virgil with great success; as particularly your
+lordship, whose version of Orpheus and Eurydice is eminently good.
+Amongst the dead authors, the Silenus of my Lord Rescommon cannot be too
+much commended.  I say nothing of Sir John Denham, Mr. Waller, and Mr.
+Cowley; it is the utmost of my ambition to be thought their equal, or not
+to be much inferior to them and some others of the living.  But it is one
+thing to take pains on a fragment and translate it perfectly, and another
+thing to have the weight of a whole author on my shoulders.  They who
+believe the burden light, let them attempt the fourth, sixth, or eighth
+Pastoral; the first or fourth Georgic; and, amongst the Æneids, the
+fourth, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh, or
+the twelfth, for in these I think I have succeeded best.
+
+Long before I undertook this work I was no stranger to the original.  I
+had also studied Virgil’s design, his disposition of it, his manners, his
+judicious management of the figures, the sober retrenchments of his
+sense, which always leaves somewhat to gratify our imagination, on which
+it may enlarge at pleasure; but, above all, the elegance of his
+expressions and the harmony of his numbers.  For, as I have said in a
+former dissertation, the words are in poetry what the colours are in
+painting.  If the design be good, and the draft be true, the colouring is
+the first beauty that strikes the eye.  Spenser and Milton are the
+nearest in English to Virgil and Horace in the Latin, and I have
+endeavoured to form my style by imitating their masters.  I will farther
+own to you, my lord, that my chief ambition is to please those readers
+who have discernment enough to prefer Virgil before any other poet in the
+Latin tongue.  Such spirits as he desired to please, such would I choose
+for my judges, and would stand or fall by them alone.  Segrais has
+distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of
+judging, into three classes (he might have said the same of writers, too,
+if he had pleased).  In the lowest form he places those whom he calls
+_les petits esprits_—such things as are our upper-gallery audience in a
+playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit; prefer a
+quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
+expression.  These are mob-readers.  If Virgil and Martial steed for
+Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it.  But though they make
+the greatest appearance in the field, and cry the loudest, the best of it
+is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought ever
+in herds, but not naturalised, who have not land of two pounds per annum
+in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll.  Their authors
+are of the same level; fit to represent them on a mountebank’s stage, or
+to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden.  Yet these are they who
+have the most admirers.  But it often happens, to their mortification,
+that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by
+reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment), they
+soon forsake them; and when the torrent from the mountains falls no more,
+the swelling writer is reduced into his shallow bed, like the Mançanares
+at Madrid, with scarce water to moisten his own pebbles.  There are a
+middle sort of readers (as we held there is a middle state of souls),
+such as have a farther insight than the former, yet have not the capacity
+of judging right; for I speak not of those who are bribed by a party, and
+knew better if they were not corrupted, but I mean a company of warm
+young men, who are not yet arrived so far as to discern the difference
+betwixt fustian or ostentations sentences and the true sublime.  These
+are above liking Martial or Owen’s epigrams, but they would certainly set
+Virgil below Statius or Lucan.  I need not say their poets are of the
+same paste with their admirers.  They affect greatness in all they write,
+but it is a bladdered greatness, like that of the vain man whom Seneca
+describes an ill habit of body, full of humours, and swelled with dropsy.
+Even these, too, desert their authors as their judgment ripens.  The
+young gentlemen themselves are commonly misled by their pedagogue at
+school, their tutor at the university, or their governor in their
+travels, and many of these three sorts are the most positive blockheads
+in the world.  How many of these flatulent writers have I known who have
+sunk in their reputation after seven or eight editions of their works!
+for indeed they are poets only for young men.  They had great success at
+their first appearance, but not being of God, as a wit said formerly,
+they could not stand.
+
+I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for neither of
+them, and by his example I am not ambitious of pleasing the lowest or the
+middle form of readers.  He chose to please the most judicious souls, of
+the highest rank and truest understanding.  These are few in number; but
+whoever is so happy as to gain their approbation can never lose it,
+because they never give it blindly.  Then they have a certain magnetism
+in their judgment which attracts others to their sense.  Every day they
+gain some new proselyte, and in time become the Church.  For this reason
+a well-weighed judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no
+more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than
+much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking
+of the reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every
+time he takes it up he discovers some new graces in it.  And whereas
+poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a gloss
+upon them at the first (which time wears off), the works of judgment are
+like the diamond, the more they are polished the more lustre they
+receive.  Such is the difference betwixt Virgil’s “Æneis” and Marini’s
+“Adone.”  And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say
+that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes:—
+
+    “_Mobilitate viget_, _viresque acquirit eundo_.”
+
+Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree,
+according to my motto in the title-page—_sequiturque patrem non passibus
+æquis_—and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like
+that of the peers, of which your lordship is so great an ornament.
+
+Without this ambition which I own, of desiring to please the _judices
+natos_, I could never have been able to have done anything at this age,
+when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men.  Yet
+Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement; when he
+was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him.  And we
+find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour (_nec dona
+moror_); for Dampier has informed us in his “Voyages” that the air of the
+country which produces gold is never wholesome.
+
+I had long since considered that the way to please the best judges is not
+to translate a poet literally, and Virgil least of any other; for his
+peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by
+the narrow compass of our heroic verse, unless I would make use of
+monosyllables only, and these clogged with consonants, which are the dead
+weight of our mother tongue.  It is possible, I confess, though it rarely
+happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some
+examples of it I have seen.  My first line of the “Æneis” is not harsh—
+
+    “Arms, and the man I sing, who forced by Fate,” &c.—
+
+but a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius,
+made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech—
+
+    “Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame”—
+
+where the many liquid consonants are placed so artfully that they give a
+pleasing sound to the words, though they are all of one syllable.  It is
+true, I have been sometimes forced upon it in other places of this work,
+but I never did it out of choice: I was either in haste, or Virgil gave
+me no occasion for the ornament of words; for it seldom happens but a
+monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and
+unharmonious.  Philarchus, I remember, taxes Balzac for placing twenty
+monosyllables in file without one dissyllable betwixt them.
+
+The way I have taken is not so strait as metaphrase, nor so loose as
+paraphrase; some things, too, I have omitted, and sometimes have added of
+my own.  Yet the omissions, I hope, are but of circumstances, and such as
+would have no grace in English; and the additions, I also hope, are
+easily deduced from Virgil’s sense.  They will seem (at least, I have the
+vanity to think so), not stuck into him, but growing out of him.  He
+studies brevity more than any other poet; but he had the advantage of a
+language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space.  We and all
+the modern tongues have more articles and pronouns, besides signs of
+tenses and cases, and other barbarities on which our speech is built, by
+the faults of our forefathers.  The Romans founded theirs upon the Greek;
+and the Greeks, we know, were labouring many hundred years upon their
+language before they brought it to perfection.  They rejected all those
+signs, and cut off as many articles as they could spare, comprehending in
+one word what we are constrained to express in two; which is one reason
+why we cannot write so concisely as they have done.  The word _pater_,
+for example, signifies not only “a father,” but “your father,” “my
+father,” “his or her father”—all included in a word.
+
+This inconvenience is common to all modern tongues, and this alone
+constrains us to employ more words than the ancients needed.  But having
+before observed that Virgil endeavours to be short, and at the same time
+elegant, I pursue the excellence and forsake the brevity.  For there he
+is like ambergris, a rich perfume, but of so close and glutinous a body
+that it must be opened with inferior scents of musk or civet, or the
+sweetness will not be drawn out into another language.
+
+On the whole matter I thought fit to steer betwixt the two extremes of
+paraphrase and literal translation; to keep as near my author as I could
+without losing all his graces, the most eminent of which are in the
+beauty of his words: and those words, I must add, are always figurative.
+Such of these as would retain their elegance in our tongue, I have
+endeavoured to graff on it; but most of them are of necessity to be lest,
+because they will not shine in any but their own.  Virgil has sometimes
+two of them in a line; but the scantiness of our heroic verse is not
+capable of receiving more than one; and that, too, must expiate for many
+others which have none.  Such is the difference of the languages, or such
+my want of skill in choosing words.  Yet I may presume to say, and I hope
+with as much reason as the French translator, that, taking all the
+materials of this divine author, I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak
+such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in
+England and in this present age.  I acknowledge, with Segrais, that I
+have not succeeded in this attempt according to my desire; yet I shall
+not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I may be allowed to have
+copied the clearness, the purity, the easiness, and the magnificence of
+his style.  But I shall have occasion to speak farther on this subject
+before I end the preface.
+
+When I mentioned the Pindaric line, I should have added that I take
+another licence in my verses; for I frequently make use of triplet
+rhymes, and for the same reason—because they bound the sense.  And
+therefore I generally join these two licences together, and make the last
+verse of the triplet a Pindaric; for besides the majesty which it gives,
+it confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would
+languish if it were lengthened into four.  Spenser is my example for both
+these privileges of English verses; and Chapman has followed him in his
+translation of Homer.  Mr. Cowley has given in to them after both; and
+all succeeding writers after him.  I regard them now as the _Magna
+Charta_ of heroic poetry; and am too much an Englishman to lose what my
+ancestors have gained for me.  Let the French and Italians value
+themselves on their regularity; strength and elevation are our standard.
+I said before, and I repeat it, that the affected purity of the French
+has unsinewed their heroic verse.  The language of an epic poem is almost
+wholly figurative; yet they are so fearful of a metaphor that no example
+of Virgil can encourage them to be bold with safety.  Sure, they might
+warm themselves by that sprightly blaze, without approaching it so close
+as to singe their wings; they may come as near it as their master.  Not
+that I would discourage that purity of diction in which he excels all
+other poets; but he knows how far to extend his franchises, and advances
+to the verge without venturing a foot beyond it.  On the other side,
+without being injurious to the memory of our English Pindar, I will
+presume to say that his metaphors are sometimes too violent, and his
+language is not always pure.  But at the same time I must excuse him, for
+through the iniquity of the times he was forced to travel at an age when,
+instead of learning foreign languages, he should have studied the
+beauties of his mother tongue, which, like all other speeches, is to be
+cultivated early, or we shall never write it with any kind of elegance.
+Thus by gaining abroad he lost at home, like the painter in the
+“Arcadia,” who, going to see a skirmish, had his arms lopped off, and
+returned, says Sir Philip Sidney, well instructed how to draw a battle,
+but without a hand to perform his work.
+
+There is another thing in which I have presumed to deviate from him and
+Spenser.  They both make hemistichs, or half-verses, breaking off in the
+middle of a line.  I confess there are not many such in the “Faërie
+Queen,” and even those few might be occasioned by his unhappy choice of
+so long a stanza.  Mr. Cowley had found out that no kind of staff is
+proper for an heroic poem, as being all too lyrical; yet though he wrote
+in couplets, where rhyme is freer from constraint, he frequently affects
+half-verses, of which we find not one in Homer, and I think not in any of
+the Greek poets or the Latin, excepting only Virgil: and there is no
+question but he thought he had Virgil’s authority for that licence.  But
+I am confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a
+precedent; and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we find
+no example of a hemistich in any of his Pastorals or Georgics, for he had
+given the last finishing strokes to both these poems; but his “Æneis” he
+left so incorrect, at least so short of that perfection at which he
+aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he passed upon it.  And, in the
+second place, I reasonably presume that he intended to have filled up all
+these hemistichs, because in one of them we find the sense imperfect:—
+
+    “_Quem tibi jam Troja_ . . . ” (“Æn.” iii. 340.)
+
+which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half-line of
+nonsense:—
+
+    “_Peperit fumante Creusa_.”
+
+For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of that
+city, which I need not prove.  On the other side we find also that he
+himself filled up one line in the sixth Æneid, the enthusiasm seizing him
+while he was reading to Augustus:—
+
+    “_Misenum Æolidem_, _quo non præstantior alter_
+    _Ære ciere viros_, . . . ”
+
+to which he added in that transport, _Martemque accendare cantu_, and
+never was any line more nobly finished, for the reasons which I have
+given in the “Book of Painting.”
+
+On these considerations I have shunned hemistichs, not being willing to
+imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander’s courtiers, who affected to
+hold their necks awry because he could not help it.  I am confident your
+lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that you will look on those
+half-lines hereafter as the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the
+frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part
+a lump of unformed, unanimated mud.
+
+I am sensible that many of my whole verses are as imperfect as those
+halves, for want of time to digest them better.  But give me leave to
+make the excuse of Boccace, who, when he was upbraided that some of his
+novels had not the spirit of the rest, returned this answer: that
+Charlemagne, who made the Paladins, was never able to raise an army of
+them.  The leaders may be heroes, but the multitude must consist of
+common men.
+
+I am also bound to tell your lordship, in my own defence, that from the
+beginning of the first Georgic to the end of the last Æneid, I found the
+difficulty of translation growing on me in every succeeding book.  For
+Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost
+inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words.  I, who
+inherit but a small portion of his genius, and write in a language so
+much inferior to the Latin, have found it very painful to vary phrases
+when the same sense returns upon me.  Even he himself, whether out of
+necessity or choice, has often expressed the same thing in the same
+words, and often repeated two or three whole verses which he had used
+before.  Words are not so easily coined as money; and yet we see that the
+credit not only of banks, but of exchequers, cracks when little comes in
+and much goes out.  Virgil called upon me in every line for some new
+word, and I paid so long that I was almost bankrupt; so that the latter
+end must needs be more burthensome than the beginning or the middle; and
+consequently the twelfth Æneid cost me double the time of the first and
+second.  What had become of me, if Virgil had taxed me with another book?
+I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in hammered money for want
+of milled; that is, in the same old words which I had used before; and
+the receivers must have been forced to have taken anything, where there
+was so little to be had.
+
+Besides this difficulty with which I have struggled and made a shift to
+pass it ever, there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all
+translators.  We are bound to our author’s sense, though with the
+latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred as that one
+iota must not be added or diminished, on pain of an anathema.  But slaves
+we are, and labour on another man’s plantation; we dress the vineyard,
+but the wine is the owner’s.  If the soil be sometimes barren, then we
+are sure of being scourged; if it be fruitful, and our care succeeds, we
+are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say—the poor drudge has
+done his duty.  But this is nothing to what follows; for being obliged to
+make his sense intelligible, we are forced to untune our own verses that
+we may give his meaning to the reader.  He who invents is master of his
+thoughts and words: he can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he
+renders them harmonious.  But the wretched translator has no such
+privilege, for being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can
+in the expression; and for this reason it cannot always be so sweet as
+that of the original.  There is a beauty of sound, as Segrais has
+observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern
+language.  He instances in that _mollis amaracus_, on which Venus lays
+Cupid in the first Æneid.  If I should translate it sweet-marjoram, as
+the word signifies, the reader would think I had mistaken Virgil; for
+these village-words, as I may call them, give us a mean idea of the
+thing; but the sound of the Latin is so much more pleasing, by the just
+mixture of the vowels with the consonants, that it raises our fancies to
+conceive somewhat more noble than a common herb, and to spread roses
+under him, and strew lilies over him—a bed not unworthy the grandson of
+the goddess.
+
+If I cannot copy his harmonious numbers, how shall I imitate his noble
+flights, where his thoughts and words are equally sublime?  _Quem_
+
+    “ . . . _quisquis studet æmulari_,
+    . . . _cæratis ope Dedaleâ_
+    _Nititur pennis_, _vitreo daturus_
+          _Nomina ponto_.”
+
+What modern language or what poet can express the majestic beauty of this
+one verse, amongst a thousand others?
+
+    “_Aude_, _hospes_, _contemnere opes_, _et te quoque dignum_
+    _Finge Deo_ . . . ”
+
+For my part, I am lost in the admiration of it.  I contemn the world when
+I think on it, and myself when I translate it.
+
+Lay by Virgil, I beseech your lordship and all my better sort of judges,
+when you take up my version, and it will appear a passable beauty when
+the original muse is absent; but like Spenser’s false Florimel, made of
+snow, it melts and vanishes when the true one comes in sight.
+
+I will not excuse, but justify, myself for one pretended crime with which
+I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this translation,
+but in many of my original poems—that I Latinise too much.  It is true,
+that when I find an English word significant and sounding, I neither
+borrow from the Latin nor any other language; but when I want at home, I
+must seek abroad.  If sounding words are not of our growth and
+manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country?
+I carry not out the treasure of the nation which is never to return, but
+what I bring from Italy I spend in England.  Here it remains and here it
+circulates, for if the coin be good it will pass from one hand to
+another.  I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of
+our native language.  We have enough in England to supply our necessity;
+but if we will have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get
+them by commerce.  Poetry requires ornament, and that is not to be had
+from our old Teuton monosyllables; therefore, if I find any elegant word
+in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalised by using it myself;
+and if the public approves of it, the bill passes.  But every man cannot
+distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry; every man, therefore, is not fit
+to innovate.
+
+Upon the whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he
+would introduce is beautiful in the Latin; and is to consider, in the
+next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom.  After this he
+ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in
+both languages; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him use this
+licence very sparingly; for if too many foreign words are poured in upon
+us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives, but to
+conquer them.
+
+I am now drawing towards a conclusion, and suspect your lordship is very
+glad of it.  But permit me first to own what helps I have had in this
+undertaking.  The late Earl of Lauderdale sent me over his new
+translation of the “Æneis,” which he had ended before I engaged in the
+same design.  Neither did I then intend it; but some proposals being
+afterwards made me by my bookseller, I desired his lordship’s leave that
+I might accept them, which he freely granted, and I have his letter yet
+to show for that permission.  He resolved to have printed his work, which
+he might have done two years before I could publish mine; and had
+performed it, if death had not prevented him.  But having his manuscript
+in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author’s sense,
+for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman.  His
+friends, I hear, have yet another and more correct copy of that
+translation by them, which had they pleased to have given the public, the
+judges must have been convinced that I have not flattered him.
+
+Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, Mr. Congreve has done me
+the favour to review the “Æneis,” and compare my version with the
+original.  I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man
+has shown me many faults, which I have endeavoured to correct.  It is
+true he might have easily found more, and then my translation had been
+more perfect.
+
+Two other worthy friends of mine, who desire to have their names
+concealed, seeing me straitened in my time, took pity on me and gave me
+the life of Virgil, the two prefaces—to the Pastorals and the
+Georgics—and all the arguments in prose to the whole translation; which
+perhaps has caused a report that the two first poems are not mine.  If it
+had been true that I had taken their verses for my own, I might have
+gloried in their aid; and like Terence, have farthered the opinion that
+Scipio and Lælius joined with me.  But the same style being continued
+through the whole, and the same laws of versification observed, are
+proofs sufficient that this is one man’s work; and your lordship is too
+well acquainted with my manner to doubt that any part of it is another’s.
+
+That your lordship may see I was in earnest when I premised to hasten to
+an end, I will not give the reasons why I writ not always in the proper
+terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession.  I
+will only say that Virgil has avoided these proprieties, because he writ
+not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, &c., but to
+all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality,
+who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in the terms.  In
+such cases, it is enough for a poet to write so plainly that he may be
+understood by his readers; to avoid impropriety, and not affect to be
+thought learned in all things.
+
+I have emitted the four preliminary lines of the first Æneid, because I
+think them inferior to any four others in the whole poem; and
+consequently believe they are not Virgil’s.  There is too great a gap
+betwixt the adjective _vicina_ in the second line, and the substantive
+_arva_ in the latter end of the third; which keeps his meaning in
+obscurity too long, and is contrary to the clearness of his style.  _Ut
+quamvis avido_ is too ambitious an ornament to be his, and _gratum opus
+agricolis_ are all words unnecessary, and independent of what he had said
+before.  _Horrentia Martis arma_ is worse than any of the rest.
+_Horrentia_ is such a flat epithet as Tully would have given us in his
+verses.  It is a mere filler to stop a vacancy in the hexameter, and
+connect the preface to the work of Virgil.
+
+Our author seems to sound a charge, and begins like the clangour of a
+trumpet:—
+
+    “_Arma_, _virumque cano_, _Trojæ qui primus ab oris_,”—
+
+Scarce a word without an _r_, and the vowels for the greater part
+sonorous.  The prefacer began with _Ille ego_, which he was constrained
+to patch up in the fourth line with _at nunc_ to make the sense cohere;
+and if both those words are not notorious botches I am much deceived,
+though the French translator thinks otherwise.  For my own part, I am
+rather of the opinion that they were added by Tucca and Varius, than
+retrenched.
+
+I know it may be answered by such as think Virgil the author of the four
+lines—that he asserts his title to the “Æneis” in the beginning of this
+work, as he did to the two former, in the last lines of the fourth
+Georgic.  I will not reply otherwise to this, than by desiring them to
+compare these four lines with the four others, which we know are his,
+because no poet but he alone could write them.  If they cannot
+distinguish creeping from flying, let them lay down Virgil, and take up
+Ovid de Ponto in his stead.  My master needed not the assistance of that
+preliminary poet to prove his claim: his own majestic mien discovers him
+to be the king amidst a thousand courtiers.  It was a superfluous office,
+and therefore I would not set those verses in the front of Virgil; but
+have rejected them to my own preface:
+
+    “I, who before, with shepherds in the groves,
+    Sung to my oaten pipe their rural loves,
+    And issuing thence, compelled the neighb’ring field
+    A plenteous crop of rising corn to yield;
+    Manured the glebe, and stocked the fruitful plain
+    (A poem grateful to the greedy swain),” &c.
+
+If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the prefacer gave me
+no occasion to write better.  This is a just apology in this place; but I
+have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole translation.  Want of time,
+the inferiority of our language, the inconvenience of rhyme, and all the
+other excuses I have made, may alleviate my fault, but cannot justify the
+boldness of my undertaking.  What avails it me to acknowledge freely that
+I have not been able to do him right in any line?  For even my own
+confession makes against me; and it will always be returned upon me,
+“Why, then, did you attempt it?”  To which no other answer can be made,
+than that I have done him less injury than any of his former libellers.
+
+What they called his picture had been drawn at length so many times by
+the daubers of almost all nations, and still so unlike him, that I
+snatched up the pencil with disdain, being satisfied beforehand that I
+could make some small resemblance of him, though I must be content with a
+worse likeness.  A sixth Pastoral, a Pharmaceutria, a single Orpheus, and
+some other features have been exactly taken.  But those holiday authors
+writ for pleasure, and only showed us what they could have done if they
+would have taken pains to perform the whole.
+
+Be pleased, my lord, to accept with your wonted goodness this unworthy
+present which I make you.  I have taken off one trouble from you, of
+defending it, by acknowledging its imperfections; and though some part of
+them are covered in the verse (as Ericthonius rode always in a chariot to
+hide his lameness), such of them as cannot be concealed you will please
+to connive at, though in the strictness of your judgment you cannot
+pardon.  If Homer was allowed to nod sometimes, in so long a work it will
+be no wonder if I often fall asleep.  You took my “Aurengzebe” into your
+protection with all his faults; and I hope here cannot be so many,
+because I translate an author who gives me such examples of correctness.
+What my jury may be I know not; but it is good for a criminal to plead
+before a favourable judge: if I had said partial, would your lordship
+have forgiven me?  Or will you give me leave to acquaint the world that I
+have many times been obliged to your bounty since the Revolution?  Though
+I never was reduced to beg a charity, nor ever had the impudence to ask
+one, either of your lordship or your noble kinsman the Earl of Dorset,
+much less of any other, yet when I least expected it you have both
+remembered me, so inherent it is in your family not to forget an old
+servant.  It looks rather like ingratitude on my part, that where I have
+been so often obliged, I have appeared so seldom to return my thanks, and
+where I was also so sure of being well received.  Somewhat of laziness
+was in the case, and somewhat too of modesty; but nothing of disrespect
+or of unthankfulness.  I will not say that your lordship has encouraged
+me to this presumption, lest, if my labours meet with no success in
+public, I may expose your judgment to be censured.  As for my own
+enemies, I shall never think them worth an answer; and if your lordship
+has any, they will not dare to arraign you for want of knowledge in this
+art till they can produce somewhat better of their own than your “Essay
+on Poetry.”  It was on this consideration that I have drawn out my
+preface to so great a length.  Had I not addressed to a poet and a critic
+of the first magnitude, I had myself been taxed for want of judgment, and
+shamed my patron for want of understanding.  But neither will you, my
+lord, so soon be tired as any other, because the discourse is on your
+art; neither will the learned reader think it tedious, because it is _ad
+Clerum_: at least, when he begins to be weary, the church doors are open.
+That I may pursue the allegory with a short prayer after a long sermon.
+
+May you live happily and long for the service of your country, the
+encouragement of good letters and the ornament of poetry, which cannot be
+wished more earnestly by any man than by
+
+                       Your Lordship’s most humble,
+
+                                                     Most obliged and most
+                                                         Obedient servant,
+
+                                                              JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+WHAT Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age (in plenty and at ease) I have
+undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants,
+oppressed by sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in
+all I write; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already
+prejudiced against me by the lying character which has been given them of
+my morals.  Yet steady to my principles, and not dispirited with my
+afflictions, I have, by the blessing of God on my endeavours, overcome
+all difficulties; and, in some measure, acquitted myself of the debt
+which I owed the public when I undertook this work.  In the first place,
+therefore, I thankfully acknowledge to the Almighty Power the assistance
+He has given me in the beginning, the prosecution, and conclusion of my
+present studies, which are more happily performed than I could have
+promised to myself when I laboured under such discouragements.  For what
+I have done, imperfect as it is for want of health and leisure to correct
+it, will be judged in after-ages, and possibly in the present, to be no
+dishonour to my native country, whose language and poetry would be more
+esteemed abroad if they were better understood.  Somewhat (give me leave
+to say) I have added to both of them in the choice of words and harmony
+of numbers, which were wanting, especially the last, in all our poets;
+even in those who being endued with genius yet have not cultivated their
+mother-tongue with sufficient care, or, relying on the beauty of their
+thoughts, have judged the ornament of words and sweetness of sound
+unnecessary.  One is for raking in Chaucer (our English Ennius) for
+antiquated words, which are never to be revived but when sound or
+significancy is wanting in the present language.  But many of his deserve
+not this redemption any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are
+slain for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life if a wish
+could revive them.  Others have no ear for verse, nor choice of words,
+nor distinction of thoughts, but mingle farthings with their gold to make
+up the sum.  Here is a field of satire opened to me, but since the
+Revolution I have wholly renounced that talent.  For who would give
+physic to the great, when he is uncalled, to do his patient no good and
+endanger himself for his prescription?  Neither am I ignorant but I may
+justly be condemned for many of these faults of which I have too
+liberally arraigned others:
+
+          “_Cynthius aurem_
+    _Vellit_, _et admonuit_.”
+
+It is enough for me if the government will let me pass unquestioned.  In
+the meantime I am obliged in gratitude to return my thanks to many of
+them, who have not only distinguished me from others of the same party by
+a particular exception of grace, but without considering the man have
+been bountiful to the poet, have encouraged Virgil to speak such English
+as I could teach him, and rewarded his interpreter for the pains he has
+taken in bringing him over into Britain by defraying the charges of his
+voyage.  Even Cerberus, when he had received the sop, permitted Æneas to
+pass freely to Elysium.  Had it been offered me and I had refused it, yet
+still some gratitude is due to such who were willing to oblige me.  But
+how much more to those from whom I have received the favours which they
+have offered to one of a different persuasion; amongst whom I cannot omit
+naming the Earls of Derby and of Peterborough.  To the first of these I
+have not the honour to be known, and therefore his liberality [was] as
+much unexpected as it was undeserved.  The present Earl of Peterborough
+has been pleased long since to accept the tenders of my service: his
+favours are so frequent to me that I receive them almost by prescription.
+No difference of interests or opinion has been able to withdraw his
+protection from me, and I might justly be condemned for the most
+unthankful of mankind if I did not always preserve for him a most
+profound respect and inviolable gratitude.  I must also add that if the
+last Æneid shine amongst its fellows, it is owing to the commands of Sir
+William Trumbull, one of the principal Secretaries of State, who
+recommended it, as his favourite, to my care; and for his sake
+particularly I have made it mine.  For who would confess weariness when
+he enjoined a fresh labour?  I could not but invoke the assistance of a
+muse for this last office:—
+
+    “_Extremum hunc_, _Arethusa_; . . .
+    . . . _neget quis carmina Gallo_?”
+
+Neither am I to forget the noble present which was made me by Gilbert
+Dolben, Esq., the worthy son of the late Archbishop of York, who (when I
+began this work) enriched me with all the several editions of Virgil and
+all the commentaries of those editions in Latin, amongst which I could
+not but prefer the Dauphin’s as the last, the shortest, and the most
+judicious.  Fabrini I had also sent me from Italy, but either he
+understands Virgil very imperfectly or I have no knowledge of my author.
+
+Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir William Bowyer, to Denham
+Court, I translated the first Georgic at his house and the greatest part
+of the last Æneid.  A more friendly entertainment no man ever found.  No
+wonder, therefore, if both these versions surpass the rest; and own the
+satisfaction I received in his converse, with whom I had the honour to be
+bred in Cambridge, and in the same college.  The seventh Æneid was made
+English at Burghley, the magnificent abode of the Earl of Exeter.  In a
+village belonging to his family I was born, and under his roof I
+endeavoured to make that Æneid appear in English with as much lustre as I
+could, though my author has not given the finishing strokes either to it
+or to the eleventh, as I perhaps could prove in both if I durst presume
+to criticise my master.
+
+By a letter from William Walsh, Esq., of Abberley (who has so long
+honoured me with his friendship, and who, without flattery, is the best
+critic of our nation), I have been informed that his Grace the Duke of
+Shrewsbury has procured a printed copy of the Pastorals, Georgics, and
+six first Æneids from my bookseller, and has read them in the country
+together with my friend.  This noble person (having been pleased to give
+them a commendation which I presume not to insert) has made me vain
+enough to boast of so great a favour, and to think I have succeeded
+beyond my hopes; the character of his excellent judgment, the acuteness
+of his wit, and his general knowledge of good letters, being known as
+well to all the world as the sweetness of his disposition, his humanity,
+his easiness of access, and desire of obliging those who stand in need of
+his protection are known to all who have approached him, and to me in
+particular, who have formerly had the honour of his conversation.
+Whoever has given the world the translation of part of the third Georgic
+(which he calls “The Power of Love”) has put me to sufficient pains to
+make my own not inferior to his; as my Lord Roscommon’s “Silenus” had
+formerly given me the same trouble.  The most ingenious Mr. Addison, of
+Oxford, has also been as troublesome to me as the other two, and on the
+same account; after his bees my latter swarm is scarcely worth the
+hiving.  Mr. Cowley’s praise of a country life is excellent, but it is
+rather an imitation of Virgil than a version.  That I have recovered in
+some measure the health which I had lost by too much application to this
+work, is owing (next to God’s mercy) to the skill and care of Dr.
+Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs (the two ornaments of their profession), whom I
+can only pay by this acknowledgment.  The whole faculty has always been
+ready to oblige me, and the only one of them who endeavoured to defame me
+had it not in his power.  I desire pardon from my readers for saying so
+much in relation to myself which concerns not them; and with my
+acknowledgments to all my subscribers, have only to add that the few
+notes which follow are _par manière d’acquit_, because I had obliged
+myself by articles to do somewhat of that kind.  These scattering
+observations are rather guesses at my author’s meaning in some passages
+than proofs that so he meant.  The unlearned may have recourse to any
+poetical dictionary in English for the names of persons, places, or
+fables, which the learned need not, but that little which I say is either
+new or necessary, and the first of these qualifications never fails to
+invite a reader, if not to please him.
+
+
+
+
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