Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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 readers 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.[43] A miserable clench, in my opinion, for Horace to record: I have heard honest Mr Swan[44] 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 II. 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 chuse 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 it is 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 that 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, flavâque 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 quivers and the arrows, as the badges of his satire, and the golden belt, and the diamond button;

_Tertius Argolico hoc clypeo contentus abito._

And let Persius, the last of the first three worthies, be contented with this Grecian shield, and with victory, not only over all the Grecians, who were ignorant of the Roman satire, but over all the moderns in succeeding ages, excepting Boileau and your lordship.

And thus I have given the history of Satire, and 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 condita_ CCCCCXIV. I have since desired my learned friend, Mr Maidwell,[45] 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's 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, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli._

This is that in which I have made bold to differ from Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics,--that not Ennius, but Andronicus was the first, who, by the _Archæa Comoedia_ 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_[46] 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 a-foot, with his pad in his hand, for his own pleasure; but let not them be accounted no poets, who chuse 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 Æneid? Certainly he has, and for the better: for Virgil's age was more civilized, 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 tragi-comedy, there is to be but one main design; and though there be an underplot, or second walk of comical characters and adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried along under it, and helping to it; so that the drama may not seem a monster with two heads. Thus, the Copernican system of the planets makes the moon to be moved by the motion of the earth, and carried about her orb, as a dependent of her's. 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 quodvis simplex duntaxat et unum_; yet he seems not much to mind it in his Satires, many of them consisting of more arguments than one; and the second without dependence on the first. Casaubon has 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 fruit 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, altogether, may complete that _olla_, or hotchpotch, which is properly a satire.

Under this unity of theme, or subject, is comprehended another rule for perfecting the design of true satire. The poet is bound, and that _ex officio_, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue, and to caution him against some one particular vice or folly. Other virtues, subordinate to the first, may be recommended under that chief head; and other vices or follies may be 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 stoick; 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 every where 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 farther 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 aukwardly 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 make 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.[47] 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 before-hand, 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 "Secchia 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,[48] 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; Hyrcanæque admorûnt ubera tigres_:

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

Non, ton pere a Paris, ne fut point boulanger:
Et tu n'es point du sang de Gervais, l'horloger:
Ta mere ne fut point la maitresse d'un coché;
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 Georgick, 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 proelia dicam._

And again:

_At genus immortale manet; multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum;_--

we see Boileau pursuing him in the same flights, and scarcely yielding to his master. This, I think, my lord, to be the most beautiful, and most noble kind of satire. Here is the majesty of the heroic, finely 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,[49] 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 every where to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were cloathed with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines 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 "Fairy Queen;" and there I met with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer; and amongst the rest of his excellencies had copied that. Looking farther into the Italian, I found Tasso had done the same; nay more, that all the sonnets in that language are on the turn of the first thought; which Mr Walsh, in his late ingenious preface to his poems, has 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 master-piece.

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

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

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

_Tum jam nulla viro juranti fæmina credat;
Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles;
Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestit apisci,
Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt:
Sed simul ac cupidæ mentis satiata libido est,
Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant._

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

_Si, nisi quæ 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 Georgick 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:

_Cùm 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 expence 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 excellencies 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 any thing 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 those 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 Stapylton, 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 Stapylton 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 dactyle is a more frequent foot in hexameters than the spondee. But Holyday, without considering that he wrote 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 Stapylton, 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.[50]

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 give 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 shewn in the least ceremony. I will slip away while your back is turned, and while you are otherwise employed; with great confusion for having entertained you so long with this discourse, and for having no other recompence 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.
_Aug. 18, 1692._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Our author's connection with this witty and accomplished nobleman is fully traced in Dryden's Life. He was created Earl of Middlesex in 1675, and after the Revolution became Lord Chamberlain, and a knight of the garter. Dryden alludes to these last honours in the commencement of the dedication, which was prefixed to a version of the Satires of Juvenal by our author and others, published in 1693.

[2] See Introduction to the "Essay on Dramatic Poetry."

[3] These Lyrical Pieces, after all, are only a few smooth songs, where wit is sufficiently overbalanced by indecency.

[4] Alluding to Rochester's well-known couplet:

For pointed satire I would Buckhurst chuse;
The best good man, with the worst-natured muse.

_Allusion to Horace's 10th Satire, Book I._

The satires of Lord Dorset seem to have consisted in short lampoons, if we may judge of those which have been probably lost, from such as are known to us. His mock "Address to Mr Edward Howard, on his incomparable and incomprehensible Poem, called the British Princes;" another to the same on his plays; a lampoon on an Irish lady; and one on Lady Dorchester,--are the only satires of his lordship's which have been handed down to us. He probably wrote other light occasional pieces of the same nature.

[5] Shooting at rovers, in archery, is opposed to shooting at butts: In the former exercise the bowman shoots at random, merely to show how far he can send an arrow.

[6] Probably meaning Sir Robert Howard, with whom our author was now reconciled, and perhaps Sir William D'Avenant.

[7] The First Satire of Persius is doubtless levelled against bad poets; but that author rather engages in the defence of satire, opposed to the silly or bombastic verses of his contemporaries, than in censuring freedoms used with private characters.

[8] The four sceptres were placed saltier-wise upon the reverse of guineas, till the gold coinage of his present majesty.

[9]

_Sic Maro nec Calabri tentavit carmina Flacci,
Pindaricos posset cum superare modos;
Et Vario cessit Romani laude cothurni,
Cum posset tragico fortius ore loqui._

MART. _lib. VIII. epig. XVIII._

[10] "Would it be imagined," says Dr Johnson, "that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas? The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy."

[11] Dryden's recollection seems here deficient. There is, no doubt, a close imitation of the Iliad throughout the Jerusalem; but the death of the Swedish Prince was so far from being the motive of Rinaldo's return to the wars, that Rinaldo seems never to have heard either of that person or of his fate until he was delivered from the garden of Armida, and on his voyage to join Godfrey's army.

[12] Epic poems by Le Moyne, Chapelain, and Scuderi; of which it may be enough to say, that they are in the stale, weary, flat, and unprofitable taste of all French heroics.

[13] This passage is certainly inaccurate in one particular, and probably in the rest. Sir Philip Sydney was killed at the battle of Zutphen, 16th October, 1586, and the "Faery Queen" was then only commenced. For, in a dialogue written by Bryskett, as Mr Malone conjectures, betwixt 1584 and 1586, Spenser is introduced describing himself as having undertaken a work in heroical verse, under the title of a "Faerie Queene;" and it is clear that he continued to labour in that task till 1594, when we learn, from his 80th sonnet, that he had just composed six books:

After so long a race as I have run
Through Faery Land, which those six books compile,
Give leave to rest me, being half foredonne,
And gather to myself new breath awhile;
Then, as a steed refreshed after toyle,
Out of my prison will I break anew,
And stoutly will that second work assoyle,
With strong endevour, and attention due.

It was not, therefore, the death of Sir Philip Sydney which deprived him of spirit to continue his captivating poem, since the greater part was written after that event; but the poet's domestic misfortunes, occasioned by Tyrone's rebellion, which seem at once to have ruined his fortune, and broken his heart. See TODD'S _Life of Spenser_, and MALONE'S Note on this passage.

It seems unlikely, that Sydney was Spenser's Prince Arthur. Upton more justly considers Leicester, a worthless character, but the favourite of Gloriana, (Queen Elizabeth,) and who aspired to share her bed and throne, as depicted under that character. See TODD'S _Spenser_, Vol. I. Life, p. clxviii.

[14] This was a charge brought against Spenser so early as the days of Ben Jonson; who says, in his Discoveries, "Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius." This has been generally supposed to apply only to Spenser's "Pastorals;" but as in these he imitates rather a coarse and provincial than an obsolete dialect, the limitation of Jonson's censure is probably imaginary. It is probable, that, as the style of poetry in the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and in that of her successor, had become laboured and ornate, Spenser's imitations of the old metrical romances had to his contemporaries an antique air of rude and naked simplicity, although his "Faery Queen" seems more intelligible to us than the compositions of Jonson himself. Dryden, whose charge was afterwards echoed by Pope, probably adopted it without very accurate investigation. Our idea of what is ancient does not necessarily imply obscurity; on the contrary, I am afraid that to modern ears the style of Addison sounds more antiquated than that of Dr Johnson; so that simplicity may produce the same effect as unintelligibility.

[15] Mr Rymer, who was pleased to call himself a critic, had promised to favour the public with "some reflections on that Paradise Lost of Milton, which some are pleased to call a poem, and to assert rhime against the slender sophistry wherewith he attacks it." But this promise, which is given in the end of his "Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age," he never filled up the measure of his presumption, by attempting to fulfil.

[16]

_Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum_----

This passage, as our author observes, (p. 221. vol. iv.) is variously construed by expositors; and the meaning which he there adopts, that of "applying received words to a new signification," seems fully as probable as that adopted in the text. Mr Malone has given the opinions of Hurd, Beattie, and De Nores, upon this disputed passage.

[17] This resolution our author fortunately did not adhere to.

[18] The passages of Scripture, on which Dryden founds his idea of the machinery of guardian angels, are the following, which I insert for the benefit of such readers as may not have at hand the old-fashioned book in which they occur.

"Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. And I Daniel alone saw the vision; for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face towards the ground.

"And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands: And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And, when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling. Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days. And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb. And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? for, as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me. Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me. And said, O man greatly beloved, fear not; peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong. And, when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me. Then said he, knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come. But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince."--Dan. x. 5-21.

It may, however, be doubted, whether any poetical use could be made of the guardian angels here mentioned; since our ideas of their powers are too obscure and indefinite to afford any scope for description.

[19] In the beginning of the 12th chapter, as well as in the passage quoted, Michael is distinguished as "the great prince which standeth up for the children of Daniel's people."

[20] I shall imitate my predecessor, Mr Malone, in presenting the reader with Spanheim's summary of the notes of distinction between the Greek satirical drama, and the satirical poetry of the Romans.

"La premiére différence, qui est içi à remarquer et dont on ne peut disconvenir, c'est que les Satyres ou poëmes satyriques des Grecs, etoient des piéces dramatiques, ou de théatre; ce qu'on ne peut point dire des Satires Romaines, prises dans tous ces trois genres, dont je viens de parler, et auxquelles on a appliqué ce mot. Il y auroit peut-être plus de sujet d'en douter, à l'égard de ces premiéres Satires des anciens Romains, dont il a été fait mention, et dont il ne nous est rien resté, si les passages de deux auteurs Latins et de T. Live entre autres, qui en parlent, ne marquoient en termes exprès, qu'elles avoient précedé parmi eux les piéces dramatiques, et etoient en effet d'une autre espéce. D'ou vient aussi, que les Latins, quand ils font mention de la poësie Grecque, et d'ailleurs se contentent de donner aux premiéres ce nom de _poëme_, comme Ciceron le donne aux Satires de Varron, et d'autres un nom pareil à celles de Lucilius ou d'Horace.

"La seconde différence entre les poëmes satyriques des Grecs, et les Satires des Latins, vient de ce qu'il y a même quelque diversité dans le nom, laquelle ne paroit pas autrement dans les langues vulgaires. C'est qu'en effet les Grecs donnoient aux leurs le nom de Satyrus ou Satiri, de Satyriques, de piéces Satyriques, par rapport, s'entend, aux Satyres, ces hostes de bois, et ces compagnons de Baccus, qui y jouoient leur rôle: et d'ou vient aussi, qu'Horace, comme nous avons déja vû, les appelle _agrestes Satyros_, et ceux, qui en étoient les auteurs, du nom de _Satyrorum Scriptor._ Au lieu que les Romains ont dit _Satira_ ou _Satura_ de ces poëmes, auxquels ils en ont appliqué et restraint le nom; que leurs auteurs et leurs grammairiens donnent une autre origine, et une autre signification de ce mot, comme celle d'un mélange de plusieurs fruits de la terre, ou bien de plusieurs mets dans un plat; delà celle d'un mélange de plusieurs loix comprises dans une, ou enfin la signification d'un poëme mêlé de plusieurs choses.

"La troisiéme différence entre ces mêmes Satires et les piéces satyriques des Grecs est, qu'en effet l'introduction des Silénes et des Satyres, qui composoient les choeurs de ces derniéres, etoient tellement de leur essence, que sans eux elles ne pouvoient plus porter le nom de _Satyres_. Tellement qu'Horace, parlant entre autres de la nature de ces Satyres ou poëmes satyriques des Grecs, s'arrête a montrer, en quelle maniére on y doit faire parler Siléne, ou les Satyres; ce qu'on leur doit faire éviter ou observer. Ce qu'l n'auroit pas fait avec tant de soin, s'il avoit cru, que la présence des Satyres ne fut pas de la nature et de l'essence, comme je viens de dire, de ces sortes de piéces, qui en portoient le nom.

"C'est à quoi on peut ajouter l'action de ces mêmes Satyres, et qui etoient propres aux piéces, qui en portoient le nom. C'est qu'en effet les danses etoient si fort de leur essence, que non seulement Aristote, comme nous avons déja veu, joint ensemble la _poësie satyrique et faite pour la danse_; mais qu'un autre auteur Grec [_Lucianus_ #peri orchêseôs#] parle nommément des trois différentes sortes de danses attachés au théatre, _la tragique, la comique, et la satyrique_. D'où vient aussi, comme il le remarque ailleurs, que les Satires en prirent le nom de _Sicynnistes_; c'est à dire d'une sorte de danse, qui leur etoit particuliére, comme on peut voir entre autres de ce qu'en dit Siléne dans le Cyclope, à la veuë des Satyres; et ainsi d'ou on peut assés comprendre la force de l'épithéte de _saltantes Satyros_, que Virgile leur donne en quelque endroit; ou de ce qu'Horace, dans sa premiére Ode, parle des danses des Nymphes et des Satyres, _Nympharumque leues cum Satyris chori_. Tout cela, comme chacun voit, n'avoit aucun raport avec les Satires Romaines, et il n'est pas nécessaire, d'en dire davantage, pour le faire entendre.