EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE SIXTH SATIRE

1 And seek, in Sabine air, &c. All the studious, and particularly the poets, about the end of August, began to set themselves on work, refraining from writing during the heats of the summer. They wrote by night, and sate up the greatest part of it; for which reason the product of their studies was call'd their elucubrations, or nightly labors. They who had coun try seats retir'd to them while they studied, as Persius did to his, which was near the Port of the Moon in Etruria; and Bassus to his, which was in the country of the Sabines, nearer Rome.

2 Now sporting on thy lyre, &c. This proves

Casins Bassus to have been a lyric poet. 'Tis said of him that by an eruption of the flaming mountain Vesuvius, near which the greatest part of his fortune lay, he was burnt himself, together with all his writings.

3 Who, in a drunken dream, &c. I call it a drunken dream of Ennius; not that my author in this place gives me any encouragement for the epithet, but because Horace and all who mention Ennius say he was an excessive drinker of wine. In a dream, or vision, call you it which you please, he thought it was reveal'd to him that the soul of Pythagoras was transmigrated into him; as Pythagoras before him believ'd that himself had been Euphorbus in the wars of Troy. Commentators differ in placing the order of this soul, and who had it first. I have here given it to the peacock, because it looks more according to the order of nature that it should lodge in a creature of an inferior species, and so by gradation rise to the informing of a man. And Persius favors me, by saying that Ennius was the fifth from the Pythagorean peacock.

4 My friend is shipwreck'd on, &c. Perhaps this is only a fine transition of the poet, to introduce the business of the satire; and not that any such accident had happen'd to one of the friends of Persius. But, however, this is the most poetical description of any in our author; and since he and Lucan were so great friends, I know not but Lucan might help him in two or three of these verses, which seem to be written in his style: certain it is, that besides this description of a shipwreck. and two lines more, which are at the end of the Second Satire, our poet has written nothing elegantly. I will therefore transcribe both the passages, to justify my opinion. The following are the last verses, saving one, of the Second Satire:

Compositum jus, fasque animi; sanctosque recessus Mentis, et incoctum generoso pectus honesto. The others are those in this present satire, which are subjoin'd:

·trabe rupta, Bruttia saxa Prendit amicus inops : remque omnem, surdaque vota Condidit Ionio, jacet ipse in littore, et una Ingentes de puppe Dei, jamque obvia mergis Costa ratis lacera.

5 From thy new hope, &c. The Latin is, Nunc et de cespite vivo frange aliquid. Casaubon only opposes the cespes vivus, which, word for word, is the living turf, to the harvest, or annual income; I suppose the poet rather means, sell a piece of land already sown, and give the money of it to my friend, who has lost all by shipwreck; that is, do not stay till thou hast reap'd, but help him immediately, as his wants require.

6 Not beg with a blue table, &c. Holyday translates it a green table. The sense is the same, for the table was painted of the sea-color, which the shipwreck'd person carried on his back, expressing his losses thereby, to excite the charity of the spectators.

7 Or without spices, &c. The bodies of the rich, before they were burnt, were imbalm'd with spices; or rather spices were put into the urn with the relics of the ashes. Our author here names cinnamum and cassia, which cassia was sophisticated with cherry gum, and probably enough by the Jews, who adulterate all things which they sell. But whether the ancients were acquainted with the spices of the Molucca Islands, Ceylon, and other parts of the Indies, or whether their pepper and cinnamon, &c., were the same with ours, is another question. As for nutmegs and mace, 't is plain that the Latin names of them are modern.

8 Cæsar salutes, &c. The Cæsar here mention'd is Caius Caligula, who affected to triumph over the Germans, whom he never conquer'd, as he did over the Britains; and accordingly sent letters, wrapp'd about with laurels, to the senate and the Empress Cæsonia, whom I here call queen, tho' I know that name was not us'd amongst the Romans; but the word empress would not stand in that verse, for which reason I adjourn'd it to another. The dust which was to be swept away from the altars, was either the ashes which were left there after the last sacrifice for victory, or might perhaps mean the dust or ashes which were left on the altars since some former defeat of the Romans by the Germans; after which overthrow the altars had been neglected.

9 Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, who afterwards, in the reign of Claudius, was propos'd, but ineffectually, to be married to him, after he had executed Messalina for adultery.

10 The captive Germans, &c. He means only such as were to pass for Germans in the triumph, large-bodied men, as they are still, whom the empress cloth'd new, with coarse garments, for the greater ostentation of the victory.

11 Know, I have vow'd two hundred gladiators. A hundred pair of gladiators were beyond the purse of a private man to give; therefore this is only a threat'ning to his heir, that he could do what he pleas'd with his estate.

12 Should'st thou demand of me my torch, &c. Why shouldst thou, who art an old fellow, hope to outlive me, and be my heir, who am much younger? He who was first in the course, or race, deliver'd the torch which he carried to him who was second.

13 Well fed, and fat as Cappadocian slaves!" Who were famous for their lustiness, and being, as we call it, in good liking. They were set on a stall when they were expos'd to sale, to shew the good habit of their body; and made to play tricks before the buyers, to shew their activity and strength.

14 Then say, Chrysippus, &c. Chrysippus, the Stoic, invented a kind of argument, consisting of more than three propositions, which is call'd sorites, or a heap. But as Chrysippus could never bring his propositions to a certain stint, so neither can a covetous man bring his craving desires to any certain measure of riches, beyond which he could not wish for any

more.

VIRGIL, Geor. IV.

TO THE

RIGHT HONORABLE MY LORD RADCLIFFE

MY LORD,

THESE Miscellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before some of them were yet in being. The rest are deriv'd from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candor of your nature; easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, tho' these are your equitable claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my verses. 'Tis a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own productions; and 't is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet might have rais'd me to any honors of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are only chang'd, but the same jugglings in state, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement, will remain for ever. Blood and money will be lavish'd in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces, with old consciences. There is too

often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they see not those whom they raise in the same colors with other men. All whom they affect look golden to them, when the gilding is only in their own distemper'd sight. These considerations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have risen by unworthy ways. I am not asham'd to be little, when I see them so infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet should be dishonorable to me, if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do anything that shall dishonor it. The notions of morality are known to all men; none can pretend ignorance of those ideas which are inborn in mankind: and if I see one thing and practice the contrary, I must be disingenuous, not to acknowledge a clear truth; and base, to act against the light of my own conscience. For the reputation of my honesty, no man can question it, who has any of his own; for that of my poetry, it shall either stand by its own merit, or fall for want of it. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, as the best poet and the best patron said:

When in the full perfection of decay,

Turn vinegar, and come again in play.

Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic: I mean of a critic in the general acceptation of this age, for formerly they were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works; to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit, and, in short, to shield him from

writings, but to throw dirt on the writers of this age their declaration is one thing, and their practice is another. By a seeming ven

fame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of critics by the ancients: what their reputation was then, we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turn'd our enemies? Are they, who at best are but wits of the second order, and whose only credit amongst readers is what they obtain'd by being subservient to the fame of writers; are these become rebels of slaves, and usurpers of subjects? or, to speak in the most honorable terms of them, are they from our seconds become principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports its weakness? What labor would it cost them to put in a better line than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet! Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevail'd upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt: he perform'd worse in his Essay of the Civil War, than the author of the Pharsalia; and, avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the possession of three thousand years. Has he succeeded in his attempt ? He has indeed shown us some of those imperfections in him, which are incident to humankind; but who had not rather be that Homer than this Scaliger? You see the same hypercritic, when he endeavors to mend the beginning of Claudian (a faulty poet, and living in a barbarous age), yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that he rather seems to bark than sing! Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? One would have thought he had learn'd Latin, as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off with a pace tua, by your good leave, Lucan; he call'd him not by those outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two sorts of those gentlemen in our nation: some of them, proceeding with a seeming moderation and pretense of respect to the dramatic writers of the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is nothing less than to do honor to any man besides themselves. Horace took notice of such men in his age:

-Non ingeniis favet ille sepultis ; Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit. "T is not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the manes of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, that they commend their

us, their lawful issue, and govern us themselves, under a specious pretense of reformation. If they could compass their intent, what would wit and learning get by such a change? If we are bad poets, they are worse; and when any of their woful pieces come abroad, the difference is so great betwixt them and good writers, that there need no criticisms on our part to decide it. When they describe the writers of this age, they draw such monstrous figures of them, as resemble none of us; our pretended pictures are so unlike, that 't is evident we never sate to them: they are all grotesque; the products of their wild imaginations, things out of nature, so far from being copied from us, that they resemble nothing that ever was, or ever can be. But there is another sort of insects, more venomous than the former: those who manifestly aim at the destruction of our poetical Church and State; who allow nothing to their countrymen, either of this or of the former age. These attack the living by raking up the ashes of the dead; well knowing that if they can subvert their original title to the stage, we who claim under them must fall of course. Peace be to the venerable shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson! None of the living will presume to have any competition with them: as they were our predecessors, so they were our masters. We trail our plays under them, but (as at the funerals of a Turkish emperor) our ensigns are furl'd or dragg'd upon the ground, in honor to the dead; so we may lawfully advance our own, afterwards, to show that we succeed: if less in dignity, yet on the same foot and title, which we think too we can maintain against the insolence of our own janizaries. If I am the man, as I have reason to believe, who am seemingly courted, and secretly undermin'd, I think I shall be able to defend myself, when I am openly attack'd; and to shew besides that the Greek writers only gave us the rudiments of a stage, which they never finish'd; that many of the tragedies in the former age amongst us were without comparison beyond those of Sophocles and Euripides. But at present, I have neither the leisure nor the means for such an undertaking. 'Tis ill going to law for an estate with him who is in possession of it and enjoys the present profits to feed his cause. But the quantum mutatus may be remember'd in due time. In the mean while, I leave the world to judge who gave the provocation.

This, my Lord, is, I confess, a long digression, from Miscellany Poems to Modern Tragedies; but I have the ordinary excuse of an

injur'd man, who will be telling his tale unseasonably to his betters: tho', at the same time, I am certain you are so good a friend, as to take a concern in all things which belong to one who so truly honors you. And besides, being yourself a critic of the genuine sort, who have read the best authors in their own languages, who perfectly distinguish of their several merits, and in general prefer them to the moderns, yet, I know, you judge for the English tragedies against the Greek and Latin, as well as against the French, Italian, and Spanish, of these latter ages. Indeed there is a vast difference betwixt arguing like Perrault in behalf of the French poets, against Homer and Virgil, and betwixt giving the English poets their undoubted due of excelling Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. For if we, or our greater fathers, have not yet brought the drama to an absolute perfection, yet at least we have carried it much farther than those ancient Greeks: who, beginning from a chorus, could never totally exclude it, as we have done, who find it an unprofitable incumbrance, without any necessity of entertaining it amongst us; and without the possibility of establishing it here, unless it were supported by a public charge. Neither can we accept of those lay bishops, as some call them, who, under pretense of reforming the stage, would intrude themselves upon us as our superiors, being indeed incompetent judges of what is manners, what religion, and, least of all, what is poetry and good sense. I can tell them, in behalf of all my fellows, that when they come to exercise a jurisdiction over us, they shall have the stage to themselves, as they have the laurel. As little can I grant that the French dramatic writers excel the English: our authors as far surpass them in genius, as our soldiers excel theirs in courage. 'Tis true, in conduct they surpass us either way; yet that proceeds not so much from their greater knowledge, as from the difference of tastes in the two nations. They content themselves with a thin design, without episodes, and manag'd by few persons. Our audience will not be pleas'd but with variety of accidents, an underplot, and many actors. They follow the ancients too servilely in the mechanic rules, and we assume too much license to ourselves, in keeping them only in view at too great a distance. But if our audience had their tastes, our poets could more easily comply with them than the French writers could come up to the sublimity of our thoughts, or to the difficult variety of our designs. However it be, I dare establish it for a rule of practice on the stage, that we are bound to please those whom we pretend to entertain; and that at any price, religion and good manners only excepted; and I care not much if I give this handle to our

bad illiterate poetasters, for the defense of their scriptions, as they call them. There is a sort of merit in delighting the spectators; which is a name more proper for them than that of auditors; or else Horace is in the wrong, when he commends Lucilius for it. But these commonplaces I mean to treat at greater leisure in the mean time, submitting that little I have said to your Lordship's approbation, or your censure, and choosing rather to entertain you this way, as you are a judge of writing, than to oppress your modesty with other commendations; which, tho' they are your due, yet would not be equally receiv'd in this satirical and censorious age. That which cannot without injury be denied to you is the easiness of your conversation, far from affectation or pride, not denying even to enemies their just praises. And this, if I would dwell on any theme of this nature, is no vulgar commendation to your Lordship. Without flattery, my Lord, you have it in your nature to be a patron and encourager of good poets, but your fortune has not yet put into your hands the opportunity of expressing it. What you will be hereafter, may be more than guess'd by what you are at present. You maintain the character of a nobleman, without that haughtiness which generally attends too many of the nobility; and when you converse with gentlemen, you forget not that you have been of their order. You are married to the daughter of a king, who, amongst her other high perfections, has deriv'd from him a charming behavior, a winning goodness, and a majestic person. The Muses and the Graces are the ornaments of your family. While the Muse sings, the Grace accompanies her voice: even the servants of the Muse have sometimes had the happiness to hear her, and to receive their inspirations from her.

I will not give myself the liberty of going farther; for 't is so sweet to wander in a pleasing way, that I should never arrive at my journey's end. To keep myself from being belated in my letter, and tiring your attention, I must return to the place where I was setting out. I humbly dedicate to your Lordship my own labors in this Miscellany; at the same time, not arrogating to myself the privilege of inscribing to you the works of others who are join'd with me in this undertaking, over which I can pretend no right. Your Lady and you have done me the favor to hear me read my translations of Ovid, and you both seem'd not to be displeas'd with them. Whether it be the partiality of an old man to his youngest child, I know not; but they appear to me the best of all my endeavors in this kind. Perhaps this poet is more easy to be translated than some others whom I have lately attempted; perhaps, too, he was more according to my