After God had of others was not long after it. curfed Adam and Eve in Paradise, the husband and wife excufed themfelves, by laying the blame on one another; and gave a beginning to thofe conjugal dialogues in profe, which the poets have perfected in verfe. The third chapter of Job is one of the firft inftances of this poem in holy fcripture: unless we will take it higher; from the latter end of the fecond; where his wife advifes him to curfe his Maker. The original, I confefs, is not much to the honour of fatire; 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 fcoffs and revilings are of the growth of all nations; and confequently that neither the Greek poets borrowed from other people their art of railing, neither needed the Romans to take it from them. But confidering fatire as a fpecies of poetry, here the war begins amongst the criticks. Scaliger the father will have it defcend from Greece to Rome; and derives the word fatire from Satyrus, that mixt 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, powting lips, a bunch or ftruma under the chin, pricked ears, and upright horns; the body fhagged with hair, efpecially from the waift, and ending in a goat, with the legs and feet of that creature. But Cafaubon, and his followers, with reafon condemn this derivation; and prove that from Satyrus, the word fatira, as it fignifies a poem, cannot poffibly defcend. For fatira is not properly a fubftantive, but an adjective; to which the word lanx, in English a charger, or large platter, is understood; fo that the Greek poem made according to the manner of a fatire, and expreffing his qualities, must properly be called fatyrical, and not fatire. And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had fuch poems; but that they were wholly different in fpecie, fpecie, from that to which the Romans gave the name of fatire. Ariftotle divides all poetry, in relation to the progrefs of it, into nature without art, art begun, and art compleated. Mankind, even the most barbarous, have the feeds of poetry implanted in them. The firft fpecimen of it was certainly fhewn in the praises of the Deity, and prayers to him and as they are of natural obligation, fo they are likewise of divine inftitution. Which Milton obferving, 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 foon fucceeded to private worfhip, 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 reafon knew they were to invoke fome fuperior Being in their neceffities, and to thank him for his benefits. Thus the Grecian holidays were celebrated with offerings to Bacchus and Ceres, and other deities, to whofe bounty they fuppofed they were owing for their corn and wine, and other helps of life. And the ancient Romans, Horace tells us, paid their thanks to mother Earth, or Vefta, to Silvanus, and their genius, in the fame manner. But as all feftivals have a double reafon of their inftitution; the first of religion, the other of recreation, for the unbending of our minds: fo both the Grecians and Romans agreed, after their facrifices were performed, to fpend the remainder of the day in fports and merriments; amongft which fongs and dances, and that which they called wit (for want of knowing better) were the chiefeft entertainments. The Grecians had a notion of fatires, whom I have already defcribed; and taking them, and the Sileni, that is, the young fatires and the old, for the tutors, attendants, and humble companions of their Bacchus, habited habited themfelves like thofe rural deities, and imitated them in their ruftic dances, to which they joined fongs, with fome fort of rude harmony, but without certain numbers; and to these they added a kind of chorus. The Romans alfo (as nature is the fame in all places) though they knew nothing of thofe Grecian demi-gods, nor had any communication with Greece, yet had certainly young men, who at their feftivals danced and fung after their uncouth manner, to a certain kind of verfe, which they called faturnian: what it was, we have no certain light from antiquity to difcover; but we may conclude, that, like the Grecian, it was void of art, or at leaft with very feeble beginnings of it. Those ancient Romans, at thefe holidays, which were a mixture of devotion and debauchery, had a custom of reproaching each other with their faults, in a fort of extempore poetry, or rather of tunable hobling verfe; and they answered in the fame kind of grofs raillery; their wit and their mufic being of a piece. The Grecians, says Cafaubon, had formerly done the fame, in the perfons of their petulant fatires: but I am afraid he mistakes the matter, and confounds the finging and dancing of the fatires, with the ruftical entertainments of the firft Romans. The reafon of my opinion is this; that Cafaubon finding little light from antiquity, of thefe beginnings of poetry, amongst the Grecians, but only thefe reprefentatious of fatires, who carried canisters and cornucopias full of feveral fruits in their hands, and danced with them at their public feafts: and afterwards reading Horace, who makes mention of his homely Romans jefting at one another in the fame kind of folemnities, might fuppofe those wanton fatires did the fame. And efpecially because Horace poffibly might feem to him, to have fhewn the original of all poetry in general, including the Grecians as well as Romans. Though it is plainly otherwife, that he only described the beginning, and firft rudipoetry in his own country. The verfes are ments of thefe, e thefe, which he cites from the first epiftle of the second book, which was written to Auguftus. Agricola prifci, fortès, parvoque beati, Our brawny clowns of old, who turn'd the foil, At harveft-home, with mirth and country cheer And kindly milk, Silvanus, pour'd to thee. Yet fince it is a hard conjecture, that fo great a man as Cafaubon fhould mifapply what Horace writ concerning ancient Rome, to the ceremonies and manners of ancient Greece, I will not infift on this opinion, but rather judge in general, that fince all poetry had its original from religion, that of the Grecians and Romans had the fame beginning: both were invented at feftivals of thanksgiving; and both were profecuted with mirth and raillery, and rudiments of verfe: amongst the Greeks, by thofe who reprefented fatires; and amongst the Romans, by real clowns. For, For, indeed, when I am reading Cafaubon on thefe two fubjects, methinks I hear the fame ftory told twice over with very little alteration. Of which Dacier taking notice, in his interpretation of the Latin verfes which I have tranflated, fays plainly, that the beginning of poetry was the fame, 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 moft learned critic takes notice alfo, in his illuftrations on the first epiftle of the fecond book, that as the poetry of the Romans, and that of the Grecians, had the fame beginning, at feafts of thanksgiving, as it has been obferved; and the old comedy of the Greeks which was invective, and the fatire of the Romans which was of the fame nature, were begun on the very fame occafion, fo the fortune of both in procefs of time was juft the fame; the old comedy of the Grecians was forbidden, for its too much licence in expofing of particular perfons, and the rude fatire of the Romans was alfo punished by a law of the Decemviri, as Horace tells us in these words: Libertafque recurrentes accepta per annos The law of the Decemviri was this; Siquis occentaffit malum carmen, five condidifit, quod infamiam faxit, flagitiumve alteri, capital efto. A ftrange likeness, and barely poffible: but the critics being all of the fame opinion, it becomes me to be filent, and to fubmit to better judgments than my own. But |