cording to the etymology of the word; yet it may arife naturally from one fubject, as it is diverfly treated, in the feveral fubordinate branches of it; all relating to the chief. It may be illuftrated accordingly with variety of examples in the fubdivifions of it; and with as many precepts as there are members of it; which altogether may complete that olla, or hotch-potch, which is properly a fatire. Under this unity of theme, or fubject, is comprehended another rule for perfecting the defign of true fatire. The poet is bound, and that ex officio, to give his reader fome one precept of moral virtue; and to caution him against fome one particular vice or folly. Other virtues, fubordinate to the firft, may be recommended, under that chief head; and other vices or follies may be scourged, befides that which he principally intends. But he is chiefly to inculcate one virtue, and infift on that. Thus Juvenal in every fatire, excepting the firft, ties himfelf to one principal inftructive point, or to the fhunning of moral evil. Even in the fixth, which feems only an arraignment of the whole fex of womankind, there is a latent admonition to avoid ill women, by fhewing how very few, who are virtuous and good, are to be found amongst them. But this, though the wittiest of all his fatires, has yet the leaft of truth or inftruction in it. He has run himself into his old declamatory way, and almoft forgotten that he was now fetting up for a moral poet. Perfius is never wanting to us in fome profitable doctrine, and in expofing the oppofite vices to it. His kind of philofophy is one, which is the ftoick; and every fatire is a comment on one particular dogma of that fect; unless we will except the firft, 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 elfe there is a fundamental error in the whole defign. : I have already declared who are the only perfons that are the adequate object of private fatire, and who they are that may properly be expofed by name for public examples of vices and follies: and therefore I will trouble your lordship no farther with them. Of the best and fineft manner of fatire, I have faid enough in the comparison betwixt Juvenal and Horace it is that fharp, 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 verfification, which is moft proper for it, and add fomewhat to what I have faid already on that fubject. The fort of verfe which is called burlesque, confifting of eight fyllables, or four feet, is that which our excellent Hudibras has chofen. I ought to have mentioned him before, when I fpake of Donn; but by a flip of an old man's memory he was forgotten. The worth of his poem is too well known to need any commendation, and he is above my cenfure his fatire is of the Varronian kind, though unmixed with profe. The choice of his numbers is fuitable enough to his defign, as he has managed it but in any other hand, the fhortness of his verfe, and the quick returns of rhyme, had debafed the dignity of ftyle. And befides, the double rhyme, (a neceffary companion of burlefque writing) is not fo proper for manly fatire, for it turns earnest too much to jeft, and gives us a boyish kind of pleasure. It tickles aukwardly with a kind of pain to the beft fort of readers; we are pleafed ungratefully, and if I may fay fo, against our liking. We thank him not for giving us that unfeasonable delight, when we know he could have given us a better, and more folid. He might have left that talk to others, who not being able to put in thought, can only make us grin with the excrefcence of a word of two or three fyllables in the close. It is, indeed, below fo great a mafter to make use of such a little inftrument. But his good fenfe is perpetually fhining through all he writes; it affords us not the time of finding faults. We pafs through the levity of his rhyme, and are immediately carried into fome admirable useful thought. After all, he has chofen this kind of verfe; and has written the best in it: and had he taken another, he would always have excelled. As we fay of a court-favourite, that whatfoever his office be, he ftill makes it uppermoft, and moft 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 fyllables, which we call the English heroick, to that of eight. This is truly my opinion; for this fort of number is more roomy: the thought can turn itfelf with greater eafe in a larger compafs. When the rhyme comes too thick upon us, it ftraitens the expreffion; we are thinking of the clofe, when we fhould be employed in adorning the thought. It makes a poet giddy with turning in a space too narrow for his imagination; he lofes many beauties, without gaining one advantage. For a burlefque rhyme, I have already concluded to be none; or if it were, it is more easily purchafed in ten fyllables than in eight: in both occafions it is as in a tennis-court, when the ftroaks of greater force are given, when we ftrike out and play at length. Taffone and Boileau have left us the best examples of this way, in the Secchia Rapita, and the Lutrin. And next them Merlin Coccajus in his Baldus. I will fpeak only of the two former, becaufe the laft is written in Latin verfe. The Secchia Rapita is an Italian poem, a fatire of the Varronian kind. It is written in the stanza of eight, which is their measure for heroick verfe. The words are ftately, the numbers fmooth, the turn both of thoughts and words is happy. The firft fix lines of the ftanza feem majeftical and fevere; but the two laft 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 fome kind of indignation, as witty as it was, and found nothing in France that was worthy of his imitation. But he copied the Italian fo well, that his own may pafs for an original. He writes it in the French heroick verfe, and calls it an heroick poem: his fubject 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 fome parodies; as particularly this paffage in the fourth of the Eneids. Nec tibi Diva parens; generis nec Dardanus auctor, Which he thus tranflates, keeping to the words, but altering the fense: Non, ton Pere a Paris, ne fut point Boulanger: And, as Virgil in his fourth Georgick of the Bees, perpetually raises the lownefs of his fubject, by the loftinefs of his words; and enobles it by comparifons drawn from empires, and from monarchs. Admiranda tibi levium fpectacula rerum, Sed Genuus immortale manet; multofque per annos We fee Boileau pursuing him in the fame flights; and scarcely yielding to his mafter. This, I think, my lord, to be the most beautiful, and moft noble kind of fatire. Here is the majefty of the heroick, finely mixed with the venom of the other; and raising the delight which otherwife would be flat and vulgar, vulgar, by the fublimity of the expreffion. I could fay fomewhat more of the delicacy of this and fome other of his fatires; 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 manner this fort of fatire may beft be managed. Had I time, I could enlarge on the beautiful turns of words and thoughts; which are as requifite in this, as in heroick poetry itself; of which the fatire is undoubtedly a fpecies. With thefe beautiful turns I confefs myself to have been unacquainted, till about twenty years ago, in a converfation which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie: he asked me why I did not imitate in my verfes the turns of Mr. Waller and Sir John Denham; of which, he repeated many to me. I had often read with pleasure, and with fome profit, those two fathers of our English poetry; but had not seriously enough confidered thofe beauties which give the laft perfection to their works. Some fprinklings of this kind I had alfo formerly in my plays; but they were cafual and not defigned. But this hint, thus feasonably given me, firft made me fenfible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to feek for the fupply 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 oppofite nature to thofe puerilities; but no elegant turns either on the word or on the thought. Then I confulted a greater genius (without offence to the manes of that noble author) I mean Milton; but as he endeavours every where to exprefs Homer, whofe age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true fublimity, lofty thoughts, which were cloathed with admirable Grecifms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spencer, and which, with all their rufticity, had fomewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that 0 4 |