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 5 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 10 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 15 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, 20 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 25 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 30 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 35 demi-gods, nor had any communication with Greece,

yet had certain young men, who, at their festivals,
danced and sung, 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, 5
it was void of art, or, at least, with very feeble begin-
nings of it. Those ancient Romans, at these holidays,
which were a mixture of devotion and debauchery, had
a custom of reproaching each other with their faults, in
a sort of ex tempore poetry, or rather of tunable hobbling 10
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 sing- 15
ing and dancing of the Satyrs with the rustical enter-
tainments 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 20
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 25
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 30
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-

Agricola prisci, fortes, parvoque beati,
Condita post frumenta, levantes tempore festo

35

ΙΟ

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20

5

Corpus, et ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentem,
Cum sociis operum, et pueris, et conjuge fida,
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 turn'd the soil,
Content with little, and inur'd to toil,

At harvest-home, with mirth and country cheer,
Restor❜d their bodies for another year;
Refresh'd their spirits, and renew'd 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, pour'd to thee;

With flow'rs, 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 25 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 30 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 35 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 5
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 10
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 cœpit jocus, et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax: doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi: quinetiam lex,
Panaque lata, malo quæ nollet carmine quenquam
Describi: vertere modum, formidine fustis

Ad benedicendum delectandumque redacti.

15

20

The law of the Decemviri was this: Siquis occentassit malum carmen, sive condidisit, quod infamiam faxit, flagi 25 tiumve 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 satyric 30 dramas the elder Scaliger and Heinsius will have the Roman Satire to proceed, I am to take a view of them first, and to see if there be any such descent from them as those authors have pretended.

Thespis, or whoever he were that invented Tragedy, 35 (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 5 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 buffoonry and farce. From hence it came, that, in the Olympic games, where To the poets contended for four prizes, the satyric tragedy was the last of them; for, in the rest, the Satyrs were excluded from the chorus. Among the plays of Euripides which are yet remaining, there is one of these Satyrics, which is called the Cyclops; in which we may 15 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 that 20 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 25 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 firebrand into his eye, and so, revenging his dead 30 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.

35 This was the subject of the tragedy; which, being