Exposing My Orbs: The Rise of a Liberal Satirist
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This is one amongst many of your shining qualities which distinguish you from others of your rank. But let me add a farther truth--that without these ties of gratitude, and abstracting from them all, I have a most particular inclination to honour you, and, if it were not too bold an expression, to say I love you.
It is no shame to be a poet, though it is to be a bad one. Augustus Caesar of old, and Cardinal Richelieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David and Solomon were such. You who, without flattery, are the best of the present age in England, and would have been so had you been born in any other country, will receive more honour in future ages by that one excellency than by all those honours to which your birth has entitled you, or your merits have acquired you. I have formerly said in this epistle that I could distinguish your writings from those of any others; it is now time to clear myself from any imputation of self-conceit on that subject.
I assume not to myself any particular lights in this discovery; they are such only as are obvious to every man of sense and judgment who loves poetry and understands it. Your thoughts are always so remote from the common way of thinking that they are, as I may say, of another species than the conceptions of other poets; yet you go not out of nature for any of them. Gold is never bred upon the surface of the ground, but lies so hidden and so deep that the mines of it are seldom found; but the force of waters casts it out from the bowels of mountains, and exposes it amongst the sands of rivers, giving us of her bounty what we could not hope for by our search.
This success attends your lordship's thoughts, which would look like chance if it were not perpetual and always of the same tenor. If I grant that there is care in it, it is such a care as would be ineffectual and fruitless in other men; it is the curiosa felicitas which Petronius ascribes to Horace in his odes. We have not wherewithal to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly: Something is deficient in the manner or the words, but more in the nobleness of our conception. Yet when you have finished all, and it appears in its full lustre; when the diamond is not only found, but the roughness smoothed; when it is cut into a form and set in gold, then we cannot but acknowledge that it is the perfect work of art and nature; and every one will be so vain to think he himself could have performed the like until he attempts it.
It is just the description that Horace makes of such a finished piece; it appears so easy,. And besides all this, it is your lordship's particular talent to lay your thoughts so chose together that, were they closer, they would be crowded, and even a due connection would be wanting.
We are not kept in expectation of two good lines which are to come after a long parenthesis of twenty bad; which is the April poetry of other writers, a mixture of rain and sunshine by fits: There is continual abundance, a magazine of thought, and yet a perpetual variety of entertainment; which creates such an appetite in your reader that he is not cloyed with anything, but satisfied with all. It is that which the Romans call caena dubia; where there is such plenty, yet withal so much diversity, and so good order, that the choice is difficult betwixt one excellency and another; and yet the conclusion, by a due climax, is evermore the best--that is, as a conclusion ought to be, ever the most proper for its place.
See, my lord, whether I have not studied your lordship with some application: Yet what I have done is enough to distinguish you from any other, which is the proposition that I took upon me to demonstrate. And now, my lord, to apply what I have said to my present business: Your lordship, amongst many other favours, has given me your permission for this address; and you have particularly encouraged me by your perusal and approbation of the sixth and tenth satires of Juvenal as I have translated them.
My fellow-labourers have likewise commissioned me to perform in their behalf this office of a dedication to you, and will acknowledge, with all possible respect and gratitude, your acceptance of their work. Some of them have the honour to be known to your lordship already; and they who have not yet that happiness, desire it now.
Be pleased to receive our common endeavours with your wonted candour, without entitling you to the protection of our common failings in so difficult an undertaking. And allow me your patience, if it be not already tired with this long epistle, to give you from the best authors the origin, the antiquity, the growth, the change, and the completement of satire among the Romans; to describe, if not define, the nature of that poem, with its several qualifications and virtues, together with the several sorts of it; to compare the excellencies of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, and show the particular manners of their satires; and, lastly, to give an account of this new way of version which is attempted in our performance: The most perfect work of poetry, says our master Aristotle, is tragedy.
His reason is because it is the most united; being more severely confined within the rules of action, time, and place. The action is entire of a piece, and one without episodes; the time limited to a natural day; and the place circumscribed at least within the compass of one town or city.
Being exactly proportioned thus, and uniform in all its parts, the mind is more capable of comprehending the whole beauty of it without distraction. But after all these advantages an heroic poem is certainly the greatest work of human nature. The beauties and perfections of the other are but mechanical; those of the epic are more noble.
Though Homer has limited his place to Troy and the fields about it; his actions to forty-eight natural days, whereof twelve are holidays, or cessation from business during the funeral of Patroclus. The instruction is equal; but the first is only instructive, the latter forms a hero and a prince. If it signifies anything which of them is of the more ancient family, the best and most absolute heroic poem was written by Homer long before tragedy was invented. But if we consider the natural endowments and acquired parts which are necessary to make an accomplished writer in either kind, tragedy requires a less and more confined knowledge; moderate learning and observation of the rules is sufficient if a genius be not wanting.
But in an epic poet, one who is worthy of that name, besides an universal genius is required universal learning, together with all those qualities and acquisitions which I have named above, and as many more as I have through haste or negligence omitted. And, after all, he must have exactly studied Homer and Virgil as his patterns, Aristotle and Horace as his guides, and Vida and Bossu as their commentators, with many others both Italian and French critics which I want leisure here to recommend. In a word, what I have to say in relation to this subject, which does not particularly concern satire, is that the greatness of an heroic poem beyond that of a tragedy may easily be discovered by observing how few have attempted that work, in comparison to those who have written dramas; and of those few, how small a number have succeeded.
But leaving the critics on either side to contend about the preference due to this or that sort of poetry, I will hasten to my present business, which is the antiquity and origin of satire, according to those informations which I have received from the learned Casaubon, Heinsius, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the Dauphin's Juvenal, to which I shall add some observations of my own. There has been a long dispute among the modern critics whether the Romans derived their satire from the Grecians or first invented it themselves.
Julius Scaliger and Heinsius are of the first opinion; Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the publisher of Dauphin's Juvenal maintain the latter. If we take satire in the general signification of the word, as it is used in all modern languages, for an invective, it is certain that it is almost as old as verse; and though hymns, which are praises of God, may be allowed to have been before it, yet the defamation of others was not long after it. After God had cursed Adam and Eve in Paradise, the husband and wife excused themselves by laying the blame on one another, and gave a beginning to those conjugal dialogues in prose which the poets have perfected in verse.
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The third chapter of Job is one of the first instances of this poem in Holy Scripture, unless we will take it higher, from the latter end of the second, where his wife advises him to curse his Maker. This original, I confess, is not much to the honour of satire; but here it was nature, and that depraved: Only we have learnt thus much already--that scoffs and revilings are of the growth of all nations; and consequently that neither the Greek poets borrowed from other people their art of railing, neither needed the Romans to take it from them.
But considering satire as a species of poetry, here the war begins amongst the critics. Scaliger, the father, will have it descend from Greece to Rome; and derives the word "satire" from Satyrus, that mixed 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, pouting lips, a bunch or struma under the chin, pricked ears, and upright horns; the body shagged with hair, especially from the waist, and ending in a goat, with the legs and feet of that creature.
But Casaubon and his followers, with reason, condemn this derivation, and prove that from Satyrus the word satira, as it signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend. For satira is not properly a substantive, but an adjective; to which the word lanx in English a "charger" or "large platter" is understood: And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had such poems, but that they were wholly different in species from that to which the Romans gave the name of satire.
Aristotle divides all poetry, in relation to the progress of it, into nature without art, art begun, and art completed. Mankind, even the most barbarous, have the seeds of poetry implanted in them. The first specimen of it was certainly shown in the praises of the Deity and prayers to Him; and as they are of natural obligation, so they are likewise of divine institution: 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 soon succeeded to 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 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 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 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.
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The Grecians had a notion of Satyrs, whom 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 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 demi-gods, nor had any communication with Greece, yet had certain young men who at their festivals danced and sang 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, it was void of art, or, at least, with very feeble beginnings of it.
Those ancient Romans at these holy days, which were a mixture of devotion and debauchery, had a custom of reproaching each other with their faults in a sort of extempore poetry, or rather of tunable hobbling 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 singing and dancing of the Satyrs with the rustical entertainments of the first Romans. The reason of my opinion is this: The verses are these, which he cites from the First Epistle of the Second Book, which was written to Augustus: Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit.
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, poured to thee. With flowers 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 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 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 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 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 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: The law of the Decemviri was this: Siquis occentassit malum carmen, sive condidissit, quod infamiam faxit, flagitiumve 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 satiric dramas the elder Scaliger and Heinsius will have the Roman satire to proceed; I am to take a view of them first, and see if there be any such descent from them as those authors have pretended. Thespis, or whoever he were that invented tragedy 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 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 buffoonery and farce. From hence it came that in the Olympic Games, where the poets contended for four prizes, the satiric tragedy was the last of them, for in the rest the Satyrs were excluded from the chorus. Amongst the plays of Euripides which are yet remaining, there is one of these satirics, which is called The Cyclops, in which we may see the nature of those poems, and from thence conclude what likeness they have to the Roman satire.
How late-night comedy went from political to politicized
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 the 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 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 fire-brand into his eye, and so revenging his dead 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.
This was the subject of the tragedy, which, being one of those that end with a happy event, is therefore by Aristotle judged below the other sort, whose success is unfortunate; notwithstanding which, the Satyrs who were part of the dramatis personae, as well as the whole chorus were properly introduced into the nature of the poem, which is mixed of farce and tragedy.
The adventure of Ulysses was to entertain the judging part of the audience, and the uncouth persons of Silenus and the Satyrs to divert the common people with their gross railleries. Your lordship has perceived by this time that this satiric tragedy and the Roman satire have little resemblance in any of their features. The very kinds are different; for what has a pastoral tragedy to do with a paper of verses satirically written? The character and raillery of the Satyrs is the only thing that could pretend to a likeness, were Scaliger and Heinsius alive to maintain their opinion.
And the first farces of the Romans, which were the rudiments of their poetry, were written before they had any communication with the Greeks, or indeed any knowledge of that people. And here it will be proper to give the definition of the Greek satiric poem from Casaubon before I leave this subject. The persons represented in it are illustrious men, the action of it is great, the style is partly serious and partly jocular, and the event of the action most commonly is happy. The Grecians, besides these satiric tragedies, had another kind of poem, which they called "silli," which were more of kin to the Roman satire.
Those "silli" were indeed invective poems, but of a different species from the Roman poems of Ennius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Horace, and the rest of their successors. From some fragments of the "silli" written by Timon we may find that they were satiric poems, full of parodies; that is, of verses patched up from great poets, and turned into another sense than their author intended them. Such amongst the Romans is the famous Cento of Ausonius, where the words are Virgil's, but by applying them to another sense they are made a relation of a wedding-night, and the act of consummation fulsomely described in the very words of the most modest amongst all poets.
Of the same manner are our songs which are turned into burlesque, and the serious words of the author perverted into a ridiculous meaning. Thus in Timon's "silli" the words are generally those of Homer and the tragic poets, but he applies them satirically to some customs and kinds of philosophy which he arraigns. But the Romans not using any of these parodies in their satires--sometimes indeed repeating verses of other men, as Persius cites some of Nero's, but not turning them into another meaning--the "silli" cannot be supposed to be the original of Roman satire.
To these "silli," consisting of parodies, we may properly add the satires which were written against particular persons, such as were the iambics of Archilochus against Lycambes, which Horace undoubtedly imitated in some of his odes and epodes, whose titles bear sufficient witness of it: I might also name the invective of Ovid against Ibis, and many others. But these are the underwood of satire rather than the timber-trees; they are not of general extension, as reaching only to some individual person. And Horace seems to have purged himself from those splenetic reflections in those odes and epodes before he undertook the noble work of satires, which were properly so called.
Thus, my lord, I have at length disengaged myself from those antiquities of Greece, and have proved, I hope, from the best critics, that the Roman satire was not borrowed from thence, but of their own manufacture. I am now almost gotten into my depth; at least, by the help of Dacier, I am swimming towards it. Not that I will promise always to follow him, any more than he follows Casaubon; but to keep him in my eye as my best and truest guide; and where I think he may possibly mislead me, there to have recourse to my own lights, as I expect that others should do by me.
Quintilian says in plain words, Satira quidem tota nostra est; and Horace had said the same thing before him, speaking of his predecessor in that sort of poetry, et Graecis intacti carminis auctor. Nothing can be clearer than the opinion of the poet and the orator both the best critics of the two best ages of the Roman empire , that satire was wholly of Latin growth, and not transplanted to Rome from Athens. Yet, as I have said, Scaliger the father, according to his custom that is, insolently enough , contradicts them both, and gives no better reason than the derivation of satyrus from [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] salacitas; and so, from the lechery of those fauns, thinks he has sufficiently proved that satire is derived from them: His other allegation, which I have already mentioned, is as pitiful--that the Satyrs carried platters and canisters full of fruit in their hands.
If they had entered empty-handed, had they been ever the less Satyrs? Or were the fruits and flowers which they offered anything of kin to satire? Casaubon judged better, and his opinion is grounded on sure authority: It is thus, says Denier, that we say a full colour, when the wool has taken the whole tincture and drunk in as much of the dye as it can receive. According to this derivation, from setur comes satura or satira, according to the new spelling, as optumus and maxumus are now spelled optimus and maximus.
Satura, as I have formerly noted, is an adjective, and relates to the word lanx, which is understood; and this lanx in English a "charger" or "large platter" was yearly filled with all sorts of fruits, which were offered to the gods at their festivals as the premices or first gatherings. These offerings of several sorts thus mingled, it is true, were not unknown to the Grecians, who called them [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] a sacrifice of all sorts of fruits; and [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], when they offered all kinds of grain.
Virgil has mentioned these sacrifices in his "Georgics": This word satura has been afterward applied to many other sorts of mixtures; as Festus calls it, a kind of olla or hotch-potch made of several sorts of meats. Laws were also called leges saturae when they were of several heads and titles, like our tacked Bills of Parliament; and per saturam legem ferre in the Roman senate was to carry a law without telling the senators, or counting voices, when they were in haste.
Sallust uses the word, per saturam sententias exquirere, when the majority was visibly on one side. From hence it might probably be conjectured that the Discourses or Satires of Ennius, Lucilius, and Horace, as we now call them, took their name, because they are full of various matters, and are also written on various subjects--as Porphyrius says.
But Dacier affirms that it is not immediately from thence that these satires are so called, for that name had been used formerly for other things which bore a nearer resemblance to those discourses of Horace; in explaining of which, continues Dacier, a method is to be pursued of which Casaubon himself has never thought, and which will put all things into so clear a light that no further room will be left for the least dispute. During the space of almost four hundred years since the building of their city the Romans had never known any entertainments of the stage.
Chance and jollity first found out those verses which they called Saturnian and Fescennine; or rather human nature, which is inclined to poetry, first produced them rude and barbarous and unpolished, as all other operations of the soul are in their beginnings before they are cultivated with art and study. However, in occasions of merriment, they were first practised; and this rough-cast, unhewn poetry was instead of stage-plays for the space of a hundred and twenty years together. They were made extempore, and were, as the French call them, impromptus; for which the Tarsians of old were much renowned, and we see the daily examples of them in the Italian farces of Harlequin and Scaramucha.
Such was the poetry of that savage people before it was tuned into numbers and the harmony of verse. Little of the Saturnian verses is now remaining; we only know from authors that they were nearer prose than poetry, without feet or measure. They were [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] but not [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Perhaps they might be used in the solemn part of their ceremonies; and the Fescennine, which were invented after them, in their afternoons' debauchery, because they were scoffing and obscene. The Fescennine and Saturnian were the same; for as they were called Saturnian from their ancientness, when Saturn reigned in Italy, they were also called Fescennine, from Fescennia, a town in the same country where they were first practised.
The actors, with a gross and rustic kind of raillery, reproached each other with their failings, and at the same time were nothing sparing of it to their audience. Somewhat of this custom was afterwards retained in their Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn, celebrated in December; at least, all kind of freedom in speech was then allowed to slaves, even against their masters; and we are not without some imitation of it in our Christmas gambols.
Soldiers also used those Fescennine verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at the triumph of their generals; of which we have an example in the triumph of Julius Caesar over Gaul in these expressions: Caesar Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem. Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Gallias; Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem. The vapours of wine made those first satirical poets amongst the Romans, which, says Dacier, we cannot better represent than by imagining a company of clowns on a holiday dancing lubberly and upbraiding one another in extempore doggerel with their defects and vices, and the stories that were told of them in bake-houses and barbers' shops.
When they began to be somewhat better bred, and were entering, as I may say, into the first rudiments of civil conversation, they left these hedge-notes for another sort of poem, somewhat polished, which was also full of pleasant raillery, but without any mixture of obscenity. This sort of poetry appeared under the name of "satire" because of its variety; and this satire was adorned with compositions of music, and with dances; but lascivious postures were banished from it. In the Tuscan language, says Livy, the word hister signifies a player; and therefore those actors which were first brought from Etruria to Rome on occasion of a pestilence, when the Romans were admonished to avert the anger of the gods by plays in the year ab urbe condita CCCXC.
They played, not the former extempore stuff of Fescennine verses or clownish jests, but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly farce, with music and dances, and motions that were proper to the subject. In this condition Livius Andronicus found the stage when he attempted first, instead of farces, to supply it with a nobler entertainment of tragedies and comedies. This man was a Grecian born, and being made a slave by Livius Salinator, and brought to Rome, had the education of his patron's children committed to him, which trust he discharged so much to the satisfaction of his master that he gave him his liberty.
Andronicus, thus become a freeman of Rome, added to his own name that of Livius, his master; and, as I observed, was the first author of a regular play in that commonwealth. Being already instructed in his native country in the manners and decencies of the Athenian theatre, and conversant in the archaea comaedia or old comedy of Aristophanes and the rest of the Grecian poets, he took from that model his own designing of plays for the Roman stage, the first of which was represented in the year CCCCCXIV.
Dacier has not carried the matter altogether thus far; he only says that one Livius Andronicus was the first stage-poet at Rome. But I will adventure on this hint to advance another proposition, which I hope the learned will approve; and though we have not anything of Andronicus remaining to justify my conjecture, yet it is exceeding probable that, having read the works of those Grecian wits, his countrymen, he imitated not only the groundwork, but also the manner of their writing; and how grave soever his tragedies might be, yet in his comedies he expressed the way of Aristophanes, Eupolis, and the rest, which was to call some persons by their own names, and to expose their defects to the laughter of the people the examples of which we have in the fore-mentioned Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates into ridicule, and is also very free with the management of Cleon, Alcibiades, and other ministers of the Athenian government.
Now if this be granted, we may easily suppose that the first hint of satirical plays on the Roman stage was given by the Greeks--not from the satirica, for that has been reasonably exploded in the former part of this discourse-- but from their old comedy, which was imitated first by Livius Andronicus. And then Quintilian and Horace must be cautiously interpreted, where they affirm that satire is wholly Roman, and a sort of verse which was not touched on by the Grecians.
The reconcilement of my opinion to the standard of their judgment is not, however, very difficult, since they spoke of satire, not as in its first elements, but as it was formed into a separate work--begun by Ennius, pursued by Lucilius, and completed afterwards by Horace. The proof depends only on this postalatum--that the comedies of Andronicus, which were imitations of the Greek, were also imitations of their railleries and reflections on particular persons.
For if this be granted me, which is a most probable supposition, it is easy to infer that the first light which was given to the Roman theatrical satire was from the plays of Livius Andronicus, which will be more manifestly discovered when I come to speak of Ennius. In the meantime I will return to Dacier. The people, says he, ran in crowds to these new entertainments of Andronicus, as to pieces which were more noble in their kind, and more perfect than their former satires, which for some time they neglected and abandoned; but not long after they took them up again, and then they joined them to their comedies, playing them at the end of every drama, as the French continue at this day to act their farces, in the nature of a separate entertainment from their tragedies.
But more particularly they were joined to the "Atellane" fables, says Casaubon; which were plays invented by the Osci. Those fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy, were tempered with the Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy or obsceneness; and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away oppressed with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre.
So that the ancient satire of the Romans was in extempore reproaches; the next was farce, which was brought from Tuscany; to that succeeded the plays of Andronicus, from the old comedy of the Grecians; and out of all these sprang two several branches of new Roman satire, like different scions from the same root, which I shall prove with as much brevity as the subject will allow.
A year after Andronicus had opened the Roman stage with his new dramas, Ennius was born; who, when he was grown to man's estate, having seriously considered the genius of the people, and how eagerly they followed the first satires, thought it would be worth his pains to refine upon the project, and to write satires, not to be acted on the theatre, but read. He preserved the groundwork of their pleasantry, their venom, and their raillery on particular persons and general vices; and by this means, avoiding the danger of any ill success in a public representation, he hoped to be as well received in the cabinet as Andronicus had been upon the stage.
The event was answerable to his expectation. He made discourses in several sorts of verse, varied often in the same paper, retaining still in the title their original name of satire. Both in relation to the subjects, and the variety of matters contained in them, the satires of Horace are entirely like them; only Ennius, as I said, confines not himself to one sort of verse, as Horace does, but taking example from the Greeks, and even from Homer himself in his "Margites" which is a kind of satire, as Scaliger observes , gives himself the licence, when one sort of numbers comes not easily, to run into another, as his fancy dictates; for he makes no difficulty to mingle hexameters with iambic trimeters or with trochaic tetrameters, as appears by those fragments which are yet remaining of him.
Horace has thought him worthy to be copied, inserting many things of his into his own satires, as Virgil has done into his "AEneids. Here we have Dacier making out that Ennius was the first satirist in that way of writing, which was of his invention--that is, satire abstracted from the stage and new modelled into papers of verses on several subjects. But he will have Ennius take the groundwork of satire from the first farces of the Romans rather than from the formed plays of Livius Andronicus, which were copied from the Grecian comedies. It may possibly be so; but Dacier knows no more of it than I do.
And it seems to me the more probable opinion that he rather imitated the fine railleries of the Greeks, which he saw in the pieces of Andronicus, than the coarseness of his own countrymen in their clownish extemporary way of jeering. But besides this, it is universally granted that Ennius, though an Italian, was excellently learned in the Greek language. His verses were stuffed with fragments of it, even to a fault; and he himself believed, according to the Pythagorean opinion, that the soul of Homer was transfused into him, which Persius observes in his sixth satire--postquam destertuit esse Maeonides.
But this being only the private opinion of so inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of the critics, if they think it worth their notice. Most evident it is that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly so called, and distinguished from any sort of stage-play. Of Pacuvius, who succeeded him, there is little to be said, because there is so little remaining of him; only that he is taken to be the nephew of Ennius, his sister's son; that in probability he was instructed by his uncle in his way of satire, which we are told he has copied; but what advances he made, we know not.
Lucilius came into the world when Pacuvius flourished most. He also made satires after the manner of Ennius; but he gave them a more graceful turn, and endeavoured to imitate more closely the vetus comaedia of the Greeks, of the which the old original Roman satire had no idea till the time of Livius Andronicus.
And though Horace seems to have made Lucilius the first author of satire in verse amongst the Romans in these words -. Satira quidem tota nostra est; in qua primus insignem laudem adeptus est Luciluis. Thus both Horace and Quintilian give a kind of primacy of honour to Lucilius amongst the Latin satirists; for as the Roman language grew more refined, so much more capable it was of receiving the Grecian beauties, in his time.
Horace and Quintilian could mean no more than that Lucilius writ better than Ennius and Pacuvius, and on the same account we prefer Horace to Lucilius. Both of them imitated the old Greek comedy; and so did Ennius and Pacuvius before them. The polishing of the Latin tongue, in the succession of times, made the only difference; and Horace himself in two of his satires, written purposely on this subject, thinks the Romans of his age were too partial in their commendations of Lucilius, who writ not only loosely and muddily, with little art and much less care, but also in a time when the Latin tongue was not yet sufficiently purged from the dregs of barbarism; and many significant and sounding words which the Romans wanted were not admitted even in the times of Lucretius and Cicero, of which both complain.
Dacier justly taxes Casaubon for saying that the satires of Lucilius were wholly different in species from those of Ennius and Pacuvius, Casaubon was led into that mistake by Diomedes the grammarian, who in effect says this: But in former times the name of satire was given to poems which were composed of several sorts of verses, such as were made by Ennius and Pacuvius"--more fully expressing the etymology of the word satire from satura, which we have observed. Here it is manifest that Diomedes makes a specifical distinction betwixt the satires of Ennius and those of Lucilius.
But this, as we say in English, is only a distinction without a difference; for the reason of it is ridiculous and absolutely false. This was that which cozened honest Casaubon, who, relying on Diomedes, had not sufficiently examined the origin and nature of those two satires, which were entirely the same both in the matter and the form; for all that Lucilius performed beyond his predecessors, Ennius and Pacuvius, was only the adding of more politeness and more salt, without any change in the substance of the poem.
And though Lucilius put not together in the same satire several sorts of verses, as Ennius did, yet he composed several satires of several sorts of verses, and mingled them with Greek verses: In short, if the satires of Lucilius are therefore said to be wholly different from those of Ennius because he added much more of beauty and polishing to his own poems than are to be found in those before him, it will follow from hence that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of Lucilius, because Horace has not less surpassed Lucilius in the elegancy of his writing than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his.
This passage of Diomedes has also drawn Dousa the son into the same error of Casaubon, which I say, not to expose the little failings of those judicious men, but only to make it appear with how much diffidence and caution we are to read their works when they treat a subject of so much obscurity and so very ancient as is this of satire. Having thus brought down the history of satire from its original to the times of Horace, and shown the several changes of it, I should here discover some of those graces which Horace added to it, but that I think it will be more proper to defer that undertaking till I make the comparison betwixt him and Juvenal.
In the meanwhile, following the order of time, it will be necessary to say somewhat of another kind of satire which also was descended from the ancient; it is that which we call the Varronian satire but which Varro himself calls the Menippean because Varro, the most learned of the Romans, was the first author of it, who imitated in his works the manners of Menippus the Gadarenian, who professed the philosophy of the Cynics. This sort of satire was not only composed of several sorts of verse, like those of Ennius, but was also mixed with prose, and Greek was sprinkled amongst the Latin.
Quintilian, after he had spoken of the satire of Lucilius, adds what follows: But Quintilian meant not that the satire of Varro was in order of time before Lucilius; he would only give us to understand that the Varronian satire, with mixture of several sorts of verses, was more after the manner of Ennius and Pacuvius than that of Lucilius, who was more severe and more correct, and gave himself less liberty in the mixture of his verses in the same poem. We have nothing remaining of those Varronian satires excepting some inconsiderable fragments, and those for the most part much corrupted.
The tithes of many of them are indeed preserved, and they are generally double; from whence, at least, we may understand how many various subjects were treated by that author. Tully in his "Academics" introduces Varro himself giving us some light concerning the scope and design of those works; wherein, after he had shown his reasons why he did not ex professo write of philosophy, he adds what follows: And Tully himself confirms us in this opinion when a little after he addresses himself to Varro in these words: And he entitled his own satires Menippean; not that Menippus had written any satires for his were either dialogues or epistles , but that Varro imitated his style, his manner, and his facetiousness.
All that we know further of Menippus and his writings, which are wholly lost, is that by some he is esteemed, as, amongst the rest, by Varro; by others he is noted of cynical impudence and obscenity; that he was much given to those parodies which I have already mentioned that is, he often quoted the verses of Homer and the tragic poets, and turned their serious meaning into something that was ridiculous ; whereas Varro's satires are by Tully called absolute, and most elegant and various poems.
Lucian, who was emulous of this Menippus, seems to have imitated both his manners and his style in many of his dialogues, where Menippus himself is often introduced as a speaker in them and as a perpetual buffoon; particularly his character is expressed in the beginning of that dialogue which is called [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. But Varro in imitating him avoids his impudence and filthiness, and only expresses his witty pleasantry. This we may believe for certain--that as his subjects were various, so most of them were tales or stories of his own invention; which is also manifest from antiquity by those authors who are acknowledged to have written Varronian satires in imitation of his--of whom the chief is Petronius Arbiter, whose satire, they say, is now printing in Holland, wholly recovered, and made complete; when it is made public, it will easily be seen by any one sentence whether it be supposititious or genuine.
Many of Lucian's dialogues may also properly be called Varronian satires, particularly his true history; and consequently the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, which is taken from him. Of the same stamp is the mock deification of Claudius by Seneca, and the Symposium or "Caesars" of Julian the Emperor. Amongst the moderns we may reckon the "Encomium Moriae" of Erasmus, Barclay's "Euphormio," and a volume of German authors which my ingenious friend Mr.
Charles Killigrew once lent me. In the English I remember none which are mixed with prose as Varro's were; but of the same kind is "Mother Hubbard's Tale" in Spenser, and if it be not too vain to mention anything of my own the poems of "Absalom" and "MacFlecnoe. This is what I have to say in general of satire: But in our modern languages we apply it only to invective poems, where the very name of satire is formidable to those persons who would appear to the world what they are not in themselves; for in English, to say satire is to mean reflection, as we use that word in the worst sense; or as the French call it, more properly, medisance.
In the criticism of spelling, it ought to be with i, and not with y, to distinguish its true derivation from satura, not from Satyrus; and if this be so, then it is false spelled throughout this book, for here it is written "satyr," which having not considered at the first, I thought it not worth correcting afterwards. But the French are more nice, and never spell it any otherwise than "satire. I am now arrived at the most difficult part of my undertaking, which is to compare Horace with Juvenal and Persius. It is observed by Rigaltius in his preface before Juvenal, written to Thuanus, that these three poets have all their particular partisans and favourers.
Every commentator, as he has taken pains with any of them, thinks himself obliged to prefer his author to the other two; to find out their failings, and decry them, that he may make room for his own darling. Such is the partiality of mankind, to set up that interest which they have once espoused, though it be to the prejudice of truth, morality, and common justice, and especially in the productions of the brain.
Discourse on Satire
As authors generally think themselves the best poets, because they cannot go out of themselves to judge sincerely of their betters, so it is with critics, who, having first taken a liking to one of these poets, proceed to comment on him and to illustrate him; after which they fall in love with their own labours to that degree of blind fondness that at length they defend and exalt their author, not so much for his sake as for their own.
It is a folly of the same nature with that of the Romans themselves in their games of the circus. The spectators were divided in their factions betwixt the Veneti and the Prasini; some were for the charioteer in blue, and some for him in green.
The colours themselves were but a fancy; but when once a man had taken pains to set out those of his party, and had been at the trouble of procuring voices for them, the case was altered: I am now myself on the brink of the same precipice; I have spent some time on the translation of Juvenal and Persius, and it behoves me to be wary, lest for that reason I should be partial to them, or take a prejudice against Horace. Yet on the other side I would not be like some of our judges, who would give the cause for a poor man right or wrong; for though that be an error on the better hand, yet it is still a partiality, and a rich man unheard cannot be concluded an oppressor.
I remember a saying of King Charles II. It had been much fairer if the modern critics who have embarked in the quarrels of their favourite authors had rather given to each his proper due without taking from another's heap to raise their own. There is praise enough for each of them in particular, without encroaching on his fellows, and detracting from them or enriching themselves with the spoils of others. But to come to particulars: Heinsius and Dacier are the most principal of those who raise Horace above Juvenal and Persius. Scaliger the father, Rigaltius, and many others debase Horace that they may set up Juvenal; and Casaubon, who is almost single, throws dirt on Juvenal and Horace that he may exalt Persius, whom he understood particularly well, and better than any of his former commentators, even Stelluti, who succeeded him.
I will begin with him who, in my opinion, defends the weakest cause, which is that of Persius; and labouring, as Tacitus professes of his own writing, to divest myself of partiality or prejudice, consider Persius, not as a poet whom I have wholly translated, and who has cost me more labour and time than Juvenal, but according to what I judge to be his own merit, which I think not equal in the main to that of Juvenal or Horace, and yet in some things to be preferred to both of them.
First, then, for the verse; neither Casaubon himself, nor any for him, can defend either his numbers or the purity of his Latin. Casaubon gives this point for lost, and pretends not to justify either the measures or the words of Persius; he is evidently beneath Horace and Juvenal in both. Then, as his verse is scabrous and hobbling, and his words not everywhere well chosen the purity of Latin being more corrupted than in the time of Juvenal, and consequently of Horace, who wrote when the language was in the height of its perfection , so his diction is hard, his figures are generally too bold and daring, and his tropes, particularly his metaphors, insufferably strained.
In the third place, notwithstanding all the diligence of Casaubon, Stelluti, and a Scotch gentleman whom I have heard extremely commended for his illustrations of him, yet he is still obscure; whether he affected not to be understood but with difficulty; or whether the fear of his safety under Nero compelled him to this darkness in some places, or that it was occasioned by his close way of thinking, and the brevity of his style and crowding of his figures; or lastly, whether after so long a time many of his words have been corrupted, and many customs and stories relating to them lost to us; whether some of these reasons, or all, concurred to render him so cloudy, we may be bold to affirm that the best of commentators can but guess at his meaning in many passages, and none can be certain that he has divined rightly.
After all he was a young man, like his friend and contemporary Lucan--both of them men of extraordinary parts and great acquired knowledge, considering their youth; but neither of them had arrived to that maturity of judgment which is necessary to the accomplishing of a formed poet. And this consideration, as on the one hand it lays some imperfections to their charge, so on the other side it is a candid excuse for those failings which are incident to youth and inexperience; and we have more reason to wonder how they, who died before the thirtieth year of their age, could write so well and think so strongly, than to accuse them of those faults from which human nature and more especially in youth can never possibly be exempted.
To consider Persius yet more closely: And it is to be believed that he who commits the same crime often and without necessity cannot but do it with some kind of pleasure. To come to a conclusion: Dec 11, Strange the Dreamer Strange the Dreamer, 1. Nov 30, Minority Report and Other Stories. Nov 29, Orbson Rice wants to read. Dec 16, Dec 12, Orbson Rice started reading. I still have to work to profit by it. Stories From a South African Childhood. I lay them at your feet. Tread lightly, for you tread on my dreams.
We should seek out the new and strange and applaud it and throw wild fecking parties whenever it walks into our lives. We should be building roads in and out of our own wee heads rather than erecting walls around them. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands.
So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. Then, this is the place for you.
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