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[Pg 46] 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 under-wood 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. SATIRIC [Pg 46] 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 Græcis 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.[20] Yet, as I have said, Scaliger, [Pg 47]the father, according to his custom, that is, insolently enough, contradicts them both; and
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