regular kind, which now took the name of SATIRE. * These Satires (for as yet they had but little claim to the title of dramas) continued, without much alteration, to the year 514, when Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and a freedman of L. Salinator, who was undoubtedly acquainted with the old comedy of his country, produced a regular play. That it pleased, cannot be doubted, for it surpassed the Satires, even in their improved state; and indeed banished them for some time from the scene. They had however taken too strong a hold of the affections of the people to be easily forgotten, and it was therefore found necessary to reproduce and join them to the plays of Andronicus, (the superiority of which could not be contested) under the name of Exodia or Afterpieces. These partook, in a certain degree, of the general amelioration of the stage; something like a story was now introduced into them, which, though frequently indecent, and always extravagant, created a greater degree of interest, than the reciprocation of gross humour and scurrility in unconnected dialogues. Whether any of the old people still regretted this sophistication of their early amusements, it is * The origin of this word is now acknowledged to be Roman. Scaliger derived it from curupos, (satyrus,) but Casaubon, Dacier and others, more reasonably, from satura, (fem. of satur,) rich, abounding, full of variety. In this sense it was applied to the lanx or charger, in which the various productions of the soil were offered up to the gods; and thus came to be used for any miscellaneous collection in general. Satura olla, a hotch-potch; saturæ leges, laws comprehending a multitude of regulations, &c. This deduction of the name may serve to explain, in some measure, the nature of the first Satires, which treated of various subjects, and were full of various matters: but enough on this trite topick. not easy to say; but Ennius, who came to Rome about twenty years after this period, and who was more than half a Grecian, conceived that he should perform an acceptable service by reviving the ancient Satires.* He did not pretend to restore them to the stage, for which indeed the new pieces were infinitely better calculated, but endeavoured to adapt them to the closet, by refining their grossness, and softening their asperity. Success justified the attempt; Satire, thus freed from action, and formed into a poem, became a favourite pursuit, and was cultivated by several writers of eminence. In imitation of his model, Ennius confined himself to no particular species of verse, nor indeed of language, for he mingled Greek expressions with his Latin, at pleasure. It is solely with a reference to this new attempt, that Horace and Quintilian are to be understood, when they claim for the Romans the invention + It should be observed, however, that the idea was obvious, and the work itself highly necessary. The old Satire, amidst much coarse ribaldry, frequently attacked the follies and vices of the day. This could not be done by the comedy which superseded it, and which, by a strange perversity of taste, was never rendered national. Its customs, manners, nay, its very plots, were Grecian; and scarcely more applicable to the Romans than to us. + To extend this to Lucilius, as is sometimes done, is absurd, since he evidently had in view the old comedy of the Greeks, of which his Satires, according to Horace, were rigid imitations: "Eupolis atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque poëtæ 66 Atque alii, quorum comœdia prisca virorum est; Here the matter would seem to be at once determined by a very competent judge. Strip the old Greek comedy of its action, and of this kind of poetry; and certainly they had opportunities of judging, which we have not, for little of Ennius, and nothing of the old satire, remains. It is not necessary to pursue the history of Satire further in this place, or to speak of another species of it, the Varronian or, as Varro himself called it, the Menippean, which branched out change the metre from iambick to heroick, and you have the Roman Satire! It is evident from this, that unless two things be granted; first, that the actors in those ancient satires were ignorant of the existence of the Greek comedy; and secondly, that Ennius, who knew it well, passed it by for a ruder model; the Romans can have no pretensions to the honour they claim. And even if these be granted, the honour appears to be scarcely worth the claiming; for the Greeks had not only dramatick, but lyrick and heroick satire. To pass by the Margites, what were the iambicks of Archilochus, and the scazons of Hipponax, but satires? nay, what were the Silli ?-Casaubon derives them aro To have, to scoff, to treat petulantly; and there is no doubt of the justness of his derivation. These little pieces were made up of passages from various poems, which, by slight alterations, were humorously or satirically applied at will. The satires of Ennius. were probably little more; indeed we have the express authority of Diomedes the grammarian, for it. After speaking of Lucilius, whose writings he derives, with Horace, from the old comedy, he adds, et olim carmen, quod ex variis poematibus constabat, satira vocabatur; quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius. Modern criticks agree in understanding ex variis poematibus, of various kinds of metre; but, I do not see why it may not mean, as I have rendered it," of various poems;" unless we choose to compliment the Romans, by supposing that what was in the Greeks a mere cento, was in them an original composition. It would scarcely be doing justice, however, to Ennius, to suppose that he did not surpass his models, for, to say the truth, the Greek Silli appear to have been no very extraordinary performances. A few short specimens of them may be seen in Diogenes Laertius, and a longer one, which has escaped the writers on this subject, in Dio Chrysostom. As this is, perhaps, the only Greek satire extant, it may be regarded as a curiosity; and as such, for as a literary effort it is worth nothing, a short extract from it may not be uninteresting. Sneering at the people of Alexandria, for their mad attachment to chariot-races, &c. he says, this folly from the former, and was a medley of prose and verse: it will be a more pleasing, as well as a more useful employ, to enter a little into what Dryden, I know not for what reason, calls the most difficult part of his undertaking; "a comparative view of the Satirists;" not certainly with the design of depressing one at the expense of another, (for though I have translated Juvenal, I have no quarrel with Horace and Persius,) but for the purpose of pointing out the characteristick excellencies and defects of them all. To do this the more effectually, it will be previously necessary to take a cursory view of the times in which their respective works were produced. LUCILIUS, to whom Horace, forgetting what he had said in another place, attributes the invention of Satire, flourished in the interval between the siege of Carthage and the defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons, by Marius. He lived therefore in an age in which the struggle between the old and new manners, though daily becoming more equal, or rather inclining to the worse side, was still far from being decided. The freedom of speaking and writing, was yet unchecked by fear, or by any law more precise than that which, as of theirs is not ill exposed by one of those scurrilous writers of (Silli, or) parodies: κακως τις παρεποίησε των σατρων τετων ποιητων Αρματα δ' άλλοτε μεν χθονι πιλνατο πουλυβοτείρη, Θωκοις εν σφετεροις, εθ ̓ ἑτασαν, εδ' εκάθηντο, d Ad Alexand. Orat, xxx11. has been already mentioned, was introduced to restrain the coarse ebullitions of rustick malignity. Add to this, that Lucilius was of a most respectable family, (he was great-uncle to Pompey,) and lived in habits of intimacy with the chiefs of the republick, with Lælius, Scipio, and others, who were well able to protect him from the Lupi and Mutii of the day, had they attempted, which they probably did not, to silence or molest him. Hence that boldness of satirizing the vicious by name, which startled Horace, and on which Juvenal and Persius delight to felicitate him. Too little remains of Lucilius, to enable us to judge of his manner: his style seems, however, to bear fewer marks of delicacy than of strength, and his strictures appear harsh and violent. With all this, he must have been an extraordinary man; since Horace, who is evidently hurt by his reputation, can say nothing worse of his compositions than that they are careless and hasty, and that if he had lived at a more refined period, he would have partaken of the general amelioration. I do not remember to have heard it observed, but I suspect that there was something of political spleen in the excessive popularity of Lucilius under Augustus, and something of courtly complacency in the attempt of Horace to counteract it. Augustus enlarged the law of the twelve tables respecting libels; and the people, who found themselves thus abridged of the liberty of satirizing the great by name, might not improbably seek to avenge themselves, by an overstrained attachment to the works of a man who, living, as they would insinuate, in better times, practised without fear, what he enjoyed without restraint. The space between Horace and his predecessor, was a dreadful interval "filled up with horrour |