THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. WHEN these Satires were shown to Pope at a late period of his poetical career, he was so sensible of their merit as to wish he had seen them sooner1. I doubt not that every reader who takes them up for the first time will be surprised that so much sterling good sense, such nervous language, and such masterly versification should not have commanded more popularity. Yet nothing can be less true than Warton's remark, that Hall is better known as a poet than as a prelate or polemic. The Sermons and Meditations of the divine retained I Warburton told Warton, that in a copy of Hall's Satires in Pope's library, the whole first satire of the sixth book was corrected in the margin, or interlined in Pope's own hand; and that Pope had written at the head of that satire OPTIMA SATIRA. their popularity, while the youthful effusions of the poet possessed but limited fame, and were indeed almost unknown to any but antiquarian poetical readers. This may in some measure be accounted for from the circumstance of the obscurity which naturally attends upon satire; as the follies which are castigated, and the fashionable vices which are held up to ridicule fade away, the allusions are not so easily understood by a later age, as by that which it was intended to correct. Hall has heightened this obscurity by imitating the elliptical manner of Persius and Juvenal; but perhaps still more by throwing over his compositions the veil of antiquated words and phraseology, which, like his friend Spenser, he seems to have studiously affected. Indeed, following an erroneous opinion, he imagined, that a satire must necessarily be 'hard of conceit, and harsh of style,' he therefore thought proper to apologize for too much stooping to the low reach of the vulgar:' and in the Prologue to Book III. he finds it necessary to answer such cavillers as had blamed his plain speaking. Satire, as Warton observes, specifically so called, had not its rise among us until the latter end of Elizabeth's reign. For though the long allegorical Vision of Pier's Ploughman is interspersed with satirical delineations of vice and folly, satire was not its primary object. Other poems had been made the vehicle of satirical allusion, and Skelton's ribaldry long since had dealt out abuse and scurrility in profusion, but satire in its dignified and moral sense,' and ́on the model of the ancients, had its rise, if not with the publication of Hall, at least in his time. He boldly claims the precedence— I first adventure, follow me who list, But he was certainly anticipated by Thomas Lodge, whose Fig for Momus, published in 1593, contained four Satires, as a specimen of 'a whole centon already in his hands,' and several Epistles, in the manner of Horace. Donne, and Marston too, appear to have written about the same time, though posterior in the order of publication. What is more important, however, if not the first, Hall may justly lay claim to be considered the best satirist of his age, and when we remember that the writer was only twenty-three years old at the time of publication, we cannot but regret that graver studies should have so absorbed his life, as to give him neither leisure nor inclination to renew his acquaintance with the Muse. That he was not unconscious of his power for higher flights appears in several passages of the following volume; but especially in part of the Defiance to Envy, quoted by Warton; where, apostrophizing his muse, he says Would she but shade her tender brows with bay, Or would we loose her plumy pinion, Soon might she have those kestrels proud outgone, * * * * Or scour the rusted swords of Elvish knights, And by some strange enchanted spear and shield, |