kept him at a greater diftance from the schools, had yet his share of this philofophical humour. Now this apology for the practice of the Greek poets doth by no means extend to the Roman; Philosophy having been very late, and never generally, the taste of Rome. Cicero fays, Philofophia quidem tantum abeft ut proinde, ac de hominum eft vitâ merita, laudetur, ut a plerifque neglecta, a multis etiam vituperetur. In another place he tells us, that in his time Aristotle was not much known, or read, even by the philofophers themfelves, [Cic. Top. fub init.] And, though in the age of Seneca, Sentences, we know, were much in use, yet the cast and turn of them evidently fhew them to have been the affectation of the lettered few, and not the general mode and practice of the time. For the quaintness, in which Seneca's aphorifms are dreffed, manifeftly speaks the labour and artifice of the clofet, and is just the reverse of that easy, fimple expreffion, which cloaths them in the Greek poets, thus demonftrating their familiar currency in coinmon life. Under any other circumftances than thefe, the practice, as was observed, must be unquestionably faulty; except only in the chorus, where, for the reafon before given, it may always, with good advantage, be employed. N 3 ཝཱ 220. CAR 220. CARMINE QUI TRAGICO, etc.] The connexion with 201, from whence the poet had digreffed, is worth obferving. The digreffion had been taken up in defcribing the improved ftate of dramatic mufic; the application of which to the cafe of tragedy, brings him round again to his subject, the tragic chorus; to which alone, as hath been obferved, the two laft lines refer. This too is the finest preparation of what follows. For to have paffed on directly from the tibia to the fatyrs, had been abrupt and inaftificial; but from tragedy, the tranfition is easy, the fatyrs being a species of the tragic drama. That it was fo accounted may be seen from the following paffage in Ovid, Eft et in obfcoenos deflexa tragoedia rifus, For the tragedy, here referred to, cannot be the I "diarum diarum formæ funt tres: Palliatæ, Togatæ, "Atellana, falibus et jocis compofitæ, quæ in fe "non habent nifi vetuftam elegantiam." [Prol. in Terent.] And Athenæus [1. vi.] fpeaking of fome pieces of this fort, which L. Sylla had compofed, calls them Calupixas xwwdías, fatyric comedies; comedies, because, as Donatus fays, falibus et jocis compofitæ:" and fatyric, not that fatyrs were introduced in them, but, according to Diomedes, from their being "argumentis "dictifque fimiles fatyricis fabulis Græcis." Of what then can Ovid be understood to speak, but the true fatyric piece, which was always esteemed, and, as appears from the Cyclops, in fact is, what Demetrius [wepi guneas] elegantly calls it, τραγωδία παιζέση, a lighter kind of tragedy; the very name, which Horace, as well as Ovid in this place, gives to it? But this is further clear from the inftance quoted by Ovid, of this loofe tragedy; for he proceeds: Nec nocet autori, mollem qui fecit Achillem, Infregiffe fuis fortia falta modis. which well agrees to the idea of a fatyric piece, and, as Voffius takes notice, feems to be the very fame fubject, which Athenæus and others tell us, Sophocles had work'd into a fatyric tragedy, under the title of 'Αχιλλέως ἐραςαί. 1 221. Mox ETIAM, etc.] It is not, the intention of these notes to retail the accounts of others. I must therefore refer the reader, for whatever concerns the hiftory of the fatyric, as I have hitherto done, of the tragic, and comic drama, to the numerous differtators on the ancient ftage; and above all in the cafe before us, to the learned Cafaubon; from whom all that hath been faid to any purpose, by modern writers, hath been taken. Only it will be proper to obferve one or two particulars, which have been greatly mifunderstood, and without which it will be impoffible, in any tolerable manner, to explain what follows. I. The defign of the poet, in these lines, is not to fix the origin of the fatyric piece, in afcribing the invention of it to Thefpis. This hath been concluded, without the leaft warrant from his own words, which barely tell us, "that the Representation of tragedy was in elder "Greece, followed by the fatyrs ;" and indeed the nature of the thing, as well as the teftimony of all antiquity, fhews it to be impoffible. For the fatyr here spoken of, is, in all refpects, a regular drama, and therefore could not be of earlier date, than the times of Æfchylus, when the conftitution of the drama was firft formed. 'Tis true indeed, there was a kind of entertainment of much greater antiquity, which by the antients antients is sometimes called fatyrie, out of which (as Ariftotle affures us) tragedy itself arose, ἡ δὲ τραγῳδία, διὰ τὸ ἐκ βατυρικό μεταβαλεν, ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνώθη, [περ. ποιητ. κ. δ.] But then this was nothing but a chorus of fatyrs [Athenæus, 1. xiv.] celebrating the festivals of Bacchus, with rude fongs, and uncouth dances; 'and had little refemblance to that, which was afterwards called fatyric; which, except that it retained the chorus of fatyrs, and turned upon fome subject relative to Bacchus, was of a quite different ftructure, and, in every refpect, as regular a compofition, as tragedy itself. II. There is no doubt but the poem, here diftinguished by the name of SATYRI, was in actual use on the Roman ftage. This appears from the turn of the poet's whole criticifm upon it. Particularly, his addrefs to the Pifos, 235. and his observation of the offence which a loose dialogue in this drama would give to a Roman auditory, 248. make it evident that he had, in fact, the practice of his own ftage in view. It hath, however, been queftioned, whether by Satyri we are to understand the proper Greek Satyrs, or the Latin Atellane fable, which, in the main of its character, very much resembled that drama. If the authority of Diomedes be any thing, the former must be the truth, for he ex prefly |