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.
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