Though the former writ fables, the latter, speaking
properly, began the Roman satire, according to that description
which Juvenal gives of it in his first:-
"Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira voluptas,
Gaudia, discurses, nostri est farrago libelli."
This is that in which I have made hold to differ from Casaubon,
Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics--that not
Ennius, but Andronicus, was the first who, by the archaea comedia of
the Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous
Roman satire; which sort of poem, though we had not derived from
Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages and in every
country.
It is but necessary that, after so much has been said of satire,
some definition of it should be given. Heinsius, in his
Dissertations on Horace, makes it for me in these words:- "Satire is
a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the
purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors,
and all things besides which are produced from them in every man,
are severely reprehended--partly dramatically, partly simply, and
sometimes in both kinds of speaking, but for the most part
figuratively and occultly; consisting, in a low familiar way,
chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech, but partly also in
a facetious and civil way of jesting, by which either hatred or
laughter or indignation is moved.
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