Thus the Copernican system of the planets
makes the moon to be moved by the motion of the earth, and carried
about her orb as a dependent of hers. Mascardi, in his discourse of
the "Doppia Favola," or double tale in plays, gives an instance of
it in the famous pastoral of Guarini, called Il Pastor Fido, where
Corisca and the Satyr are the under-parts; yet we may observe that
Corisca is brought into the body of the plot and made subservient to
it. It is certain that the divine wit of Horace was not ignorant of
this rule--that a play, though it consists of many parts, must yet
be one in the action, and must drive on the accomplishment of one
design--for he gives this very precept, Sit quod vis simplex
duntaxat, et unum; yet he seems not much to mind it in his satires,
many of them consisting of more arguments than one, and the second
without dependence on the first. Casaubon has observed this before
me in his preference of Persius to Horace, and will have his own
beloved author to be the first who found out and introduced this
method of confining himself to one subject.
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