endeavoured to justify his construction; but Stelluti is against it; and, for my part, I can have but a very dark notion of it. As for the chastity of his thoughts, Casaubon denies not but that one particular passage, in the fourth satire, At si unctus cesses, &c. is not only the most obscure, but the most obscene of all his works. I understood it; but for that reason turned it over. In defence of his boisterous metaphors, he quotes Longinus, who accounts them as instruments of the sublime; fit to move and stir up the affections, particularly in narration. To which it may be replied, that where the trope is far fetched and hard, it is fit for nothing but to puzzle the understanding; and may be reckoned amongst those things of Demosthenes which Eschines called Javμara, not juara, that is, prodigies, not words. It must be granted to Casaubon, that the knowledge of many things is lost in our modern ages, which were of familiar notice to the ancients; and that satire is a poem of a difficult nature in itself, and is not written to vulgar readers: and through the relation which it has to comedy, the frequent change of persons makes the sense perplexed, when we can but divine who it is that speaks; whether Persius himself, or his friend and monitor; or, in some places, a third person. But Casaubon comes back always to himself, and concludes, that if Persius had not been obscure, there had been no need of him for an interpreter. Yet when he had once enjoined himself so hard a task, he then considered the Greek proverb, that he must xexares payer û μn payer, either eat the whole snail, or let it quite alone; and so he went through with his laborious task, as I have done with my difficult translation. gone very hard

Thus far, my lord, you see it has

with Persius: I think he cannot be allowed to stand in competition either with Juvenal or Horace. Yet for once I will venture to be so vain, as to affirm, that none of his hard metaphors, or forced expressions, are in my translation. But more of this in its proper place, where I shall say somewhat in particular, of our general performance, in making these two authors English. In the mean time, I think myself obliged to give Persius his undoubted due, and to acquaint the world, with Casaubon, in what he has equalled, and in what excelled, his two competitors.

A man who is resolved to praise an author, with any appearance of justice, must be sure to take him on the strongest side, and where he is least liable to exceptions. He is therefore obliged to chuse his mediums accordingly. Casaubon, who saw that Persius could not laugh with a becoming grace, that he was not made for jesting, and that a merry conceit was not his talent, turned his feather, like an Indian, to another light, that he might give it the better gloss. Moral doctrine, says he, and urbanity, or well-mannered wit, are the two things which constitute the Roman satire; but of the two, that which is most essential to this poem, and is, as it were, the very soul which animates it, is the scourging of vice, and exhortation to virtue. Thus wit, for a good reason, is already almost out of doors; and allowed only for an instrument, a kind of tool, or a weapon, as he calls it, of which the satirist makes use in the compassing of his design. The end and aim of our three rivals is consequently the same. But by what methods they have prosecuted their intention, is farther to be considered. Satire is of the nature of moral philosophy, as being instructive: he, therefore, who instructs most use

fully, will carry the palm from his two antagonists. The philosophy in which Persius was educated, and which he professes through his whole book, is the Stoick; the most noble, most generous, most beneficial to human kind, amongst all the sects, who have given us the rules of ethics, thereby to form a severe virtue in the soul; to raise in us an undaunted courage against the assaults of fortune; to esteem as nothing the things that are without us, because they are not in our power; not to value riches, beauty, honours, fame, or health, any farther than as conveniencies, and so many helps to living as we ought, and doing good in our generation: in short, to be always happy, while we possess our minds with a good conscience, are free from the slavery of vices, and conform our actions and conversations to the rules of right reason. See here, my lord, an epitome of Epictetus; the doctrine of Zeno, and the education of our Persius: and this he expressed, not only in all his satires, but in the manner of his life. I will not lessen this commendation of the Stoick philosophy, by giving you an account of some absurdities in their doctrine, and some perhaps impieties, if we consider them by the standard of christian faith. Persius has fallen into none of them; and therefore is free from those imputations. What he teaches might be taught from pulpits, with more profit to the audience, than all the nice speculations of divinity, and controversies concerning faith; which are more for the profit of the shepherd, than for the edification of the flock. Passions, interest, ambition, and all their bloody consequences of discord, and of war, are banished from this doctrine. Here is nothing proposed but the quiet and tranquillity of the mind; virtue lodged at home, and afterwards diffused in her general

effects, to the improvement and good of human kind. And therefore I wonder not that the present Bishop of Salisbury* has recommended this our author, and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, in his Pastoral Letter, to the serious perusal and practice of the divines in his diocese, as the best common-places for their sermons, as the store-houses and magazines of moral virtues, from whence they may draw out, as they have occasion, all manner of assistance for the accomplishment of a virtuous life, which the stoicks have assigned for the great end and perfection of mankind. Herein then it is, that Persius has excelled both Juvenal and Horace. He sticks to his own philosophy; he shifts not sides, like Horace, who is sometimes an Epicurean, sometimes a Stoick, sometimes an Eclectic, as his present humour leads him; nor declaims like Juvenal against vices, more like an orator, than a philosopher. Persius is every where the same; true to the dogmas of his master. What he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches, that he practises himself. There is a spirit of sincerity in all he says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded of that truth which he inculcates. In this I am of opinion that he excels Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he instructs; and is equal to Juvenal, who was as honest and serious as Persius, and more he could not be.

Hitherto I have followed Casaubon, and enlarged upon him, because I am satisfied that he says no more than truth; the rest is almost all frivolous. For he says that Horace, being the son of a tax

The famous Gilbert Burnet, the Buzzard of our author's "Hind and Panther," but for whom he seems now disposed to entertain some respect.

gatherer, or a collector, as we call it, smells every where of the meanness of his birth and education: his conceipts are vulgar, like the subjects of his satires; that he does plebeium sapere, and writes not with that elevation, which becomes a satirist : that Persius, being nobly born, and of an opulent family, had likewise the advantage of a better master; Cornutus being the most learned of his time, a man of the most holy life, the chief of the Stoick sect at Rome, and not only a great philosopher, but a poet himself, and in probability a coadjutor of Persius: that, as for Juvenal, he was long a declaimer, came late to poetry, and has not been much conversant in philosophy.

It is granted that the father of Horace was libertinus, that is, one degree removed from his grandfather, who had been once a slave. But Horace, speaking of him, gives him the best character of a father, which I ever read in history; and I wish a witty friend of mine, now living, had such another. * He bred him in the best school, and with the best company of young noblemen; and Horace, by his gratitude to his memory, gives a certain testimony that his education was ingenuous. After this, he formed himself abroad, by the conversation of great men. Brutus found him at Athens, and was so pleased with him, that he took him thence into the army,

Dryden alludes to the beautiful description which Horace bas given of his father's paternal and watchful affection in the 6th Satire of the 1st Book. Wycherley, the friend for whom he wishes a father of equal tenderness, after having been gayest of the gay, applauded by theatres, and the object of a monarch's jealousy, was finally thrown into jail for debt, and lay there seven long years, his father refusing him any assistance. And, although in 1697, he was probably at liberty, for King James had interposed in his favour and paid a great part of his debts, he continued to labour under pecuniary embarrassments untill his father's death, and even after he had succeeded to his entailed property.