: plenty and by that means he arrived at his pedantic end, which was to make a literal translation: his verfes have nothing of verfe in them, but only the worst part of it, the rhyme; and that, into the bargain, is far from good. But, which is more intolerable, by cramming his ill-chofen, and worse-founding monofyllables fo clofe together; the very fenfe which he endeavours to explain, is become more obscure than that of his author. So that Holiday himself cannot be understood, without as large a commentary, as that which he makes on his two authors. For my own part, I can make a shift to find the meaning of Juvenal without his notes: but his tranflation is more difficult than his author. And I find beauties in the Latin to recompenfe my pains; but in Holiday and Stapylton, my ears, in the first place, are mortally offended; and then their fenfe is fo perplexed, that I return to the original, as the more pleasing task, as well as the more eafy. This must be faid for our tranflation, that if we give not the whole sense of Juvenal, yet we give the most confiderable part of it: we give it, in general, fo clearly, that few notes are fufficient to make us intelligible. We make our author at least appear in a poetic drefs. We have actually made him more founding, and more elegant, than he was before in English: and have endeavoured to make him speak that kind of English, which he would have spoken had he lived in England, and had written to this age. If fometimes any of us (and it is but feldom) make him exprefs the customs and and manners of our native country, rather than of Rome, it is, either when there was fome kind of analogy, betwixt their cuftoms and ours; or when,' to make him more easy to vulgar understandings, we give him thofe manners which are familiar to us. But I defend not this innovation, it is enough if I can excufe it. For, to speak fincerely, the manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded: we should either make them English, or leave them Roman. If this can neither be defended, nor excufed, let it be pardoned, at leaft, because it is acknowledged: and fo much the more easily, as being a fault which is never committed without fome pleasure to the reader. Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious vifit, the best manners will be fhewn in the least ceremony. I will flip away while your back is turned, and while you are otherwise employed: with great confufion, for having entertained you fo long with this difcourfe; and for having no other recompence to make you, than the worthy labours of my fellow-undertakers in this work, and the thankful acknowledgments, prayers, and perpetual good wishes, of, My Lord, Your Lordship's Moft Obliged, Moft Humble, and Moft Obedient Servant, Aug. 18, 1692. JOHN DRYDEN. THE ARGUMENT. THE poet gives us first a kind of humorous reafon for his writing that, being provoked by hearing fo many ill poets rehearse their works, he does himself justice on them, by giving them as bad as they bring. But, fince no man will rank himself with ill writers, it is easy to conclude, that if fuch wretches could draw an audience, he thought it no hard matter to excel them, and gain a greater efteem with the poblic. Next he informs us more openly, why he rather addicts himself to fatire, than any other kind of poetry. And here he difcovers that it is not fo much his indignation to ill poets, as to ill men, which has prompted him to write. He therefore gives us a fummary and general view of the vices and follies reigning in his time. So that this first fatire is the natural ground-work of all the reft. Herein he confines himself to no one fubject, but ftrikes indifferently at all men in his way: in every following fatire he has chofen fome particular moral which he would would inculcate; and lafhes fome particular vice or folly (an art with which our lampooners are not much acquainted). But our poet being defirous to reform his own age, but not daring to attempt it by an overt-act of naming living perfons, inveighs only against those who were infamous in the times immediately preceding his, whereby he not only gives a fair warning to great men, that their memory lies at the mercy of future poets and hiftorians, but alfo, with a finer stroke of his pen, brands even the living, and perfonates them under dead mens names. I have avoided as much as I could poffibly the borrowed learning of marginal notes and illuftrations, and for that reafon have tranflated this fatire somewhat largely. And freely own (if it be a fault) that I have likewise omitted most of the proper names, because I thought they would not much edify the reader. To conclude, if in two or three places I have deferted all the commentators, it is because they first deferted my author, or at least have left him in fo much obfcurity, that too gueffing. ST much room is left for TILL fhall I hear, and never quit the fcore, Shall this man's elegies and t 'other's play ..Unfatisfy'd Unfatisfy'd with margins closely writ, Of his own home, than I of Vulcan's grot, The best and worst on the fame theme employs I left declaiming in pedantic fchools; Where, with men-boys, I ftrove to get renown, But, fince the world with writing is possest, To make as much waste paper as the rest. But why I lift aloft the Satire's rod, And tread the path which fam'd Lucilius trod, Pacing |