kept him at a greater diftance from the schools, had yet his share of this philofophical humour. Now this apology for the practice of the Greek poets doth by no means extend to the Roman; philofophy having been very late, and never generally, the taste of Rome. Cicero fays, Philofophia quidem tantum abeft ut proinde, ac de hominum eft vitâ merita, laudetur, ut a plerifque neglecta, a multis etiam vituperetur. In another place he tells us, that in his time Arifftotle was not much known, or read, even by the philofophers themselves. [Cic. Top. fub init.] And, though in the age of Seneca, fentences, we know, were much in ufe, yet the caft and turn of them evidently fhew them to have been the affectation of the lettered few, and not the general mode and practice of the time. For the quaintnefs, in which Seneca's aphorifms are dreffed, manifeftly fpeaks the labour and artifice of the closet, and is just the reverse of that easy, fimple expreffion, which clothes them in the Greek poets, thus demonftrating their familiar currency in common life. Under any other circumftances than thefe, the practice, as was observed, must be unquestionably faulty; except only in the chorus, where, for the reafon before given, it may always, with good advantage, be employed. 220. CARMINE QUI TRAGICO, &c.] The connexion with line 201, from whence the poet had digreffed, is worth obferving. The digreffion had been taken up in defcribing the improved ftate of dramatic mufic; the application of which o the case of tragedy, brings him round again o his subject, the tragic chorus; to which alone, s hath been obferved, the two laft lines refer. This too is the finest preparation of what folWS. For to have paffed on directly from the bia to the fatires, had been abrupt and inarticial; but from tragedy the tranfition is easy, e fatires being a species of the tragic drama, at it was fo accounted, may be feen from the 'owing paffage in Ovid, Eft et in obfcoenos deflexa tragœdia rifus, the tragedy, here referred to, cannot be the dered before, and, befides, it in no age admitted, much less in this, of which we are speaking, so intolerable a mixture. As little can it be understood of the proper Atellane fable, for befides that Ovid is here confidering the Greek drama only, the Atellane was ever regarded as a fpecies, not of tragedy, but comedy: The authority of Donatus is very exprefs; 66 Coma "diarum "diarum formæ funt tres: Palliatæ, Togatæ, "Atellana, falibus et jocis compofitæ, quæ in fe "non habent nifi vetuftam elegantiam." [Prol. in Terent.] And Athenæus [1. vi.] speaking of fome pieces of this fort, which L. Sylla had compofed, calls them σατυρικὰς κωμῳδίας, fatiric comedies; comedies, because, as Donatus fays, "falibus et jocis compofitæ:" and fatiric, not that fatires were introduced in them, but, according to Diomedes, from their being " argumentis "dictifque fimiles fatyricis fabulis Græcis." Of what then can Ovid be understood to speak, but the true fatiric piece, which was always esteemed, and, as appears from the Cyclops, in fact is, what Demetrius [wepì έpunveias] elegantly calls it, τραγωδία παιζέση, a lighter kind of tragedy; the very name, which Horace, as well as Ovid in this place, gives to it? But this is further clear from the inftance quoted by Ovid, of this loose tragedy; for he proceeds, Nec nocet autori, mollem qui fecit Achillem, which well agrees to the idea of a satiric piece, and, as Voffius takes notice, seems to be the very fame fubject which, Athenæus and others tell us, Sophocles had worked into a fatiric tragedy, under the title of ̓Αχιλλέως ἐραςαί. 221. MOX ETIAM, &c.] It is not the inten tion of these notes to retail the accounts of others. I must therefore refer the reader, for whatever concerns the hiftory of the fatiric, as I have hitherto done of the tragic and comic drama, to the numerous differtators on the ancient stage; and, above all, in the cafe before us, to the learned Cafaubon; from whom all that hath been faid to any purpose, by modern writers, hath been taken. Only it will be proper to obferve one or two particulars, which have been greatly misunderstood, and without which it will be impoffible, in any tolerable manner, to explain what follows. I. The defign of the poet, in thefe lines, is not to fix the origin of the fatyric piece, in afcribing the invention of it to Thefpis. This hath been concluded, without the leaft warrant from his own words, which barely tell us, "that the representation of tragedy was in elder "Greece followed by the fatires ;" and indeed the nature of the thing, as well as the teftimony of all antiquity, fhews it to be impoffible. For the fatire here fpoken of is, in all refpects, a regular drama, and therefore could not be of earlier date than the times of Eschylus, when the conftitution of the drama was first formed. It is true indeed, there was a kind of entertainment of much greater antiquity, which by the antients antients is fometimes called fatiric, out of which (as Ariftotle affures us) tragedy itself arofe, TO ἡ δὲ τραγῳδία, διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικό μεταβαλεν, ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνώθη, [περ. ποιητ. κ. δ.] But then this was nothing but a chorus of fatyrs [Athenæus, 1. xiv.] celebrating the feftivals of Bacchus, with rude. fongs and uncouth dances; and had little refemblance to that which was afterwards called fatiric; which, except that it retained the chorus of fatyrs, and turned upon fome fubject relative to Bacchus, was of a quite different ftructure, and, in every respect, as regular a compofition as tragedy itself. II. There is no doubt but the poem, here diftinguished by the name of SATYRI, was in actual use on the Roman ftage. This appears from the turn of the poet's whole criticifin upon it. Particularly, his address to the Pifos, 1. 235, and his obfervation of the offence which a loose dialogue in this drama would give to a Roman auditory, l. 248, make it evident that he had, in fact, the practice of his own ftage in view. It hath, however, been questioned, whether by Satyri we are to understand the proper Greek fatires, or the Latin Atellane fable, which, in the main of its character, very much refembled that drama. If the authority of Diomedes be any thing, the former must be the truth, for he ex prefly |