The Path to Peace is Virtue: What I show, Thyself may freely on thyself bestow. _Dryden._
All of them sometimes correct Vice, like Moralists, I may say, like Divines, rather than Satirists: What less can we say of this of _Persius_?
_O curvæ in terras animæ, & cœlestium inanes!_
O Souls, in whom no heav'nly Fire is found. _Dryden._
Sentiments, these, one would think, were fetch'd from true Religion, not from unassisted Reason; and which we might expect from the _Christian_, more than the _Stoic_.
Notwithstanding the learned Arguments which _Casaubon_, _Dacier_, and others have urg'd, for the Etymology of the Word Satire, I can't but think their Opinion has more Probability in it than Truth; nor can any sufficient Reason be assign'd, why it may not be as well deriv'd from _Satyrus_, a Satyr, as from _Satur_, full. There's certainly too much Reason to think that some Things in _Horace_, _Juvenal_, and _Persius_, were borrow'd from the suppos'd Manners and Customs of Satyrs; and I cannot but lament, that Writers so deserving in all other Respects, should reprove some Vices in such a Manner, as to teach them; and that while they are recommending Virtue, they should throw in some Expressions so injurious to it. This Controversy, then, about the _Name_ of _Satire_, (which, it must be own'd, is the more material, because it in a great Measure defines its _Nature_) I shall leave in Uncertainty, with _Vossius_, rather than determine upon it positively with _Dacier_.
For I cannot but be surpriz'd to see this last Author so confidently assert[324], "That _Satire_ is a Species of Poetry unknown to any but the _Romans_, and has no Relation to the satirical Compositions of the _Grecians_, as some learned Men, by Mistake, have thought[325]." Now, I'll be bold to say, that not only _some_, but _most_, if not all the Learned, have thought so, and still think the same; and even Mons. _Dacier_ himself, I reckon among the Number, how much soever he seems here to have forgot himself. I appeal not only to what I have before said upon this Subject myself, but to what I have cited from him, whether it does not appear that the _Roman Satire_ had some _Affinity_ with the _Grecian_, and, particularly, that it ow'd its Rise to it.[326]_Vossius_, speaking of the _Grecian_, tells us, "That the Discourse was agreeable to the Characters of the Speakers; full of Ribaldry, Ridicule, and Scurrility. The Failings of Men were the Objects of their Scoffs, and to excite Laughter the Aim of them. _Horace_, in his Art of Poetry,