are already out of hearing. Nothing which my meanness can produce
is worthy of this long attention. But I am come to the last
petition of Abraham: if there be ten righteous lines in this vast
preface, spare it for their sake; and also spare the next city,
because it is but a little one.

I would excuse the performance of this translation if it were all my
own; but the better, though not the greater, part being the work of
some gentlemen who have succeeded very happily in their undertaking,
let their excellences atone for my imperfections and those of my
sons. I have perused some of the Satires which are done by other
hands, and they seem to me as perfect in their kind as anything I
have seen in English verse. The common way which we have taken is
not a literal translation, but a kind of paraphrase; or somewhat
which is yet more loose, betwixt a paraphrase and imitation. It was
not possible for us, or any men, to have made it pleasant any other
way. If rendering the exact sense of these authors, almost line for
line, had been our business, Barten Holyday had done it already to
our hands; and by the help of his learned notes and illustrations,
not only Juvenal and Persius, but, what yet is more obscure, his own
verses might be understood.

But he wrote for fame, and wrote to scholars; we write only for the
pleasure and entertainment of those gentlemen and ladies who, though
they are not scholars, are not ignorant--persons of understanding
and good sense, who, not having been conversant in the original (or,
at least, not having made Latin verse so much their business as to
be critics in it), would be glad to find if the wit of our two great
authors be answerable to their fame and reputation in the world. We
have therefore endeavoured to give the public all the satisfaction