Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry by John Dryden
page 91 of 202 (45%)
page 91 of 202 (45%)
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afterwards. Though the former writ fables, the latter, speaking
properly, began the Roman satire, according to that description which Juvenal gives of it in his first:- "Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira voluptas, Gaudia, discurses, nostri est farrago libelli." This is that in which I have made hold to differ from Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and indeed from all the modern critics--that not Ennius, but Andronicus, was the first who, by the archaea comedia of the Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous Roman satire; which sort of poem, though we had not derived from Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages and in every country. It is but necessary that, after so much has been said of satire, some definition of it should be given. Heinsius, in his Dissertations on Horace, makes it for me in these words:- "Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended--partly dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both kinds of speaking, but for the most part figuratively and occultly; consisting, in a low familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech, but partly also in a facetious and civil way of jesting, by which either hatred or laughter or indignation is moved." Where I cannot but observe that this obscure and perplexed definition, or rather description of |
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