satire, is wholly accommodated to the Horatian way, and excluding
the works of Juvenal and Persius as foreign from that kind of poem.
The clause in the beginning of it, "without a series of action,"
distinguishes satire properly from stage-plays, which are all of one
action and one continued series of action. The end or scope of
satire is to purge the passions; so far it is common to the satires
of Juvenal and Persius. The rest which follows is also generally
belonging to all three, till he comes upon us with the excluding
clause, "consisting, in a low familiar way of speech" which is the
proper character of Horace, and from which the other two (for their
honour be it spoken) are far distant. But how come lowness of style
and the familiarity of words to be so much the propriety of satire
that without them a poet can be no more a satirist than without
risibility he can be a man? Is the fault of Horace to be made the
virtue and standing rule of this poem? Is the grande sophos of
Persius, and the sublimity of Juvenal, to be circumscribed with the
meanness of words and vulgarity of expression? If Horace refused
the pains of numbers and the loftiness of figures are they bound to
follow so ill a precedent? Let him walk afoot with his pad in his
hand for his own pleasure, but let not them be accounted no poets
who choose to mount and show their horsemanship. Holyday is not
afraid to say that there was never such a fall as from his odes to
his satires, and that he, injuriously to himself, untuned his harp.
The majestic way of Persius and Juvenal was new when they began it,
but it is old to us; and what poems have not, with time, received an
alteration in their fashion?--"which alteration," says Holyday, "is
to after-times as good a warrant as the first." Has not Virgil
changed the manners of Homer's heroes in his AEneis? Certainly he
has, and for the better; for Virgil's age was more civilised and
better bred, and he writ according to the politeness of Rome under