the reign of Augustus Caesar, not to the rudeness of Agamemnon's age
or the times of Homer. Why should we offer to confine free spirits
to one form when we cannot so much as confine our bodies to one
fashion of apparel? Would not Donne's satires, which abound with so
much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and
of his numbers? But he followed Horace so very close that of
necessity he must fall with him; and I may safely say it of this
present age, that if we are not so great wits as Donne, yet
certainly we are better poets.

But I have said enough, and it may be too much, on this subject.
Will your lordship be pleased to prolong my audience only so far
till I tell you my own trivial thoughts how a modern satire should
be made? I will not deviate in the least from the precepts and
examples of the ancients, who were always our best masters; I will
only illustrate them, and discover some of the hidden beauties in
their designs, that we thereby may form our own in imitation of
them. Will you please but to observe that Persius, the least in
dignity of all the three, has, notwithstanding, been the first who
has discovered to us this important secret in the designing of a
perfect satire--that it ought only to treat of one subject; to be
confined to one particular theme, or, at least, to one principally?
If other vices occur in the management of the chief, they should
only be transiently lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to make
the design double. As in a play of the English fashion which we
call a tragicomedy, there is to be but one main design, and though
there be an under-plot or second walk of comical characters and
adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried
along under it and helping to it, so that the drama may not seem a
monster with two heads. Thus the Copernican system of the planets