Yet since it is a hard conjecture that so great a man as Casaubon should misapply what Horace writ concerning ancient Rome to the ceremonies and manners of ancient Greece, I will not insist on this opinion, but rather judge in general that since all poetry had its original from religion, that of the Grecians and Rome had the same beginning. Both were invented at festivals of thanksgiving, and both were prosecuted with mirth and raillery and rudiments of verses; amongst the Greeks by those who represented Satyrs, and amongst the Romans by real clowns. For, indeed, when I am reading Casaubon on these two subjects methinks I hear the same story told twice over with very little alteration. Of which Dacier, taking notice in his interpretation of the Latin verses which I have translated, says plainly that the beginning of poetry was the same, with a small variety, in both countries, and that the mother of it in all nations was devotion. But what is yet more wonderful, that most learned critic takes notice also, in his illustrations on the First Epistle of the Second Book, that as the poetry of the Romans and that of the Grecians had the same beginning at feasts and thanksgiving (as it has been observed), and the old comedy of the Greeks (which was invective) and the satire of the Romans (which was of the same nature) were begun on the very same occasion, so the fortune of both in process of time was just the same—the old comedy of the Grecians was forbidden for its too much licence in exposing of particular persons, and the rude satire of the Romans was also punished by a law of the Decemviri, as Horace tells us in these words:— “_Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos_ _Lusit amabiliter_; _donec jam sævus apertam_ _In rabiem verti cæpit jocus_, _et per honestas_ _Ire domos impune minax_: _doluere cruento_ _Dente lacessiti_; _fuit intactis quoque cura_ _Conditione super communi_: _quinetiam lex_, _Pænaque lata_, _malo quæ nollet carmine quenquam_ _Describi_: _vertere modum_, _formidine fustis_ _Ad benedicendum delectandumque redacti_.” The law of the Decemviri was this: _Siquis occentassit malum carmen_, _sive condidissit_, _quod infamiam faxit_, _flagitiumve alteri_, _capital esto_. A strange likeness, and barely possible; but the critics being all of the same opinion, it becomes me to be silent and to submit to better judgments than my own. But to return to the Grecians, from whose satiric dramas the elder Scaliger and Heinsius will have the Roman satire to proceed; I am to take a view of them first, and see if there be any such descent from them as those authors have pretended.