And thus I have given the history of satire, and derived it as far as from Ennius to your lordship—that is, from its first rudiments of barbarity to its last polishing and perfection; which is, with Virgil, in his address to Augustus— “_Nomen famâ tot ferre per annos_, . . . _Tithoni primâ quot abest ab origine Cæsar_.” I said only from Ennius, but I may safely carry it higher, as far as Livius Andronicus, who, as I have said formerly, taught the first play at Rome in the year _ab urbe conditâ_ CCCCCXIV. I have since desired my learned friend Mr. Maidwell to compute the difference of times betwixt Aristophanes and Livius Andronicus; and he assures me from the best chronologers that _Plutus_, the last of Aristophanes’ plays, was represented at Athens in the year of the 97th Olympiad, which agrees with the year _urbis conditæ_ CCCLXIV. So that the difference of years betwixt Aristophanes and Andronicus is 150; from whence I have probably deduced that Livius Andronicus, who was a Grecian, had read the plays of the old comedy, which were satirical, and also of the new; for Menander was fifty years before him, which must needs be a great light to him in his own plays that were of the satirical nature. That the Romans had farces before this, it is true; but then they had no communication with Greece; so that Andronicus was the first who wrote after the manner of the old comedy, in his plays: he was imitated by Ennius about thirty years 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 _archæa 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.