we must not reckon Swift, although related to him,[3] and now coming into notice. It is said, that Swift had subjected to his cousin's perusal, some of those performances, entitled _Odes_, which appear in the seventh volume of the last edition of his works. Even the eye of Dryden was unable to discover the wit and the satirist in the clouds of incomprehensible pindaric obscurity in which he was enveloped; and the aged bard pronounced the hasty, and never to be pardoned sentence,-- "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."[4] A doom which he, on whom it was passed, attempted to repay, by repeated, although impotent, attacks upon the fame of Dryden, everywhere scattered through his works. With the exception of Swift, no author of eminence, whose labours are still in request, has ventured to assail the poetical fame of Dryden. Shortly after the Revolution, Dryden had translated several satires of Juvenal; and calling in the aid of his two sons, of Congreve, Creech, Tate, and others, he was enabled, in 1692, to give a complete version both of that satirist, and of Persius. In this undertaking he himself bore a large share, translating the whole of Persius, with the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires of Juvenal. To this version is prefixed the noted Essay on Satire, inscribed to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex. In that treatise, our author exhibits a good deal of that sort of learning which was in fashion among the French critics; and, I suspect, was contented rather to borrow something from them, than put himself to the trouble of compiling more valuable materials. Such is the disquisition concerning the origin of the word _Satire_, which is chiefly extracted from Casaubon, Dacier, and Rigault. But the poet's own incidental remarks upon the comparative merits of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, his declamation against the abuse of satire, his incidental notices respecting epic poetry, translation, and English literature in general, render this introduction highly valuable.