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 coepit jocus, et per honestas Ire domos impune minax: doluere cruento Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura Conditione super communi: quinetiam lex, Poenaque 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 condidisit, 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.