Your lordship has perceived by this time, that this SATIRIC tragedy, and the Roman SATIRE, have little resemblance in any of their features. The very kinds are different; for what has a pastoral tragedy to do with a paper of verses satirically written? The character and raillery of the Satyrs is the only thing that could pretend to a likeness, were Scaliger and Heinsius alive to maintain their opinion. And the first farces of the Romans, which were the rudiments of their poetry, were written before they had any communication with the Greeks, or indeed any knowledge of that people. And here it will be proper to give the definition of the Greek satyric poem from Casaubon, before I leave this subject. "The SATIRIC," says he, "is a dramatic poem, annexed to a tragedy, having a chorus, which consists of Satyrs. The persons represented in it are illustrious men; the action of it is great; the style is partly serious, and partly jocular; and the event of the action most commonly is happy." The Grecians, besides these SATIRIC tragedies, had another kind of poem, which they called Silli, which were more of kin to the Roman satire. Those Silli were indeed invective poems, but of a different species from the Roman poems of Ennius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Horace, and the rest of their successors. They were so called, says Casaubon in one place, from Silenus, the foster-father of Bacchus; but, in another place, bethinking himself better, he derives their name, #apo tou sillainein#, from their scoffing and petulancy. From some fragments of the Silli, written by Timon, we may find, that they were satiric poems, full of parodies; that is, of verses patched up from great poets, and turned into another sense than their author intended them. Such, amongst the Romans, is the famous Cento of Ausonius; where the words are Virgil's, but, by applying them to another sense, they are made a relation of a wedding-night; and the act of consummation fulsomely described in the very words of the most modest amongst all poets. Of the same manner are our songs, which are turned into burlesque, and the serious words of the author perverted into a ridiculous meaning. Thus in Timon's Silli the words are generally those of Homer, and the tragic poets; but he applies them, satirically, to some customs and kinds of philosophy, which he arraigns. But the Romans, not using any of these parodies in their satires,--sometimes, indeed, repeating verses of other men, as Persius cites some of Nero's, but not turning them into another meaning,--the Silli cannot be supposed to be the original of Roman satire. To these Silli, consisting of parodies, we may properly add the satires which were written against particular persons; such as were the Iambics of Archilochus against Lycambes, which Horace undoubtedly imitated in some of his Odes and Epodes, whose titles bear sufficient witness of it. I might also name the invective of Ovid against Ibis, and many others; but these are the under-wood