This we may believe for certain,--that as his subjects were various, so most of them were tales or stories of his own invention. Which is also manifest from antiquity, by those authors who are acknowledged to have written Varronian satires, in imitation of his; of whom the chief is Petronius Arbiter, whose satire, they say, is now printed in Holland, wholly recovered, and made complete: when it is made public, it will easily be seen by any one sentence, whether it be supposititious, or genuine.[23] Many of Lucian's dialogues may also properly be called Varronian satires, particularly his True History; and consequently the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, which is taken from him. Of the same stamp is the mock deification of Claudius, by Seneca: and the Symposium or "Cæsars" of Julian, the Emperor. Amongst the moderns, we may reckon the "Encomium Moriæ" of Erasmus, Barclay's "Euphormio," and a volume of German authors, which my ingenious friend, Mr Charles Killegrew, once lent me.[24] In the English, I remember none which are mixed with prose, as Varro's were; but of the same kind is "Mother Hubbard's Tale" in Spenser; and (if it be not too vain to mention any thing of my own,) the poems of "Absalom" and "Mac Flecnoe."[25] This is what I have to say in general of satire: only, as Dacier has observed before me, we may take notice, that the word satire is of a more general signification in Latin, than in French, or English. For amongst the Romans it was not only used for those discourses which decried vice, or exposed folly, but for others also, where virtue was recommended. But in our modern languages we apply it only to invective poems, where the very name of satire is formidable to those persons, who would appear to the world what they are not in themselves; for in English, to say satire, is to mean reflection, as we use that word in the worst sense; or as the French call it, more properly, _medisance_. In the criticism of spelling, it ought to be with _i_, and not with _y_, to distinguish its true derivation from _satura_, not from _satyrus_. And if this be so, then it is false spelled throughout this book; for here it is written SATYR: which having not considered at the first, I thought it not worth correcting afterwards. But the French are more nice, and never spell it any other way than SATIRE.