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 condita_ CCCCCXIV. I have since desired my learned friend, Mr Maidwell,[45] 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's 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, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli._ This is that in which I have made bold 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 Comoedia_ 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.