PREFACE. BISHOP HALL's reputation is so thoroughly established for his learning and piety, that the publi cation of any work which bears his name, and was undoubtedly of his composition, must be acceptable to the reader. Mr. Pope saw these Satires, but so late in life that he could only bestow this commendation on them, which they truly deserve, to "wish he had seen them sooner." The ingenious Mr. Walley, in his Inquiry into the Learning of Shakspeare, has taken particular notice of them. Page 41, in the notes, he says, "Bishop Hall was born in 1574, and, publishing these Satires twenty-three years after, was, as he himself asserts, in the Prologue, the first satirist in the English language. I first adventure, follow me who list, "And if we consider the difficulty of introducing so nice a poem as satire into a nation, we must allow it required the assistance of no common and ordinary genius. The Italians had their Ariosto, and the French their Regnier, who might have served him as models for imitation; but he copies after the ancients, and chiefly Juvenal and Persius; though he wants not many strokes of elegance and delicacy, which show him perfectly acquainted with the manner of Horace. Among the seve ral discouragements which attended his attempt in that kind, he mentions one peculiar to the language and nature of the English versification, which would appear in the translation of one of Persius's Satires: The difficulty and dissonance whereof,' says he, shall make good my assertion; besides the plain experience thereof in the Satires of Ariosto; save which, and one base French satire, I could never attain the view of any for my direction.' Yet we may pay him almost the same compliment which was given of old to Homer and Archilochus: for the improvements which have been made by succeeding poets, bear no manner of proportion to the distance of time between him and them. The verses of bishop Hall are in general extremely musical and flowing, and are greatly preferable to Dr. Donne's, as being of a much smoother cadence; neither shall we find him deficient, if compared with his successor, in point of thought and wit; and to exceed him with respect to his characters, which are more numerous, and wrought up with greater art and strength of colouring. Many of his lines would do honour to the most ingenious of our modern poets; and some of them have thought it worth their labour to imitate him, especially Mr. Oldham. Bishop Hall was not only our first satirist, but was the first who brought epistolary writing to the view of the public; which was common in that age to other parts of Europe, but not practised in England, till he published his own Epistles. It may be proper to take notice, that the Virgidemiarum are not printed with his other writings; and that all account of them is omitted by him, through his extreme modesty, in The Specialties of his life, prefixed to the third volume of his works in folio. I cannot forbear mentioning a Latin book of his, equally valuable and forgotten, called Mundus alter et idem: where, under a pretended description of the Terra Australis, he gives us a very ingenious satire on the vices and follies of mankind.” The author's Postscript to his Satires will perhaps now be better placed here by way of Preface. "It is not for every one to relish a true and natural satire, being of itself, besides the nature and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and therefore 1 cannot but be unpleasing both to the unskilful and over musical ear; the one being affected with only a shallow and easy matter, the other with a smooth and current disposition: so that I well foresee in the timely publication of these my concealed Satires, I am set upon the rack of many mercilesse and peremptory censures; which, sith the calmest and most plausible writer is almost fatally subject to, in the curiosity of these nicer times, how may I hope to be exempted upon the occasion of so busy and stirring a subject? One thinks it mis-beseeming the author, because a poem ; another, unlawful in itself, because a satire; a third, harmful to others, for the sharpness; and a fourth, unsatire-like, for the mildness: the learned, too perspicuous, being named with Juvenal, Persius, and the other ancient satires: the unlearned, savourless, because too obscure, and obscure, because not under their reach. What a monster must he be that would please all ! "Certainly look what weather it would be, if every almanac should be verified: much-what like poems, if every fancy should be suited. It is not for this kind to desire or hope to please, which naturally should only find pleasure in displeasing: notwithstanding, if the fault finding with the vices of the time may honestly accord with the good will of the parties, I had as lieve ease my self with a slender apology, as wilfully bear the brunt of causeless anger in my silence. For poetry itself, after the so effectual and absolute endeavours of her honoured patrons, either she needeth no new defence, or else might well scorn the offer of so impotent and poor a client. Only for my own part, though were she a more unworthy mistress, I think she might be inoffensively served with the broken messes of our twelve o'clock hours, which homely service she only claimed and found of me, for that short while of my attendance: yet having thus soon taken my solemn farewell of her, and shaked hands with all her retinue, why should it be an eye-sore unto any, sith it can be no loss to my self? "For my Satires themselves, I see two obvious cavils to be answered: one concerning the matter; than which I confess none can be more open to danger, to envy; sith faults loath nothing more than the light, and men love nothing more than their faults, and therefore, what through the nature of the faults, and fault of the persons, it is impossible so violent an appeachment should be quietly brooked. But why should vices be unblamed for fear of blame? And if thou mayest spit upon a toad unvenomed, why mayest thou not speak of vice without danger? Especially so warily as I have endeavoured; who, in the unpartial mention of so many vices, may safely profess to be altogether guiltless in myself to the intention of any guilty person who might be blemished by the likelihood of my conceived application, thereupon choosing rather to marre mine own verse than another's name: which notwithstanding, if the injurious reader shall wrest to his own spight, and disparaging of others, it is a short answer, Art thou guilty? Complain not, thou art not wronged. Art thou guiltless? Complain not, thou art not touched. The other, concerning the manner, wherein perhaps too much stooping to the low reach of the vulgar, I shall be thought not to have any whit kindly raught my ancient Roman predecessors, whom in the want of more late and familiar precedents, I am constrained thus far off to imitate: which thing I can be so willing to grant, that I am further ready to warrant my action therein to any indifferent censure. First, therefore, I dare boldly avouch that the English is not altogether so natural to a satire as the Latin; which I do not impute to the nature of the language itself, being so far from disabling it any way, that methinks I durst equal it to the proudest in every respect; but to that which is common to it with all the other common languages, Italian, French, German, &c. In their poesies, the fettering together the series of the verses, with the bonds of like cadence or desinence of rhyme, which, if it be unusually abrupt, and not dependent in sense upon so near affinity of words, I know not what a loathsome kind of harshness and discordance it breedeth to any judicial ear: which if any more confident adversary shall gainsay, I wish no better trial than the translation of one of Persius's Satires into English the difficulty and dissonance whereof shall make good my assertion: besides, the plain experience thereof in the Satires of Ariosto, (save which, and one base French Satire, I could never attain the view of any for my direction, and that also might for need serve for an excuse at least) whose chain-verse, to which he fettereth himself, as it may well afford a pleasing harmony to the ear, so can it yield nothing but a flashy and loose conceit to the judgment. Whereas the Roman numbers tying but one foot to another, offereth a greater freedom of variety, with much more delight to the reader. Let my second ground be, the well-known dainties of the time, such, that men rather chuse carelesly to lose the sweet of the kernell, than to urge their teeth with breaking the shell wherein it was wrapped: and therefore sith that which is unseen is almost undone, and that is almost unseen which is unconceived, either I would say nothing to be untalked of, or speak with my mouth open that I may be understood. Thirdly, the end of this pains was a satire, but the end of my satire a further good, which whether I attain or no I know not; but let me be plain with the hope of profit, rather than purposely obscure only for a bare name's sake. "Notwithstanding, in the expectation of this quarrel, I think my first Satire doth somewhat resemble the sour and crabbed face of Juvenal's, which I, endeavouring in that, did determinately omit in the rest, for these forenamed causes, that so I might have somewhat to stop the mouth of every accuser. The rest to each man's censure: which let be as favourable as so thankless a work can deserve or desire." It is needless to detain the reader longer, further than to mention, that the three first books are called Toothless Satires, poetical, academical, moral. The three last, Biteing Satires. |