honour to be known to your lordship already; and they who have not
yet that happiness, desire it now. Be pleased to receive our common
endeavours with your wonted candour, without entitling you to the
protection of our common failings in so difficult an undertaking.
And allow me your patience, if it be not already tired with this
long epistle, to give you from the best authors the origin, the
antiquity, the growth, the change, and the completement of satire
among the Romans; to describe, if not define, the nature of that
poem, with its several qualifications and virtues, together with the
several sorts of it; to compare the excellencies of Horace, Persius,
and Juvenal, and show the particular manners of their satires; and,
lastly, to give an account of this new way of version which is
attempted in our performance: all which, according to the weakness
of my ability, and the best lights which I can get from others,
shall be the subject of my following discourse.

The most perfect work of poetry, says our master Aristotle, is
tragedy. His reason is because it is the most united; being more
severely confined within the rules of action, time, and place. The
action is entire of a piece, and one without episodes; the time
limited to a natural day; and the place circumscribed at least
within the compass of one town or city. Being exactly proportioned
thus, and uniform in all its parts, the mind is more capable of
comprehending the whole beauty of it without distraction.

But after all these advantages an heroic poem is certainly the
greatest work of human nature. The beauties and perfections of the
other are but mechanical; those of the epic are more noble. Though
Homer has limited his place to Troy and the fields about it; his
actions to forty-eight natural days, whereof twelve are holidays, or