"Our brawny clowns of old, who turned the soil,
Content with little, and inured to toil,
At harvest-home, with mirth and country cheer,
Restored their bodies for another year,
Refreshed their spirits, and renewed their hope
Of such a future feast and future crop.
Then with their fellow-joggers of the ploughs,
Their little children, and their faithful spouse,
A sow they slew to Vesta's deity,
And kindly milk, Silvanus, poured to thee.
With flowers and wine their Genius they adored;
A short life and a merry was the word.
From flowing cups defaming rhymes ensue,
And at each other homely taunts they threw."


Yet since it is a hard conjecture that so great a man as Casaubon
should misapply what Horace writ concerning ancient Rome to the
ceremonies and manners of ancient Greece, I will not insist on this
opinion, but rather judge in general that since all poetry had its
original from religion, that of the Grecians and Rome had the same
beginning. Both were invented at festivals of thanksgiving, and
both were prosecuted with mirth and raillery and rudiments of
verses; amongst the Greeks by those who represented Satyrs, and
amongst the Romans by real clowns.

For, indeed, when I am reading Casaubon on these two subjects
methinks I hear the same story told twice over with very little
alteration. Of which Dacier, taking notice in his interpretation of