being all of the same opinion, it becomes me to be silent and to
submit to better judgments than my own.

But to return to the Grecians, from whose satiric dramas the elder
Scaliger and Heinsius will have the Roman satire to proceed; I am to
take a view of them first, and see if there be any such descent from
them as those authors have pretended.

Thespis, or whoever he were that invented tragedy (for authors
differ), mingled with them a chorus and dances of Satyrs which had
before been used in the celebration of their festivals, and there
they were ever afterwards retained. The character of them was also
kept, which was mirth and wantonness; and this was given, I suppose,
to the folly of the common audience, who soon grow weary of good
sense, and, as we daily see in our own age and country, are apt to
forsake poetry, and still ready to return to buffoonery and farce.
From hence it came that in the Olympic Games, where the poets
contended for four prizes, the satiric tragedy was the last of them,
for in the rest the Satyrs were excluded from the chorus. Amongst
the plays of Euripides which are yet remaining, there is one of
these satirics, which is called The Cyclops, in which we may see the
nature of those poems, and from thence conclude what likeness they
have to the Roman satire.

The story of this Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus (so famous in
the Grecian fables), was that Ulysses, who with his company was
driven on the coast of Sicily, where those Cyclops inhabited, coming
to ask relief from Silenus and the Satyrs, who were herdsmen to that
one-eyed giant, was kindly received by them, and entertained till,
being perceived by Polyphemus, they were made prisoners against the