Note 279 — V

We have a notable evidence how deeply rooted this error was, how long this confusion endured, of the way in which it was shared by the learned as well as the unlearned, in Milton’s Apology for Smectymnuus, sect. 7, which everywhere presumes the identity of the ‘satyr’ and the ‘satirist’. It was Isaac Casaubon who first effectually dissipated it even for the learned world. The results of his investigations were made popular for the unlearned reader by Dryden, in the very instructive Discourse on Satirical Poetry, prefixed to his translations of Juvenal; but the confusion still survives, and ‘satyrs’ and ‘satires’, the Greek ‘satyric’ drama, the Latin ‘satirical’ poetry, are still assumed by most to have something to do with one another.