Note 17 — AN ESSAY ON THE ROMAN SATIRISTS, BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

It should be observed, however, that the idea was obvious, and the work itself highly necessary. The old Satire, amid much coarse ribaldry, frequently attacked the follies and vices of the day. This could not be done by the comedy which superseded it, and which, by a strange perversity of taste, was never rendered national. Its customs, manners, nay, its very plots, were Grecian; and scarcely more applicable to the Romans than to us.