[321] Permittas ipsis expendere numinibus, quid Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris: Charior est illis homo, quam sibi.
Intrust thy Fortune to the Pow'rs above, Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant What their unerring Wisdom sees thee want: In Goodness, as in Greatness, they excel; Ah! that we lov'd ourselves but half as well. Dryden.
And afterwards:
[322] Monstro, quod ipse tibi possis dare; semita certe Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vitæ.
The Path to Peace is Virtue: What I show, Thyself may freely on thyself bestow. Dryden.
All of them sometimes correct Vice, like Moralists, I may say, like Divines, rather than Satirists: What less can we say of this of Persius?
[323] O curvæ in terras animæ, & cœlestium inanes!
O Souls, in whom no heav'nly Fire is found. Dryden.
Sentiments, these, one would think, were fetch'd from true Religion, not from unassisted Reason; and which we might expect from the Christian, more than the Stoic.
Notwithstanding the learned Arguments which Casaubon, Dacier, and others have urg'd, for the Etymology of the Word Satire, I can't but think their Opinion has more Probability in it than Truth; nor can any sufficient Reason be assign'd, why it may not be as well deriv'd from Satyrus, a Satyr, as from Satur, full. There's certainly too much Reason to think that some Things in Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, were borrow'd from the suppos'd Manners and Customs of Satyrs; and I cannot but lament, that Writers so deserving in all other Respects, should reprove some Vices in such a Manner, as to teach them; and that while they are recommending Virtue, they should throw in some Expressions so injurious to it. This Controversy, then, about the Name of Satire, (which, it must be own'd, is the more material, because it in a great Measure defines its Nature) I shall leave in Uncertainty, with Vossius, rather than determine upon it positively with Dacier.