If Alexander had march’d Westward, and warr’d with the Romans, whether he had been able to subdue that little but valiant People, is an uncertainty: We are sure he overcame Persia; Histories attest, and Prophecies foretel the same. It was decreed that the Persians should be conquered by Alexander, and his Successors by the Romans, in whom Providence had determin’d to settle the fourth Monarchy, which neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal must prevent; tho' Hannibal came so near it, that he seem’d to miss it by fatal Infatuation: which if he had effected, there had been such a traverse and confusion of Affairs, as no Oracle could have predicted. But the Romans must reign, and the Course of Things was then moving towards the Advent of Christ, and blessed Discovery of the Gospel: Our Saviour must suffer at Jerusalem, and be sentenc’d by a Roman Judge; St. Paul, a Roman Citizen, must preach in the Roman Provinces, and St. Peter be Bishop of Rome, and not of Carthage.
[Upon Reading Hudibras.]
The way of Burlesque Poems is very Ancient, for there was a ludicrous mock way of transferring Verses of Famous Poets into a Jocose Sense and Argument, and they were call’d Ὠδέαι or Parodiæ; divers Examples of which are to be found in Athenæus.
The first Inventer hereof was Hipponactes, but Hegemon Sopater and many more pursu’d the same Vein; so that the Parodies of Ovid’s Buffoon Metamorphoses Burlesques, Le Eneiade Travastito, are no new Inventions, but old Fancies reviv'd.
An Excellent Parodie there is of both the Scaligers upon an Epigram of Catullus, which Stephens hath set down in his Discourse of Parodies: a remarkable one among the Greeks is that of Matron, in the Words and Epithites of Homer describing the Feast of Xenocles the Athenian Rhetorician, to be found in the fourth Book of Athenæus, pag. 134. Edit. Casaub.
Footnotes
[322] A Burning Mountain in Island.
[323] See Hydriotaphia, Urne-Burial: or, A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes lately found in Norfolk, 8vo. Lond. printed 1658.
[324] Vid. Licet. de Lucernis.