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 .Satire and satirists. 
 
 3 1924 027 238 223 
 
SATIRE AND SATIRISTS 
 
 BY JAMES HANNAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF " SINGLETON FONTENOY," ETC. 
 
 "Ego autem (existimes licet, quod lubet) mirifice capior facetiis, maxima 
 nostratibus." Cicero, Epist. ad Div. lib. ix. 15. 
 
 '' Non ulla Musis pagina gratibr, 
 
 Q,uam quaaseveria ludicra jungere 
 Novit, fatigataraque nugis 
 Utilibus recreare mentem." 
 
 Dr. Johnbon, Ad Urbanum. 
 
 KEDFIELD 
 
 110 AND 112 NASSAU-STHEET, NEW YORK. 
 1855. 
 
$ nfafnrtj Minttinn. 
 
 TO WILTSHIRE STANTON AUSTIN, ESQ. 
 
 MY DEAR AUSTIN, 
 
 In preparing for the press these lectures (first 
 delivered a twelvemonth ago), no part of my task has been 
 more agreeable than that which is now to be discharged, — 
 the dedication of them to yourself. This slight compliment 
 I offer to you, in acknowledgment of your qualities as a friend 
 and a companion, to which I owe many pleasant hours 
 spent in your society. To dwell upon the talents, the taste, 
 and the literature, which you unite with these qualities, 
 would be to do what your friends would find superfluous, 
 and you yourself disagreeable. In justice to my judgment, 
 I must, however, say, thatT dedicate my book to one, whose 
 capacity for criticising it, is only equalled by the natural 
 kindliness which will make him criticise it charitably. 
 
 I take the opportunity of making what remarks I think it 
 necessary to address to good-natured readers of this perform- 
 ance, by way of preface. 
 
 To treat of all Satire and all Satirists is a task which I 
 never dreamed of performing within these limits ; and my 
 work is rather a collection of passages in the history of 
 Satirical Literature, than any thing else. To those who 
 have written the Satire Proper, my main attention has been 
 given ; and of the Satiric Drama and Satiric Fiction no 
 adequate treatment has been attempted. Yet something of 
 what is here offered, illustrative of the Satirists with whom 
 
IV PREFATORY DEDICATION. 
 
 I deal, will be found applicable to those whom 1 omit ; 
 while, if I ventured on another book on the subject, such 
 would by no means supersede or interfere with the present 
 one. Bad or good, it is complete in itself: the crab has its 
 own rotundity, as well as the golden pippin ! 
 
 There are two facts of the highest interest about satirical 
 literature : 1st, that the Satires of every age have been 
 important agents in the historic work done in it ; — 2d, that 
 Satires, as literary objects, give us valuable aid in studying 
 the life of the age in which they were produced. I think 
 that general readers somewhat neglect the Satirists ; and 
 one of my objects has been, I confess, in the language of 
 Cicero, "' ut laudem eorum jam prope senescenlem, quantum 
 ego possem, ab oblivione hominum atque a silentio vindicarem." 
 (De Orat. ii. 2.) To this end, I have aimed at a popular and 
 picturesque delineation of them and their works. I have 
 especially wished to show, too, that the great Satirists have 
 been good and lovable men : — for I never made the too 
 common mistake of supposing Satire to be like a certain 
 poison known to the ancients, which best retained its 
 properties when carried in an ass's hoof ! 
 
 In the leading principles of the book, my dear Austin, I 
 am aware that you agree with me, however you may dissent 
 in less important particulars ; and I end, as I began, by 
 testifying with how much pleasure I am, 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 JAMES HANNAY. 
 June 1854. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 HORACE AND JUVENAL ...... 7 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 ERASMUS, SIR DAVID LINDSAY, AND GEORGE BUCHANAN . 51 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 EARLY EUROPEAN SATIRE. BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN . 94 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL ...... 130 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 POLITICAL SATIRE AND SQUIBS. BURNS . . . 172 | i 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 BYRON, MOORE, ETC. PRESENT ASPECT OP SATIRICAL 
 
 LITERATURE ....... 204 
 
SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 H0KACE AND JUVENAL. 
 
 The celebrated men whom I presume to make the 
 subject of these discourses, lived in very different 
 ages of the world, and in various spheres of life ; but 
 they have all a kind of brotherly likeness ; and this 
 belongs to their work as well as to their characters. 
 Born with rare powers and peculiar tendencies, they 
 have co-operated in producing what we call the sa- 
 tirical element in literature. A distinct phase of 
 itself in literary story — a production taking its own 
 place by the side of Poetry, Comedy, and Tragedy — 
 such is Satire. Perhaps there is no kind of literary 
 work wherein heart and hand go so closely toge- 
 ther ; and which, therefore, is so likely, in the most 
 artificial ages, to possess spontaneity and freshness. 
 The men who have done the work are of all literary 
 ranks, — from the king, who chastises with a sceptre, 
 to the common hangman, whose whip is not without 
 benefit on occasion. How many natural agencies 
 does this multiform power resemble ! The flashing 
 
8 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 lightning, terrifying the evil-doer, while purifying 
 the air — such is Satire, when great and earnest. The 
 white nettle-flower, — the sharp, prickly, torturing 
 broom, all blazing with color — these typify light 
 and brilliant Satire. War-rockets, too, furnish a 
 tolerable object of comparison ; while many an epi- 
 grammatist, lively but harmless, scintillates only too 
 often in sparks as evanescent as those struck out on 
 the highways by the hoofs of an animal which has 
 long supplied a favorite illustration to the satirical 
 writer. 
 
 If I undertook to treat of Satire in all its forms, 
 my task would be endless. Its spirit is as subtle 
 as that of Nature itself. It runs underground in 
 one country as a river, and comes up in another as 
 a fountain. It is like one of those mysterious per- 
 sonages in the Arabian Tales, who is to-day a bril- 
 liant gifted prince, but to-morrow an ape, struggling 
 to express itself decently. 
 
 Now, to make a practical use of this last com- 
 parison, let me assure you, that it is to the prince, 
 and not to the ape, that I mean to direct my main 
 attention. I shall not go at any great length into 
 the subject of those Satires which have no connexion 
 with beautiful aud noble objects ; I never bestow 
 willingly labor but on that which I admire. I 
 shall deal with great men, who would never have 
 known scorn if they had not known love; whose 
 natures foamed into excitement at contact with the 
 base, as the old Venetian glass cracked when the 
 poison was poured into it. For I have no faith in 
 the theory, that there is any necessary blackness or 
 
HOKACE AND JUVENAL. \) 
 
 morbidity of disposition in the satirist. People who 
 really dread the daring, original, impiilsive character 
 which is the foundation of the satirical, ingeniously 
 blame the satirist for the state of things which he 
 attacks. Juvenal was debauched, because he lashed 
 the debauched ; Burns was impious, and so attacked 
 the elders. Fancy an artist's putting up his da- 
 guerreotype apparatus in Smithneld in the presence 
 of a set of aldermen, and then people's blaming the 
 Sun, because it did not show a paradise, with a com- 
 pany of wise men ! 
 
 But I must lay down a further limitation. I 
 shall not include all who have written excellently 
 well in the satirical way, when a particular occasion 
 demanded it. That course, again, would multiply 
 our meetings indefinitely. "We should have to take 
 in Milton, for the sake of his controversial pamph- 
 lets, along with Pope. "We should have to bring in 
 Bishop Warburton, as a companion to Churchill. 
 The business would be endless. No. I shall deal 
 mainly with men who were satirists born ; whose 
 main object, main distinction, was satire; whose 
 chief influence on the world was exercised by it. 
 Acting on that determination, I hope to introduce 
 to you some great men, some good men, some im- 
 portant eras of the world ; and generally, I hope, 
 some healthy and natural pictures of human life. 
 
 What we call Satire — that form of composition 
 adopted by Boileau, by Dryden, Pope, and Church- 
 ill — derives its name from the Latin, and traces its 
 pedigree up through Horace, and his predecessor 
 Lucilius, to the early days of Italy. It has Koman 
 
10 SATIKE AND SATIIUSTS. 
 
 blood in its veins; and we have a right to expect 
 pluck from it. But I warn you fairly, we tread on 
 dangerous ground here. We tread on the bones 
 of old literary battle-fields, where, however, I hope 
 corn is now to be gathered ; for there used to be a 
 great fight about this point of the origin of Satire. 
 Many a time it has set commentators by the ears ; 
 and the ears of commentators are too often formid- 
 able affairs ! One party held that the Roman Satire 
 was of Greek descent, taking its name from our 
 mythological friend the Satyr — to whom I, for one, 
 would not like to trace my literary line. The other 
 party said " No." They planted themselves on an 
 express declaration of Quintilian's ; on certain ex- 
 pressions of Horace himself ; and on many other ar- 
 guments, deciding that Satire was of Roman birth, 
 and derived its name from the Latin adjective safoir, 
 satura. This last view very luckily pleased the judg- 
 ment of the great Isaac Casaubon* of Geneva, one 
 
 * Born Feb. 18, 1559 ; died July 1, 1614. The publication of 
 Casaubon's " Diary" (/. Casauboni Ephcmerides, ed. J. Russell, Ox- 
 onii, 1849) must be considered one of the most interesting events 
 in recent literary history. It gives an admirable idea of the life of 
 those ancient scholars ; and testifies to the learning, the piety, the 
 industry, and the affectionate nature of its great author. He came 
 to London (in company with Wotton) in October, 1610 ; was pre- 
 sented to the king very soon afterwards ; and spent the remainder 
 of his life here. The diary commences Feb. 18, 1597, on Casau- 
 bon's thirty-eighth birthday ; and lasts (with the exception of a 
 blank, where a part is lost, from January 1604 to July 1607) till 
 sixteen days before his death. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who 
 knew him well, has this paragraph about him : " I was received 
 to the house " (at Paris) " of that incomparable scholar Isaac Caw- 
 sabon, by whose learned conversation I much benefited myself." — 
 Life of Lord, Herbert. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 11 
 
 of the sturdy, all-embracing scholars of the old days. 
 The English have a special interest in him ; for he 
 lies in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid in 
 1614. Four years before, he had come over here, 
 when James I., who did love letters, (let them say 
 what else of him they please,) received him well ; 
 nay, even did what has always been, and still is, the 
 favorite way in England of rewarding high merit, 
 — for he asked him to dinner !* 
 
 Any one who feels curious to meddle with this 
 old controversy will find a very charming narrative 
 of it in Dryden's Preface to his Juvenal.f Casaubon's 
 Treatise:): (which is a luminous and weighty composi- 
 tion) has done its work well; for I believe I may 
 venture to say, that his theory has found general 
 acceptance, § and may lay claim to being considered 
 
 * James treated Casaubon handsomely ; — he drew him more 
 from his books, to be sure, than that industrious scholar liked — to 
 hold forth to him about Tacitus, Plutarch, and theology. But he 
 made him presents ; bestowed on him a prebend in Westminster 
 and in Canterbury, and a pension. In August, 1612, the king wrote 
 thus to Sir Julius Caesar : " Chancelor of my Excheker, I will 
 have Mr. Casaubon paid before me, my wife, and my barnes." 
 (Ephemerides, p. 942.) " Deus ipsum servet ! Amen," adds Ca- 
 saubon. 
 
 t Scott's Dryden, vol. xiii. pp. 37 to 65. 
 
 t De Sat. Poes., <fcc, Paris, 1605 ; the same year that his Persius 
 appeared ; of which his friend Joseph Scaliger used to say, that 
 " the sauce was worth more than the fish." 
 
 § E. Spanheim, whose essay on this subject (preface to his Cesars 
 de VEmpereur Julien, Paris, 1683) is commended by Gibbon, calls 
 Casaubon " le savant homme qui a le premier d6brouil!6 cette ma- 
 tiere." For more modern confirmations of his view, see Ruperti de 
 Satira Romanorum, in his Juvenal; Corssen's Origines Poesis Ro- 
 mance (especially pp. 147 et seq.) ; Dillenburger's Horace; and art, 
 Satura in Smith's Diet. Ant. 
 
12 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 the orthodox one. He shows, that the two kinds of 
 Satire, the Greek and the Roman, were essentially 
 different; that the derivation is not accordant with 
 etymology, nor supported by old grammarians ; that 
 the Romans had their Satire long before the Greek 
 influence began; and so forth. And he finds the 
 germ of this famous sort of composition in certain 
 old Italian practices, of which our Horace has 
 given us a sketch, — the railleries of the jolly fellows 
 at the grand old agricultural festivals of remote 
 times. 
 
 ISTow it is not within my present plan to go at 
 any length into a controversy like this. But here is 
 the interest of the matter^ LJVe derive our satirical 
 
 / for ms from Horace and Juvenal. In all other lite- 
 rary productions the Romans are imitators of the 
 Greeks ; but here a certain originality is claimed 
 for them. Here are good reasons for thinking that 
 you have a draught of wine given you with a flavor 
 of the old Italian grape in it. " Greece has modified 
 this "—the Roman arguer might say, " but we had 
 a Satire of our own before the day of her influence. 
 We derive this from days of old, and from the 
 wild, humorous heart of our countrymen at their 
 harvest-homes. Satira does not come from your 
 shaggydegged, small-horned, ape-faced Satyrs ; it 
 
 j comes from our own satura, originally applied ad- 
 jectively to a vessel full of the first-fruits ; and so, 
 
 j by transition, to any mixture; and so, to a mixed 
 
 ^ intellectual composition, like those in dispute." Well 
 to me it is beautiful to see how a people sticks to its 
 traditions, and loves its past ! I like to think of 
 
HORACE AKD JUVENAL. 13 
 
 those early days, when they crowded together, from 
 far and wide, to celebrate their harvest and their 
 vintage; and to recognize solemnly the genius, the 
 supernatural and mystic power, which underlaid the 
 beauty of the country, and the bursting fertility 
 which loaded the team ! Silvanus had his milk ; , 
 the Genius had his wine and flowers ; the banquet 
 followed, and the rude dance; and then came the 
 jest and the raillery, in doggerel and in speech. 
 How astonished would some agricola, noted for a 
 pungent way of treating his neighbors on these 
 occasions, have been, had some superior and pro- 
 phetic spirit, some supernatural reviewer, touched 
 his shoulder, and said, "Sir, you are a powerful 
 satirist ; you unite startling invective with wild hu- 
 mor ; your irony is rather coarse ; and you should 
 not attack such a respectable man as yonder So-and- 
 so ; but on the whole"— Yes, he would have stared ; 
 but he was an ancestor of the satirist who supped 
 with Scipio Africanus, and of the divine little man 
 of the world who lived in the Sabine farm ; and so 
 of hundreds of other votaries of the satura, of whom 
 he little dreamed. 
 
 At all events, it appears to me that the Eoman 
 humorous character has never been done justice to. 
 "We do not rightly feel the humanity of the old Eo- 
 mans, when we think of them only as grim soldierly 
 people, with a peculiar conformation ^of nose! A 
 stern, iron race they were, to be sure, in their great 
 day, realizing this condition,— thorough, clear, prac- 
 tical action, within a circle rigidly bounded by reli- 
 gious awe. A Koman was the most practical of 
 
14 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 men, — a soldier, lawgiver, road-maker ; — all within 
 a ring of sacred mystery. I dare say, accordingly, 
 that if one were suddenly transplanted into Rome, 
 such as it was while it retained its character, one 
 would notice, in the expression of the faces in the 
 streets, a distinct something corresponding to our 
 severe ideas. 
 
 But now, to my mind, the Roman humor was 
 correspondent in depth with the national character ; 
 something on the same scale with its sense of patriot- 
 ism, and its notions of discipline. I fancy it clumsy, 
 perhaps, hnt grandly genial, and such as laughter 
 should be, to shake the sides of men who shook the 
 world ! Consider the Saturnalia, for instance, and 
 compare them with our Greenwich and the " fun of 
 the fair ! " — A huge city and its institutions turned 
 upside down ; slaves jeering their masters, in a style 
 to astonish Uncle Tom ; blazing revelry, and feasting 
 and drinking, that would kill our aldermen ; fun, in 
 fact, proportionate to the seriousness of other times, 
 as nature arranges these matters. Or, consider such 
 a scene as this : Julius Csesar, in his triumph, rolling 
 along the streets to the Capitol, and the common 
 soldiers following behind, and shouting out satirical 
 doggerel against him !* What " unbendings " were 
 these ! what characteristics of what I shall venture to 
 call the jolly element in the Roman people ! — a pro- 
 
 * Suetonius {Jul. Cms. c. 49) has preserved a specimen of these 
 compositions. " In the Gallic triumph also," he. says, " the soldiers 
 among the other songs, such as they sing when following the car " 
 — and gives three singular verses. See Corssen, Orig. Poesis Rom. 
 p. 135. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 15 
 
 duet of the native genius of Italy, like the Fescen- 
 nine verses, or Atellan plays. 
 
 It is unfortunate that we are without any adequate 
 literary expression of this element. So fortune would 
 have it. The old ballad literature of Rome perished 
 entirely. But for my part, I fancy that we get here 
 and there, in several writers, a gleam of the old 
 Koman humor, the essence of which, I take it, was 
 a manly heartiness, and which was as likely to be 
 somewhat coarse and homely as not. In the pages 
 of Cicero (who was one of the most genial of men, and 
 whose writings overflow with wit and good-nature) 
 we find some remarkable allusions to this quality. 
 In a letter to an accomplished Koman friend,* whose 
 humor he praises, he speaks of his jests " as Salter 
 than Attic ones, — old Koman and urban ones." He 
 goes on to lament over the extinction of their native 
 facetiae, now become forgotten in Latium and the 
 city ; and in his complimentary way adds, " When I 
 see you, I seem to see the Granii and Lucilii again. 
 I protest that we have scarcely any body but you left, 
 in whom I can recognize the image of our 'antique 
 and vernacular gaiety.' " This is very striking. 
 Horace, in spite of his Greek culture, and the influ- 
 ence of the Old Comedy, must have been indebted to 
 this traditional quality. In Juvenal, who had a more 
 
 * Epist. ad Diversos, ix. 15, written to Paetus, a. u. c. 708. — 
 " Hilaritas " and " suavitas " were two notable elements in the disposi- 
 tion, personal and literary, of this great man. Stern gentlemen, who 
 think they could have managed the period better than he did, abuse 
 him ; men familiar with his writings love his memory. 
 
16 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 impulsive and strongly-marked personality in satire 
 than Horace, it is more clearly to be seen. 
 
 Of the professed Eoman satirists before Horace's 
 time we have only fragments; and why should I 
 ask you to a banquet of crumbs ? The Eoman world 
 was just culminating towards the perfection of its 
 imitative culture, when Quintus Horatius Flaccus 
 was born, in Venusia, . in Apulia, the country now 
 called the Basilicata, sixty-five years before the birth 
 of Christ. His father had been born a slave, but 
 manumitted before his son's birth, so that the poet 
 was ingenuus, as they called it. However, he never 
 got quite rid of the taint of his origin, — any more 
 than he would if he had been born, under corres- 
 ponding disadvantages, in our own highly civilized 
 country. Throughout life his enemies touched him 
 up occasionally with the ancestral whip. It must 
 have been a luxury to a dunce, whose great-grand- 
 father had been a consul, to cool his wrath by reflect- 
 ing that the poet who was admired by Augustus was 
 the son of a freedman. 
 
 The freedman, the father of Horace, was a very 
 worthy man, and made it the object of his life to 
 develop his son's faculties. He helped, too,- by a 
 practice which might have been dangerous in an 
 ordinary case, to awaken the satirical element in 
 the youngster ; for he was wont to impress moral 
 lessons on him by using the neighbors as "fright- 
 ful examples." About his twelfth year he took 
 the boy to Eome, to give him every advantage of 
 instruction ; and from Eome the youth went to 
 Athens, to finish his education. Every thing was 
 
HORACE AXD JUVENAL. 17 
 
 done by that people on the great scale. You went 
 off to Athens, or Rhodes, or Asia, to get what 
 learning you required ; and you attained the rudi- 
 ments of the military art at the expense of distant 
 barbarians. Horace was a fortunate boy. He 
 ripened into maturity under the sky of Greece; in 
 a city which, though conquered, had yet a sacred- 
 ness in the eyes of all intellectual Romans,* and 
 where the traditions of philosophy and beauty were 
 still fresh and green. Here he modelled himself 
 on the Greek civilization ; here he wandered under 
 olive-trees or plane-trees, and by the banks of famous 
 rivers, and heard talk enough about the Good and 
 the Beautiful to give him matter for speculation all 
 his life. He had a quick sense of all fine things in 
 the moral and physical world ; but admired the lofty 
 and the beautiful as objects, rather than felt disposed 
 to adopt them as subjects to be worked out in active 
 existence. Many a fine flash in his lyrics shows how 
 he had felt the beauty of the nobler theories of life 
 which he had heard. "What we know of his actual 
 career, and the general drift of his writing, however, 
 does not come up to that mark. ' As a humorist, he 
 could not but see the absurdity of the pedants of 
 stoicism, who placed every thing in garb and rude- 
 ness ; as a moralist, he was more remarkable for good 
 common sense than ethical earnestness ; as a writer, 
 he loved gracefulness, elegance, a kind of sublime 
 point, more than inner beauty or sacredness ; as a 
 man, he was worldly, prudent, self-conscious, a little 
 
 * See the fine passage of Cicero's speech Pro L. Flacco, c. 26 ; 
 " Adsunt Atheniensee," &c. 
 
18 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 too fond of high friends, good dinners, and disposed 
 to subornate art to life. In a word, he was one of a 
 class known in every age, and many of whom make 
 excellent satirists ; men of whom it may be said, 
 that they take a deeper interest in society than in 
 mankind. 
 
 It was while Horace was maturing into this kind of 
 man at Athens, being twenty-one years of age, that 
 there came, what the old English pamphlets would 
 call, " bloody news !" The Roman mob were breaking 
 into riots ; Cicero (now sixty-three years old) was 
 haranguing in the Senate ; and messengers {tahella/ri%) 
 were scampering over the wide world to tell every 
 body that the great Julius Cassar had been murdered; 
 
 The high-flown liberal party had, as the vulgar 
 phrase goes, done it at last. The foremost Eoman 
 man, and the flower of all the aristocrats that have 
 ever appeared in the world, had been crushed out 
 of life. Whatever gifts of intellect he had, the world 
 would never get the benefit of them any more. He 
 was handed over to history and to republican eloquence 
 for ever. Well, that death brought many a death in 
 its train. Cicero was murdered next year ; Brutus 
 and Cassius killed themselves the year after ; Mark 
 Antony crossed the black river with the languid wave 
 (as Horace calls it,) in a few years more ; and all the 
 great men being swept off, Caesar, the nephew, 
 mounted the throne as emperor, and order reigned in 
 Rome. There's republican eloquence for you, and its 
 charming results ! Now, you know, began the 
 Augustan age; for who else produced Horace, and 
 Virgil, and Yarius, and Tibullus, and taught them to 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 19 
 
 be geniuses, and to write fine Latin, except the em- 
 peror ? Some men are lucky in history and in life. 
 But so the world wags. In our own country, after 
 the wars of the Boses had swept away the daring 
 and generous souls, and the great Plantagenets were 
 quiet in their graves, up to the throne came that 
 prudent, sagacious Henry VII., and was a pros- 
 perous king, and died in his bed, leaving an immense 
 fortune. 
 
 Horace joined Brutus when he came to Athens, 
 and served as tribune of a legion at Philippi. He 
 has left no details of the battle ; and nothing is 
 known of his proceedings there with certainty, ex- 
 cept that he ran away. He seems to have treated 
 the affair in a jocular manner afterwards, pleasantly 
 quizzing himself, like a man of the world, who knew 
 that he could do better things than fight, and that 
 the emperor would think no worse of him for hav- 
 ing run away in the cause of Brutus. He came 
 to Borne unharmed; and here occurs a period of 
 obscurity, when he was in considerable poverty. 
 His genius, however, showed itself ; and people who 
 interested themselves in literary matters discovered 
 that there was a highly-rising man going about (son 
 of a freedman, they believed), who displayed a right 
 sharp vein in the satiric way, and had an eye for a 
 dunce or a humbug ; who wrote a lyric which, for 
 finish and touch, would have done honor to the old 
 Greeks; in fact, a man in all respects worthy to 
 approach (with all modesty, of course) the great 
 Maecenas. Horace thought so too, no doubt, and 
 
20 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 with immense respect and modesty approached the 
 great Maecenas. 
 
 At first he was not particularly intimate ; but 
 presently he was admitted among his most select 
 and dearest friends, and had the famous Farm be- 
 stowed upon him. This is one of the truest friend- 
 ships on record between patron and man of letters. 
 The sumptuous Maecenas, whose taste in jewelry, 
 and love of it, were the wonder of his contempo- 
 raries, who liked all kinds of elegant things (in- 
 cluding literature), probably classed the poet at 
 least as high as he did his unrivalled collection of 
 bijouterie, and was as warmly fond and familiar as a 
 man who comes from Etruscan kings can reasonably 
 be with a mere man of genius of the middle class. 
 Horace, on the other hand, must have been sincerely 
 grateful to one who gave him honor, leisure, the 
 capability of a sufficiency of Greek manuscripts, 
 and, generally speaking, enough for a philosopher 
 of taste, who is not servilely dependent on fortune, 
 and who "despises the malignant vulgar," — particu- 
 larly that section of the vulgar who are jealous of 
 one's entry to the palace, and to Maecenas's great 
 villas, and who insinuate that one is a tuft-hunter ! 
 Such was the relation between them, which I be- 
 lieve to have been an affectionate and good one of 
 its kind. I dare say that Horace did not think 
 quite so much of Maecenas's writings, in his heart- 
 as Maecenas himself; but then, one can't expect a 
 man to come from Etruscan kings, and be a genius 
 too ! I dare say further, that one who was so sincere 
 in the cause of good sense, and in love of the fit and 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 21 
 
 the elegant, must have been apt to spy something 
 that looked very like innocent and illustrious blood 
 on the toga of the emperor, with all his managing 
 talent, and his admiration of clever men, whose 
 applause is such a good thing for an emperor to 
 have. But though the satirist knew very well that 
 " whatever madness the kings are at, the Greeks 
 must pay the piper," he knew this in theory only. 
 Besides, what matter? — one can fancy him saying, 
 " "While fools shun one error, they run into the 
 contrary extreme. Any tranquillity is preferable 
 to idiots, like yon Stoic, with his beard and his 
 cloak, who goes about chattering that a self-pos- 
 sessed cobbler of sound moral views is a king." 
 Horace was a very sensible man, in our English 
 use of that phrase ; and I believe that he was sin- 
 cere in his expressed views about patron and em- 
 peror, and that he preserved his self-respect in his 
 relation to them both. 
 
 — I esteem Horace as a moralist and satirist (and 
 the Roman satire is essentially ethical ; and indeed 
 all great satirists are moralists) more than as a poet. 
 It would be more accurate to describe him as a 
 satirist who wrote poetry, than as a poet who wrote 
 ^satires. A late biographer (Milman) deals again 
 with that fatal old question (so often raised also 
 about Pope), was he a poet at all ? The very doubt 
 is dangerous to him ; and unhappily these doubts 
 just rise when poetry itself is taking a fresh develop- 
 ment. Who shall deny the charm of his carmina — 
 the finish of his art ? They must be read again and 
 again with pleasure. But it seems to me that the 
 
22 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 key to the whole question was furnished by Butt- 
 mann, when he said, " Horace is not one of those poets 
 who wrote from an impulse of nature."* It is a 
 certain condition of mind, original and creative, which 
 makes a man a poet ; and that that was possessed by 
 Horace, I do not see reason to believe. 
 
 When one examines his poems, one sees at the first 
 glance that the creation of many of them was merely 
 artificial. He avails himself of a tradition — of a 
 situation — of some little scene foreign to Home in 
 place and character ; and this he works up in Italian 
 marble, and gives out as a Latin poem. Thus, many 
 of his lyrics are paintings of old subjects (Greek 
 subjects on Roman frescoes); imitations of the old 
 classic models of the Archipelago, and the east of the 
 Mediterranean ; and embodiments of a mythology in 
 which he did not believe. Then, consider the difficul- 
 ties to which all attempts to treat these poems histori- 
 cally give rise. "What are we to make of the Greek 
 names in the lyrics, for instance ? The commentators 
 have done their best ; and have endowed the philoso- 
 phic Horace with such a bevy of Greek acquaintances, 
 particularly damsels, — lute-playing dancing-girls, with 
 ivy-bound heads or rose-crowned heads, with hair of 
 one form and hair of another, — that criticism pauses in 
 despair. The acute scholar I quoted a moment ago 
 takes these young Greek persons to task : he exposes 
 Horace's contradictions in his statements about them ; 
 shows that one Lalage is quite different from another 
 Lalage ; condemns the notion of their historic exist- 
 ence ; stigmatizes those who maintain it as " gossiping 
 
 * Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 439. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 23 
 
 anecdote-mongers ; " and lays it down, that " non- 
 reality is an essential feature of Horace's Odes." A 
 misconception is thus removed about Horace's private 
 life : but, further, one finds many literary difficulties 
 removed likewise. I cannot fancy Horace believing, 
 except in an artistic kind of way, in his mythological 
 subjects. You leave him skill, tact, taste, language ; 
 you conceive him, too, under this theory, a much 
 more natural and coherent being, — as a fine-tasted 
 satirist, and man of the world, who did pictures after 
 the Greeks, — than you do if you suppose him., as the 
 author of the moral and satirical discourses, to have 
 been directly inspired by old Pagan piety towards 
 the gods ; or, living in the plain way he did, to have 
 been habitually enchanted by Greek girls and boys 
 while sitting under the myrtle or the vine. I esteem 
 him, in his lyrical capacity, as an exquisite reproducer 
 of old forms : while, of course, the value of his lyrics 
 is immeasurable in this light, as a picture of the 
 ancient life, its beliefs, its sentiments, its gaiety.* 
 Horace seems to have had very modest notions him- 
 
 * Buttmaim's essay is well worth studying. Any one who attempts 
 to understand Horace by assuming that historic reality against which 
 he contends, will find himself in endless difficulties. Let us just glance 
 at some of them : — 1. There are about eighteen women celebrated by 
 Horace in the language of love, of whom the majority bear names from 
 the Greek. 2. Of some of these, contradictory statements are made. 
 3. The tone of the Satires and Epistles on this subject is different 
 from that of the Songs. 
 
 A fatality attaches to all attempts to treat of the puellm historically. 
 For instance, Professor Newman in his very valuable Horace (p. 18) 
 says that Neasra and Cinara are probably the same person. But it may 
 be remarked on the other side — • 
 
 1. That Cinara, whoever she was, died early (4, 13), having been 
 quite an early flame of Horace's (Ep. 1, 7, 28) ; while he sends (i. e. 
 
24 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 self about his pretensions to poetry proper. In the 
 Lyrics he speaks of himself with reference to the 
 Greek masters ; in the Satires he speaks, in the 4th of 
 the First Book, especially on the question ; and says 
 truly, that not to men who, like himself, delivered 
 what was similar to prosaic speech, was the poetic 
 
 jaame to be given. To the diviner mind, and to the 
 mouth sounding great things, belonged that name : — 
 which remains as true at this hour as it was when he 
 uttered it ; and the controversy on the subject shows 
 that the heart of mankind revolts against the indis- 
 criminate application of the most sacred of literary 
 
 [titles. 
 
 When we come to speak, however, of his Satires, 
 our laudation is more unqualified. I should be sorry 
 to think that I underrated such a man in any way. 
 What, then, let us first ask, is his moral point of 
 view ? He will always live as a teacher of the world : 
 what was the central moral impulse that prompted 
 him to teach ? 
 
 poetically) for Nesera to come to him on the occasion of Augustus's 
 return from Spain (3, 14) in a. u. c. 730, when he was turned of forty 
 years old. 
 
 2. That he calls Cinara rapacious, as if that were one of her character- 
 istics (Ep. 1, 14, 33), and does not apply it to Nesra at all. 
 
 3. That in the Epistles above quoted, Cinara's love is spoken of as an 
 old story ; which it would not have been, had the Nesera of a. v. c. 
 730 (represented as attractive and young when these Epistles were 
 probably his daily occupation) been identical with her. 
 
 The truth is, that if many of Horace's songs are any thing but mere 
 fancy-pictures and imitations, he was more dissolute than Verres or 
 Mark Antony. It seems more reasonable, for many considerations, to 
 believe many of his lyrics purely artificial and fanciful ; but at the same 
 
 time there is a class of really historic ones — national and moral and 
 
 these are ethical rather than poetic. 
 
HOKACE AND JUVENAL. 25 
 
 It happens, fortunately enough, that in these two 
 Romans we have the two great types of satirists ready 
 .'to our hands. If you choose to dispense with a mere 
 Jpedantic nicety, you can classify all the great satirical 
 'writers with one or the other. For instance, Erasmus 
 was a Horatian man, Buchanan more like Juvenal ; 
 Pope sympathized most with Horace, Dryden with 
 Juvenal. Horace was cosmopolitan rather than patri- 
 otic, Juvenal strongly Roman : Erasmus was a Euro- 
 pean man of letters, Buchanan a good deal of a 
 Scotchman ; and so on. You can trace the peculiari- 
 ties of each class, down to the lowest types. The 
 smallest form that the Horatian satirist has yet been 
 known in, is that of a worldly cockney jester ; while 
 the Juvenalian has been found in the same stratum, 
 as a ruffian uttering smartish Billingsgate. 
 
 Now the point of view of Horace is that of a man 
 who moves as a member of the society which he sati- 
 rizes, and is personally, on the whole, rather on good 
 terms with it than otherwise. He makes up his mind 
 to accept the established, and never pretends to be 
 better than his neighbors. Poor Swift's sceva indig- 
 natio is unknown to him. If you went to him (or his 
 representative in any age), and told him that the 
 wrath of God was excited against this city, and that 
 you had some thoughts of flying to the wilderness, — 
 he would make a note of you for his next satire, and 
 book you as a specimen of the mistaken class with the 
 uncomplimentary title, who " while they shun vices, 
 run into extremes.''-' There are no red mullet in the 
 wilderness ; and because mankind are rogues and fools 
 
 * " Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currant." 
 2 
 
26 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 (as he is inclined to believe they have pretty often 
 been), is that a reason why a satirical writer should be 
 reduced to " locusts and wild honey ? " No, no ! 
 Again, it may be true that there is the stain of blood 
 on the imperial purple ; all things considered, how- 
 ever, that is a kind of color on which it does not show 
 much. Are you sure you yourself would be a bit 
 better were you emperor ? The medium is safest, my 
 friend. Shun extremes. What a blockhead is a 
 miser ! And yet, what a madman is a spendthrift ! 
 Great wealth is but a splendid bore. On the other 
 hand, poverty is a bore too. Real happiness is to be 
 found in our little Sabine farm, given us by Maecenas, 
 to the envy of the " malignant vulgar," whom we (a 
 little ostentatiously) despise. There we delight in rus 
 (particularly when the Roman season is over, and the 
 bores are off to Baias) ; and there we indite a charm- 
 ing little sapphic to the Faun, whom our ancestors 
 feared and sacrificed to, though we are inclined to 
 imagine him, on the whole, a fabulous animal. There 
 we get a book by daylight ; and there, with a few 
 wise friends, we discuss, not the merit of this or that 
 dancer, but the nature of good and right, with other 
 edifying topics. 
 
 The Satires and Epistles of Horace give us as per- 
 fect a picture of himself as we could desire ; and this 
 alone is a proof that he was a genuine man. He 
 knew the world, and his own weaknesses too ; and yet 
 he has painted himself, — no flattering or fallacious 
 figure either. To himself we owe it, that we can see, 
 with the mind's eye, the image of that little pudgy 
 dark man, with somewhat weak eyes, and a slovenly, 
 
HOKACE AND JUVENAL. 27 
 
 sauntering, abstracted gait. He lets in light upon 
 himself constantly. We see him strolling along the 
 Sacred Way, where the famous Bore seized him, 
 whom he has drawn so amusingly.* In a very cha- 
 racteristic piece, he makes his slave Davus taie him 
 to task for his failings.-)- Davus avails himself of the 
 Saturnalia to turn satirist of his master : and it is a 
 fine specimen of what, in English, we call dry humor, 
 to see Horace, after listening to the fellow's exordium, 
 turn round sharply to inquire " What he's driving at ? " 
 " At you, " the rogue answers ; and proceeds to taunt 
 him with just the failings a stern moral reviewer 
 might tax him with. " Tou praise the old morality 
 of the Roman Plebs, " says he ; " but you are not the 
 kind of man to live among them, if you had the 
 chance. At Rome you praise a country life ; and if 
 nobody happens to ask you to dinner, you break into 
 panegyrics on simple meals." 
 
 Old Davus was quite right, as Horace has ingeni- 
 ously made him. He was a perfect man of the world, 
 with just enough poetic taste and fee-ling to make his 
 supper-crown of roses or parsley,' — genuine roses or 
 genuine fresh parsley. He was a good-natured ele- 
 gant-minded man, and quite consistent. He laughed 
 at the world, or at himself, with impartiality. With 
 no very high views of nature or life, he was perfectly 
 free from cant ; and I believe that if we had known 
 him personally, we should have liked him better than 
 we do even from his books. He made rather too 
 
 * Sat. lib. i. 9. Ibam forte, &c. Our Oldham has imitated it vciy 
 well. 
 
 t Sat. lib. ii. 7 
 
28 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 much of Augustus to please me ; but probably be 
 thought a despot better than civil war ; and any way 
 he knew that the empire was just the state of things 
 for him. Peace, and a society left to ripen into forms 
 fit for "the satirist, were his very first necessities. 
 
 It is easy to say that he was irreverent, worldly, and 
 selfish. I would not undertake to vindicate him 
 against men like Knox or Luther, — the great ones of 
 the highest class. In the nature of things, the sacred 
 man and the humorous one are two different kinds of 
 men. I bow to the first, and do him homage : but the 
 humorist has his own vocation in this world ; and if 
 be is true to the best of his nature, he has a right to 
 high respect likewise. The age imposed two tasks on 
 Horace in his capacity of man of genius : — the deli- 
 neation of the old classic life, which was waning out ; 
 and the delineation of the new corrupt luxurious life, 
 which had come in. The first he performed in his 
 lyrical, the second in his satirical works. I am quite 
 confident that he looked on the national beliefs as 
 mere stuff for fancy-pictures ; but, any way, these 
 pictures are of high value to us ; and it would be dif- 
 ficult to overrate the influence, at all times, of 
 extreme good sense and social wisdom (such as abound 
 in his Satires and Epistles) on the civilization and cul- 
 ture of mankind. 
 
 When I call him worldly, therefore, I use it only as 
 a term of description, and intend no offence to the 
 memory of the grand little man, whose writings have 
 helped to civilize the world, and largely aided in 
 emancipating us from noxiu;:? and asinine snpersti- 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 29 
 
 tions, when they were first circulated at the revival 
 of learning. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to give a notion of the lite- 
 rary charm of his Satires. As he says himself, ridi- 
 cule cuts often more deeply than fierceness. 1 do not 
 call him a bitter man. Much of his satire is just 
 pleasantry. When, for instance, he gives us a sketch 
 of the absurd supper of a jpurvenu, drawing the 
 pompous, ill-bred, over-gorged TSTasidienus,* we laugh 
 good-naturedly. The fellow swaggers and chuckles 
 over every item of his own feast to the men he is 
 entertaining ; insinuates with extreme good taste, to 
 begin with, that the sanglier is quite sound ; and 
 when the wine is brought in by a dusky Indian (for 
 of course he must have an Indian, as it was the 
 mode), he turns to the greatest man he has managed 
 to secure, and says, " Caecuban, Maecenas? — but we 
 have Alban and Falernian, if you prefer them ! " 
 He harangues on bis dishes, to prove that all is per- 
 fectly comme il faut ; and turns palpably paler, when 
 two of the young fellows, in sheer boredom, set in for 
 severe drinking. Nothing can be more dramatic than 
 the way in which Horace puts it before you : but for 
 all that, would he have scorned Nasidienus ? I dare 
 say he would have dined with him with the utmost 
 complacency, and was probably present at this very 
 feast. He acquired that knowledge of Roman life by 
 going about in society; and he shows a copious 
 knowledge of cookery. 
 
 His songs would give you a notion that he indulged 
 in a romantic sort of dissipation. This arises from 
 
 * Sat. lib. ii. 8. 
 
30 SAT1EE AND SATIKISTS. 
 
 their not being rightly viewed as fancy-pictures — 
 pictures on the ivory of the Latin language, — of old 
 Lesbian life, and Ionian life, farther south, and long 
 before. To me Horace seems a far homelier, simpler 
 old gentleman than the classic conventionalists would 
 have you suppose. A little, stoutish, weak-eyed, 
 satirical, middle-aged man, sitting; — with what hair he 
 had left, smeared with Syrian ointment — crowned, 
 under a vine, drinking, in company of a Greek young 
 woman, with an ivy crown on her head, playing or 
 dancing,- — is to me a ludicrous object. I do not think 
 that the simple and philosophic Horatius, with his 
 eye for satire, was much given to this mode of enjoy- 
 ment. I am pretty sure that he did enjoy himself ; 
 but I rather fancy him eating a too luxurious dinner 
 now and then, cramming himself with tunny-fish, 
 muscles, oysters, hare, thrushes, peacock, and what- 
 ever else was going ; and atoning for it by much quiet 
 and a little rustication in his farm. I am certain that 
 he was, in the mam, a homely little man ; and that 
 the finish and elegance he shows in his writings did 
 not appear so conspicuously in his person and in the 
 objects about him. 
 
 Of the life of Juvenal we know next to nothing. 
 But he, too, has stamped his own character on his 
 works ; and perhaps it will be better now to bring 
 him into the field, that we may look at the two great 
 satirists together, and illustrate our theme by com- 
 paring and contrasting them. Let us place by the 
 side of the philosophic man of the court of Augustus 
 a darker and sterner figure, one who had seen every 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 31 
 
 tiling that Horace saw — corrupt — ripened into sheer 
 abomination ; and who has left us his protest against 
 Home the sinner in lines of blood and fire. 
 
 We hear that Juvenal followed the profession of an 
 advocate; that he read his satires to audiences; that 
 he was exiled under pretence of an honorable em- 
 ployment ; and that he ended his life, heart-sick, far 
 up the Nile.* This may or may not be true. A late 
 editor of note determines his career within the periods 
 of the 42d year after Christ and the 122d year.f This 
 makes his birth just half a century posterior to 
 Horace's death. He was thus a youth under ]STero ; 
 had seen probably the miserable Vitellius, dragged, 
 gasping from fat and terror, out of his palace, with 
 hands fastened behind him, to be murdered ;\ had 
 undoubtedly been a spectator of the career of Domi- 
 tian. Well, here was a good school for a satirical 
 writer ! He lived with wide-open eyes, a man of real 
 satirical genius, in a period precisely requiring a 
 
 * This is the common old narrative which goes under the name of 
 Suetonius. The story of Juvenal's death, as there represented, seems 
 generally exploded now ; — and Juvenal is a writer who has been much 
 elucidated within the last quarter of a century. We must rest contented 
 with knowing that he was come to man's estate during Domitian's 
 reign (a.d. 81-96), and that he probably survived to Hadrian's (a.d. 117- 
 138). He was generally read, till lately, in the edition of Ruperti, 
 which first appeared in 1800. The recent interpretations of difficulties 
 will be found in the unpretending and excellent Thirteen Satires by 
 Mayor (Cambridge, 1853), which I had not seen when I wrote this 
 lecture. 
 
 t Heinrich. See also Professor Ramsay's art. " Juvenal" in Smith's 
 Diet, of Biog. 
 
 X A scene described with incomparable power by Tacitus, Hist. lib. 
 iii. t . 84, 85. 
 
32 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 satirical man. Accordingly, his sixteen satires have, 
 in all ages, been the objects of high admiration, not 
 only for their qualities as satirical poems, but for the 
 insight they give us into the Roman life under the 
 empire. 
 
 It was a monstrous and unnatural period, that in 
 which Juvenal lived, — of gigantic opulence and tita- 
 nic sin ; a time both of blood and luxury ; when the 
 world ate and drank more, and lied and blasphemed 
 more, and was at once more knowing and more 
 superstitious than it has ever been known to be. 
 Something tropical is the effect that entering into it 
 produces on the imagination which still retains any 
 healthy northern simplicity of character. You gasp 
 for air. The soul is in an atmosphere close and hot ; 
 cloudy with coarse perfume ; where the flowers and 
 the vegetation have, with monstrous proportions, 
 something glaring and ghastly in their beauty, and 
 something sickly in their breath. Foul figures of 
 every land swarm round you : brawny murderers from 
 the Danube, and dusky greasy scoundrels from the 
 Nile. All that is bad is near. There are sounds of 
 revelry, which are allied with unutterable shame. 
 The clashing of cymbals and the notes of lutes, the 
 gleam of gold and of wine, do not charm here ; they 
 terrify. The smoke of the wicked feasts blots out the 
 heaven above you, and, like the drifting smoke from 
 a funeral pile, is heavy with the odors of death. 
 
 This was a scene worthy of qualities much higher 
 than those of a "Wit. To laugh at Vice, and show 
 Vice, what she is too ready to forget, that she has many 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 33 
 
 points in common with the fool ; to pluck Murder by 
 the sleeve, and quiz him because he has forgotten to 
 wipe the blood off his face ; to laugh at Sin and 
 Wickedness for eating peas with a knife, — is the kind 
 of business that a merely worldly satirist has to 
 perform. There are ages which demand a different 
 kind of treatment ; and here was one of them. 
 Accordingly, in Juvenal there is a degree of earnest- 
 ness and of purpose, and a heartiness of scorn, which 
 are not the least attractions about that sturdy satirist, 
 and underlie his coarse humor, and his fierce epithets, 
 and his bitter laughter. He is a big, brawny fighting- 
 man ; and if his coat is clumsy, and his fist coarse, you 
 must remember the " mills" he has been in. He was 
 perpetually out in that grand ring, as the champion 
 of old Rome — old Rome against the empire was his 
 cause. I do not know that he made much by the 
 fighting personally, in his lifetime : probably he was 
 too gallant a fellow to mind that. But he has won 
 the fight in time. The essence of him is alive and 
 triumphant ; and his " belt " hangs up as a constel- 
 lation in literature, like the belt of Orion in the 
 firmament. 
 
 There are many moral and literary differences 
 between Horace and Juvenal : beneath them lies, as 
 the main one, of course, the different sort of satiric 
 impulse at bottom. [Horace was scarcely ever angry ; 
 and he is a clear-seeing fine-minded man, with a talent 
 for dramatic and personal exhibition of folly. He 
 gjves many fine examples of the absurdity of avarice, 
 for example ; of any of the extremes which mankind 
 so inconsistently exhibit in every thing. Every thing 
 
34 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 has its ludicrous aspect ; and that Horace lays hold 
 of. He was a good-tempered man, a well-balanced 
 man, of high taste and breeding ; and how spiritedly 
 will he expose, — I say expose, by making it appear in 
 action, rather than denounce, — absurdity, meanness, 
 ostentation ! He takes them, usually, in their relation 
 to society. Society — the cultivated, observing, 
 reflecting section — is his standard. If he attacks any 
 thing as hateful, he shows its contrast to what a 
 polished sensible person must think of it. In one 
 excellent satire he introduces a Stoic, proving all the 
 world almost mad ; and a very good case he makes of 
 it. He takes the old Greek heroes to task in the spirit 
 of a man of the world, just as he would take a contem- 
 porary. " Son of Atreus, why do ' you deny burial to 
 Ajax?" "I am a king." "Just so: plebeian as I 
 am, I ask no further." The king permits him to 
 proceed. He interrogates him again : " Why putrefies 
 Ajax, the second hero of all the Greeks, that Priam 
 and his people may exult ? " " The madman killed a 
 thousand sheep," goes on the monarch. " What ! and 
 you, when you determined to kill, instead of a calf, 
 your sweet daughter at the altar at Aulis, — were you 
 in your right mind ? " Here, you see, is his point of 
 view. All sense of the solemn and awful nature of 
 the tradition, as an instance of dark early faith, is lost. 
 The case is decided like any common case demanding 
 the opinion of a shrewd practical fellow. Many a 
 case of madness is brought forward by the Stoic (who 
 thus represents, for the hour, Horace's satirical mood^ ; 
 but the satirist very characteristically makes his mouth- 
 piece bear the brunt of the twibridled attack, and, with 
 
Hi 'RACK AND JUVENAL. 35 
 
 much i'acetiousness, prays for him, in exchange for 
 his wisdom, " that the gods will endow him with a 
 barber." 
 
 — A. cheerful humorous man, with all his satirical 
 bias; and who was undoubtedly disposed not to be 
 ferocious in his views of people, because he was 
 conscious of a good disposition in himself in life, and 
 inclined to be hopeful of others' intentions too. 
 
 Many of Horace's pieces are,- accordingly, sketches 
 of life and manners, in which the satire is more 
 incidental and casual than direct and determinate. 
 But Juvenal has usually a most unmistakable intention 
 to lash something and somebody. He gropes about, 
 like the giant in the nursery-tale, with his " fee-fo- 
 fum," smelling prey, and prepared to lay hold of it., 
 iHe laughs anjp hates. ; He had abundant subjects to. 
 attack ; and his point of view is the old Roman one. 
 The nobility are degenerate, the people degraded, the 
 emperors monsters ; and scoundrels born slaves, 
 bloated with wealth, are prominent in the general 
 infamy. He sallies out against all ; and his laugh 
 and his abuse are so strong and so reckless, that they 
 give one some notion of what such humor as that 
 shouted out in the wake of the triumphal car must 
 \ have been. It is a fact as certain as it sounds extraor- 
 dinary, that the Romans used to have buffoons, or 
 a buffoon, as part of the funeral ceremony.* There 
 are times when Juvenal's fun gives one a glimpse of 
 
 * There was a functionary called the archimimus, who marched along 
 representing the defunct person's doings and sayings. Suetonius has a 
 good story about the one who officiated at the funeral of Vespasian, — 
 Vesp. c. 19. 
 
36 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 such a portentous figure ; a representative of the comic 
 element present amidst the ghastliest and most painful 
 spectacles. 
 
 f 'The common distinction drawn between these two 
 groat satirists is, that Horace was the master of 
 ridicule, and Juvenal of i nvectiv e : that ridicule is 
 the more rare and delicate gift ; and this once laid 
 _down, follows Horace's superiority. No doubt this is 
 extremely convenient to people who wish to have a 
 kind of memoria technioa of criticism in their heads, 
 so as to be able to give each author his epithet, and 
 then leave him labelled — and neglected. This may 
 be convenient. You remember Pope's lines in one of 
 his imitations of Horace ? 
 
 . " In all disputes where critics bear a part, 
 Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, 
 Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit ; 
 How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ ; 
 How Shadwell hasty, "Wycherley was slow ; 
 But for the passions, Southern sure, and Bowe." 
 
 These good old traditionary distinctions are, of 
 course, founded on truth. But to understand any of 
 these authors at all well, you would have to be much 
 more minute ; to determine the nature in Jonson, and 
 the art in Shakespeare ; while to say only that Cowley 
 was noted for wit, would not serve to discriminate him 
 from Swift or George Canning. 
 
 If it be meant that Juvenal had not a singular talent 
 for ridicule, had not brilliant and striking wit, — some- 
 thing is meant that is not true. The fact is, he is 
 
t HORACE AND JUVENAL. 37 
 
 prickly all over with touches of ridicule. In the 
 fourth satire he has given us what is an admirable 
 specimen of it, in the form and style of the mock- 
 heroic. The , heroes here are Domitian and the 
 \ senators. 
 
 "~ — With extreme gravity he begins, that it was in 
 the days when the last of the Flavian family was 
 lacerating the half-dead world^ and Home was serving 
 a bald jSTero, that a huge turbot came into the Adriatic. 
 The fisherman who made the haul destined it at once 
 to the High Pontiff; for, says our friend, spies would 
 certainly have betrayed the man who had dared to 
 buy or eat a fish of these proportions; and officials 
 would have declared, if needful, that it had escaped 
 from the emperor's fish-pond. Every haste was made 
 with it ; doors fly open ; the senators pause outside, 
 impressed by the important news, and waiting. 
 " Accept, sir," says the bearer, " accept a fish too 
 great for private hearths ! Let this be a genial day. 
 Consume a turbot reserved for these ages. He glories 
 in being caught ! " 
 
 But here a difficulty occurs,' — no dish is large 
 enough. The council are summoned, and the mag- 
 nates of the land assemble to determine how the fish 
 shall be dressed. Each senator is hit off in a few 
 lines of description, sometimes even touchingly and 
 gravely; for Juvenal alternates between farce and 
 tragedy, — which makes him affecting as well as amus- 
 ing. Crispinus, a monster of wealth, who had been 
 an Egyptian slave, comes in, scented so as to smell 
 like two funerals. Another is ludicrously introduced, 
 ^— not by, Here comes Montamis, but by, Montanns's 
 
38 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 belly comes in. There is a contest of flattery. One 
 cries out, as if inspired, " This is the omen of some 
 great and illustrious triumph. You will capture a 
 king, or hurl a Briton down from his place." " Shall 
 it be cut? " is the solemn question put. "No," cries 
 Montanus ; " be this disgrace far from it ! Let some 
 noble dish be instantly made for it. But from this 
 time, Caesar, potters must accompany your camp ! " 
 
 " That sentiment, worthy of the man," says Juve* 
 nal, " triumphed." He characteristically concludes, 
 by bursting out with—" And better if he had given 
 to work like this the time he employed in murders. 
 But he perished as soon as the rabble began to fear 
 him. This destroyed the man who was wet with the 
 blood of the Lamias ! " 
 
 Juvenal is a more exciting writer than Horace. He 
 is more pictorial and startling. His coloring is 
 brighter. He abounds in flashes of glowing fancy. 
 When he would illustrate the extreme of effeminate 
 dandyism, he tells you that the Boman " swells " had 
 light rings for summer wear, when they could not be 
 expected to bear heavy ones.* He illustrates always 
 unscrupulously and strongly. " Now," he says, 
 " every altar has its Clodius. What should I do at 
 Borne ? I cannot lie." But it is an element in him 
 never to be forgotten, that he has gleams of poetic 
 
 * " When one of Nilus's rout, a servile pate. 
 Crispinus a Canopian (whiles in state 
 His shoulder does his purple cloak recall) 
 Upon his sweating fingers fans his small 
 Summer-rings, and a larger jewel's weight 
 Shuns as a burden." — Holyday. 
 On this passage, see G. Lonp\ Classical Musrum, vol. i. p. 371. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 39 
 
 pathos, and moral reflections, worthy of the gravest 
 and purest souls ; as in the passage where he speaks 
 of the miseries of old age, of out-lived friends and re- 
 lations, " and the urns full of sisters ;" when he says 
 of one, " Let him heap gold in mountains, and love 
 no one, and be loved by nobody ; " when he speaks of 
 tears as being the best evidence of the qualities of 
 human nature ; and many others.* He startles with 
 a kind of sudden sarcasm ; as when alluding to the 
 punishment of parricide, where the victim was hurled 
 into the river in a sack with a cock and an ape, he 
 pities the ape as an innocent sufferer. He had not 
 Horace's elegance, nor so well-balanced a judgment; 
 but in sheer wit, brave manliness, hot eloquence and 
 energy, no satirist has ever surpassed him. 
 — I wish I could convey to you, by introducing 
 modern men of our own, some image of these two 
 great writers. Let me try, though with all modesty, 
 and a full sense of the difficulty of the task. Take, as 
 a basis, Swift's keenness and his ferocity ; add a strong 
 dash of Hogarth's humor ; and tinge the whole with 
 an infusion-of the funereal poetry of Gray, — you have 
 a notion of Juvenal. Now for Horace. Take sense 
 like Franklin's, only with an air of higher breeding ; 
 mild and thin-flowing humor, like Addison's, minus 
 the Christianity ; abundant quantities of Chesterfleldan 
 shrewdness and wit, with gaiety like Lady "Wbrtley 
 Montagu's ; add a fair dose of Campbell's poetic spirit, 
 and Washington Irving's poetic taste, — and you 
 
 * The celebrated "Maxima debetur puero reverentia," in his four- 
 teenth, is an example ; it is specially praised in the Rambler. 
 
40 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 j perhaps have something that gives you a glimpse 
 
 i of Horace. 
 
 U"' On the whole, I am happy to say that Horace and 
 Juvenal are very fairly represented in our English 
 literature. Our own great satirist, Pope, spent many 
 hours in transfusing the Horatian spirit into the mould 
 of the language of his own day. I shall take the 
 liberty to read to you some specimens of his Imitations 
 of Horace. Here are a few from his version of the 
 Second Satire of the Second Book : 
 
 " What, and how great, the virtue and the art, 
 To live on little, with a cheerful heart 
 (A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine) : 
 Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine, 
 Not when a gilt buffet's reflected pride 
 Turns you from sound philosophy aside ; 
 Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll, 
 And the brain dances to the mantling bowl. 
 
 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother 
 
 About one vice and fall into the other; 
 
 Between excess and famine lies a mean ; 
 
 Plain, but not sordid ; though not splendid, clean. 
 
 Avidien and his wife (no matter which, 
 
 For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch,) 
 
 Sell their presented partridges and fruits, 
 
 And humbly live on rabbits and on roots ; 
 
 One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine, 
 
 And is at once their vinegar and wine. 
 
 But on some lucky day (as when they found 
 
 A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned), 
 
 At such a feast, old vinegar to spare, 
 
HO HACK AND JUVENAL. 41 
 
 Is what two souls so generous cannot bear. 
 Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart, 
 But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart. 
 
 How pale each worshipful and reverend guest 
 Eise from a clergy or a city feast ! 
 What life in all that ample body ! say, 
 What heavenly particle inspires the clay 1 
 The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines 
 To seem but mortal, e'en in sound divines. 
 
 Who has not learned fresh sturgeon and ham-pie 
 Are no rewards for want and infamy ? 
 When luxury has licked up all thy pelf. 
 Cursed be thy neighbors, thy trustees, thyself: 
 To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame ; 
 Think how posterity will treat thy name, 
 And buy a rope, that future times may tell 
 Thou hast at least bestowed one penny well. 
 ' Right,' cries his lordship ; ' for a rogue in need 
 To have a taste is insolence indeed ; 
 In me 'tis noble, suits my birth and state, — 
 My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.' " 
 
 He concludes very well : 
 
 " What's property, dear Swift ? you see it alter 
 
 From you to me, from me to Peter Walter: 
 
 Or, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer's share ; 
 
 Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir ; 
 
 Or, in pure equity (the case not clear), 
 
 The chancery takes your rents for twenty year : 
 
 At last it falls to some unworthy son, 
 
 Who cries, ' My father's damned, and all's my own.' 
 
42 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Shades that to Bacon might retreat afford 
 
 Become the portion of a booby lord ; 
 
 And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight. 
 
 Slides to a scrivener or a city knight. — 
 
 Let lands and houses have what lords they will, 
 
 Let us be fixed and our own masters still." 
 
 Juvenal has not been quite so fortunate as his 
 predecessor and countryman ; that is, he has never 
 had such an exquisite and sympathetic representa- 
 tion as Horace owes to Pope. He has been very 
 frequently translated,, but not adequately in his to- 
 tality. Dryden has done five of the Satires ;* and 
 with fine paraphrastic vigor and freedom, giving the 
 spirit and the humor, and sometimes so well, that I 
 must apologize for not reading them. Rome under 
 the Empire was Rome ; and Juvenal was Juvenal : 
 and the relation between these two produced a good 
 deal that was fitter for the taste of 1693 than 1853. 
 Early in this present century Juvenal was translated 
 
 * He did the First, Third, Sixth, Tenth, and Sixteenth ; and the book 
 was published in 1693. Two translations of Juvenal had appeared 
 before his, in our language ; that of Barten Holyday, D.D. archdeacon 
 of Oxford ; and that of Sir Robert Stapylton, knt. Stapylton's was 
 published in 1647, Holyday's in 1673 ; but Holyday's, it appears, was 
 first written. Neither of these works, from their crabbed and old- 
 fashioned style, will ever be read but by the curious. For instance, 
 Holyday translates 
 
 " Quo tondente gravis juveni mihi barba sonabat •" 
 " He whose officious sizzors went snip, snip, 
 As he my troublesome young beard did clip." 
 
 Stapylton is not so quaint as Holyday ; but Holyday's copious commen- 
 tary still retains its value, and testifies to his learning. Holyday was a 
 friend of Ben Jonson's. His Juvenal has some curious illustrations. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 43 
 
 also by "William Gifford, of the Anti-Jacobin and the 
 Quarterly ; and though the Critical Review cut the 
 book up (" reviewing it," says sturdy Gifford, " as the 
 ancients planted basil — with cursing and swearing"), 
 it is a valuable translation.* I have decided, then, to 
 try and give you a taste of the quality of this old 
 master by reading, first, from Dr. Johnson's imitations 
 of him, viz. London and the Vanity of Human 
 Wishes ; and next, from the translation of Gifford. 
 By combining the ideas conveyed, you will see the 
 vigor and philosophical declamation, and also the 
 grim and homely humor of the man, in some degree, 
 at all events. I begin with Dr. Johnson. 
 
 " By numbers here from shame or censure free 
 
 All crimes are safe, but hated poverty : 
 
 This, only this, the rigid law pursues ; 
 
 This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse : 
 
 The sober trader at a tattered cloak 
 
 Wakes from his dream, and labors for a joke ! 
 
 With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, 
 
 And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. 
 
 Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, 
 
 Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest : 
 
 Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart 
 
 Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart." 
 
 This is from London, published in 1738, when the 
 great, wise, and worthy Samuel Johnson was twenty- 
 nine years of age ; and for this London he received 
 
 * Gifford's Juvenal (with his very curious and interesting autobiogra- 
 phical sketch prefixed) was published in 1802. The quotations which 
 follow in the text are taken from the first edition. 
 
44 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 ten guineas — money very welcome to the great man 
 just then. But to proceed : 
 
 " Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace repine, 
 Shall Wolsey's wealth with Wolsey's end be thine ? 
 Or liv'st thou now with safer pride content, 
 The wisest justice on the banks of Trent? 
 For why did Wolsey, near the steeps of fate, 
 On weak foundations raise th' enormous weight 1 
 Why, but to sink beneath misfortune's blow, 
 "With louder ruin to the gulfs below ? 
 What gave great Villiers to the assassin's knife, 
 And fixed disease on Harley's closing life 1 
 What murdered Wentworth, and what exiled Hyde, 
 By kings protected, and to kings allied 1 
 What but the wish indulged, in courts to shine, 
 And *power too great to keep or to resign. " 
 
 One of the finest specimens of Juvenal's rhetorical 
 grandeur in his account of Hannibal in this Tenth 
 Satire. It is the very essence of philosophical me- 
 lancholy — a frame of mind which his age produced in 
 all the better-hearted of the world. A great Roman 
 in those days, who was not a satirist, and did not 
 choose to be patronized by slaves, had no alternative 
 but retirement or (what was often resorted to) suicide. 
 To the true descendants of the conquerors of the world, 
 one of the few things left was to die. 
 
 Johnson finds a good modern parallel in Charles 
 XII., and has these vigorous lines : 
 
 " The march begins in military state, 
 And nations on his eyes suspended wait. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 45 
 
 Stern famine guards the solitary coast, 
 And winter barricades the realms of frost. 
 He comes, nor want nor cold his cause delay ! 
 Hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day ! 
 
 But did not Fate at length her error mend ; 
 Did no subverted empire mark his end ; 
 Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound, 
 Or hostile millions press him to the grouud ? 
 His fall was destined to a narrow strand, 
 A petty fortress and a dubious hand. 
 He left the name, at which the world grew pale, 
 To point a moral, or adorn a tale." 
 
 Among Juvenal's more humorous efforts is the fifth, 
 in which he inveighs amusingly enough against the 
 toady of the period — a certain species of hanger-on of 
 the wealthy, and those who were still called the noble, 
 — who seems to have had hard times of it. Probably 
 there is some exaggeration in his account of the way 
 these unhappy dogs were treated; if not, the days 
 must have been bad indeed for the " diner-out," who, 
 poor fellow — if he consented to sit as a humble 
 trencher-man — at least deserved his share of what was 
 going. But hear Gifford's rendering of the contrary : 
 
 " Before thy patron cups of price are placed, 
 Amber and gold, with rows of beryl graced ; 
 Cups thou canst only at a distance view, 
 And never trusted to such guests as you ! 
 Or if they be, a faithful slave attends 
 To count the gems and watch your fingers' ends. 
 You'll pardon him, but lo ! a jasper there, 
 Which cannot be preserved with too much care. 
 
4G SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 For Virro, like his brother peers of late, 
 Has stripped his fingers to adorn his plate. 
 
 From such he drinks ; — thou drain'st the four-lugged pot, 
 The pipkin of the Beneventine sot ! " 
 
 But, though perhaps a wise caution was here exercised 
 with the cups, why had not the fellow his fair propor- 
 tion of the eatables ? Let us go on. 
 
 •' But, lo ! a lobster introduced in state, 
 Whose ample body stretches o'er the plate,' — 
 With what a length of tail he seems to scorn 
 The wretched guests, as by them proudly borne 
 He passes on, with herbs and pickles crowned, 
 And comes before his master with a bound ! 
 Thou hast a crab, with half an egg prepared, 
 A supper for the dead — in an old shard. 
 
 A lamprey of the largest size, and caught 
 Near howling Scylla, is to Virro brought : 
 To thee they bring an eel, whose slender make 
 Bespeaks a near relation to the snake. 
 
 You champ on spongy toad-stools — hateful treat ! 
 Fearful of poison in each bit you eat : 
 He feeds secure on mushrooms, fine as those ■> 
 Which Claudius erst — imperial glutton — chose 
 To feast on ; till, with one more fine, his wife 
 Ended at once his feasting and his life." i 
 
 He concludes, and most probably you will agree with 
 him, that Virro, after all, fed the sycophant very much 
 according to his merits. 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 47 
 
 So much by way of specimens. I may have par- 
 tially succeeded in showing to you the points of dis- 
 tinction between these famous men : — between the 
 man of the world, who is philosophical and moderate, 
 and the fiery reformer, whose laughter is equally 
 healthy, and whose indignation, however it express 
 itself, is a genuine utterance of emotion. Both of 
 them were of simple tastes and habits, as they have 
 described themselves. Horace, in spite of his great 
 associates, loved at times to trot out on his cropped 
 mule ; to chat with the country folk, and ask the 
 price of oil and grain ; to wander out and see how the 
 busy hum of men was going on in the Forum or the 
 Circus ; to attend at the religious rites in their turn, 
 too, as part of actual life. Home he went after such 
 duties as these, in the soft Italian afternoon, — to the 
 simple meal prepared for him, a salad and macaroni 
 not forgotten, with his little goblets, one of wine and 
 one of water, on a table covered, we may be sure, with 
 a snow-white, though not a splendid cloth ; then came 
 his sleep ; and he rose early, — wandered out, reading 
 and meditating ; and so the day agarh went by. Let 
 lis think of him, when we do think of him, as such a 
 man as this, — as a wise, genial, calm spirit ; yes, and 
 worthy too of something better than the admiration 
 of Augustus, and a tomb by the side of his splendid 
 patron. The world cannot often have heard more 
 cheerful and more charming talk than must have been 
 that of a Horatian party, when the men of genius met 
 by themselves, and Virgil's mild and pure spirit 
 brought with it an atmosphere of healthy peace ; and 
 the tender and amorous Tibullus told them how Delia 
 
48 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 should gather apples for them, if they would come 
 and put themselves under the protection of his long- 
 descended Penates. 
 
 I doubt not that the calm and moderate spirit, 
 which was the basis of Horace, increased in strength, 
 as a characteristic, as he drew near to the fifty- 
 seventh year of his age, which ended him. What 
 is called his nil admirari doctrine was the expression 
 of that temperament. JSTot to wonder! To lookup 
 at the heaven, with its revolving starry glories, and 
 feel that no vulgar fear should be inspired by that 
 spectacle in the wise man ; to have no foolish love of 
 applause or wealth, no contempt of common life, yet 
 no servility to pleasure ; to occupy the firm medium, 
 and defy the blasts of fortune or the threats of fate. 
 This is the position of the Horatian philosopher. 
 He does not dread, and he does not waver ; but 
 neither is he, however, too much given to enthusi- 
 asm, to reverence, or to love. It is as lofty a philo- 
 sophy as a man of the world can get, perhaps, out 
 of life ; it was undoubtedly the most natural one 
 to Horace ; and there seems some strong affinity be- 
 tween it and particular stages of national civilization. 
 — For at this hour a version of it has hordes of dis- 
 ciples in England ; and the Horatian tone of thinking 
 is more consonant to the average mind than the tone 
 which prevailed among our own ancestors in the days 
 of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 Juvenal also appeals to our sympathies, not only 
 as a satirist, but in his private personality, as a quiet 
 and wise old Eoman spirit, who knew the beauty of 
 a simple and genial communion of hospitality, quite 
 
HORACE AND JUVENAL. 49 
 
 different from the " suppers of Nero" and the dinners 
 of Crispinus. His eleventh Satire, in which he asks 
 Persicus to a modest entertainment, promising him a 
 kid innocent still of grass and the willow — a plump 
 kid — but with more milk than blood in him — with no 
 lack of rural delicacies, and a modicum of simple wine 
 — comes in with a strange effect, with a fresh genial 
 influence, like a breath from the old hills of Italy. 
 " You shall hear the verses of the Iliad; and of 
 Virgil," says the old satirist. And why shall we not 
 think of him, too, as a manly, healthy, and lovable 
 man ? He is by no means as polite as Horace ; but 
 his mental vigor is equal to any body's ; and, after 
 all, he had deeper laughter than Horace's, too — some- 
 thing, with its virtues and its vices, more like what 
 we understand by the genuine Roman character. 
 Coarse laughter, fierce jests he has; but with them, 
 quite startling moral aphorisms ; while at times there 
 comes from him a kind of prophetic wail, that touches 
 the heart more than any laughter ; a cry as of the old 
 blood, shed in the cause of the Republic, " crying 
 from the ground ! " The presence of such an element 
 as this stamps the satirist with a moral superiority. 
 From the heart it comes (however the speaker's other 
 inferiorities may qualify it), and all else is compara- 
 tively commonplace beside it. 
 
 t>ut, after all, whom Time has joined, let not 
 Criticism too eagerly " put asunder." In the world's 
 history, these men's spirits have worked together in 
 union, each in its own way. We meet them again 
 and again in the world's history, making their separate 
 protests. "Whenever a base system is falling, the hand- 
 
50 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 writing of both is seen on the wall. Their office was 
 to appeal to the human mind and heart against the 
 evils which time and corruption bring in their train. 
 As long as any human society shall have impostors 
 and rogues triumphant, the shades of these dead old 
 Romans will be found stirring, like hanshees, near 
 them, and prognosticating doom ! 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 EKASMUS, SLR DAVID LINDSAY, AND 
 GKOEGE BUCHANAN. 
 
 It was not to be expected that an event like the 
 Reformation would happen in the world without our 
 friend the Satirist having a hand in it. Whenever 
 great changes and convulsions are at work in human 
 society, — when the king grasps his sword, and the 
 priest his crucifix, and the soldier mounts his horse, — 
 at such times the satirical writer seizes his pen, and 
 contributes his share of exertion to the general move- 
 ment. As the men whom we last dealt with spent 
 their faculties in exposing and delineating, for their 
 times and our own, the corruptions of a state of life 
 existing in a nation which had lost its great moral 
 qualities, — so the men who are now to come before 
 ns devoted their faculties to an analogous and equally 
 important task. The order of things which had 
 supervened on the final corruption of the empire had 
 itself, in its turn, and according to inevitable laws, 
 advanced to a stage when immense changes were 
 necessary. The religious man found that the ma- 
 chinery of his element was become disorganized; and 
 
52 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 the intellectual man, born with those qualities of 
 humor and moral insight which combine to form the 
 great satirist, found that the world was in a condition 
 when they must be employed honestly in the delinea- 
 tion and correction of innumerable base, dangerous, 
 and ridiculous objects around him. Kindly Nature, in 
 her genial abundance, gives every man some use for his 
 faculty. She has not forgotten the humorist — light, 
 warm-hearted, and quick-seeing, — with his shrewd eye 
 and his brilliant laugh. The true satirist listens to the 
 mighty mother, and joyfully obeys her ; he has influ- 
 ence in time, just in proportion as he deserves it ; and 
 long after his death men love his memory, and his 
 image becomes a household god in the sacraria of the 
 nations. 
 
 I shadowed out to you, in the first of these Lectures, 
 the general principles of my design. I wish, in every 
 case, to select, for what exposition I am capable of, 
 men of notable influence. I confined myself in my 
 last to the two Roman satirists who have most 
 contributed to form modern satire ; and I now proceed 
 to their earliest and most distinguished followers, all 
 three of whom were the products of the revival of 
 learning, and more or less represent the influence 
 which the study of the ancient writers produced on 
 the European mind. Erasmus, our first and most 
 influential subject, is well known to have had Horace 
 by heart. "With him I begin, and shall take the 
 liberty to give you a sketch of his biography. His 
 adventures, conversation, and habits of life were the 
 counterpart of that brilliant and versatile mind, and 
 that interesting and curious character, which together 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 53 
 
 perhaps exercised as much influence on Europe as it 
 has ever been the lot of a man of letters to do. 
 
 In the latter half of the fifteenth century, one 
 Gerard, of the town of Tergou, within the boundaries 
 of the Germanic empire, was enslaved by the attrac 
 tions of Margaret, the daughter of Peter, a physician 
 of Sevenbergen. Gerard was a lively and genial man, 
 as we are told ; and this was undoubtedly the opinion of 
 Peter the physician's daughter ! Gerard wooed her, 
 promised to wed her, and she believed him. Poor 
 Margaret, indeed, believed him only too implicitly, — 
 and the result was, that in the neighboring city of 
 Rotterdam she gave birth one day to Erasmus.* 
 Gerard the genial had occasion, it seems, to be at 
 Rome. He was bound homewards, however, to fulfil 
 his promise, when his relations wrote to him that 
 Margaret was dead. Struck with shame and repent- 
 ance, he rushed into priest's orders ; and when he came 
 again to Holland, found that he had raised an impass- 
 able barrier to matrimony for ever. They lived apart ; 
 and when the boy was about twelve years old, they 
 both died in quick succession, leaving (as a kind of 
 compensation to Europe for the laws they had broken) 
 this fair-haired grey-eyed boy — destined to be the head 
 of the republic of letters in the sixteenth century. His 
 birth has been commonly assigned to the year 1467 ; but 
 Mr. Hallam prefers 1465 ; and I am sure we shall all 
 
 * There is no doubt that Erasmus was one of the great men of the 
 bend sinister -, and unfortunately he was the second offspring of Gerard 
 and Margaret's affection. But there seems no reason to doubt, also, 
 that the case admits of the palliations given in the text. See Bayle, art 
 Erasmc ; and de Burigni, Vie d'Erasme. 
 
54 SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 be willing to accept that date on the authority of 
 Mr. Hallam* 
 
 The fair-haired boy — for his hair in his boyhood 
 was almost yellow — went to school at Daventer, learn- 
 ing all that was to be got at quickly enough, — as 
 much Latin as the grammars of the day would permit, 
 with a due share of the logic-chopping of the time. 
 He was for a while a chorister in the Cathedral of 
 Utrecht. As he grew up, it became a question to 
 what special pursuit this youth of promise should be 
 devoted. He was an eager, quick, passionate student, 
 and soon assumed a distinct individuality even in 
 name, calling himself "Erasmus," after the Greek 
 synonym of his patronymic — a common fashion among 
 contemporary scholars. 
 
 The relations took council. It seems to have been 
 a kind of custom then to devote youngsters to what 
 was called a " religious " life, shutting them up in 
 " religious" (so called) houses, and somehow smuggling 
 away their patrimony ; — thus, you may say, ruining 
 them body and soul, both. They drove poor Erasmus 
 into a friars' establishment. His weak sensitive body 
 could not bear fast-days or austerities ; his fine sensi- 
 tive spirit could as ill bear ignorance, gluttony, or 
 hypocrisy. He was rebellious and unhappy : he 
 fluttered and struggled against the wretched old iron 
 bars of his Gothic cage; he, the light-seeking, the 
 high-aspiring, — what could he be but unhappy ! That 
 head, which Nature had destined to wear a nimbus, 
 
 * Lit. of Europe, vol. i. note to p. 285. The truth is, that in two 
 letters (Epist. 200 and 207) written in 1516, he speaks of himself as 
 having entered his fiftieth year. 
 
EEASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 55 
 
 was put under a cowl, — which was then as good as an 
 extinguisher on a candle of mind. And so poor 
 Erasmus languished. He was pining for the waters 
 of Castaly — the blessed fountain of knowledge — the 
 green groves of Academe : they shut him up inside 
 huge prison-walls; and to satisfy his mind's thirst, 
 they gave him muddy old logical and theological ponds 
 to drink of, foul in taste and smell, covered at the 
 surface with weeds old and new ; and by no means 
 free from dead dogs and other abominations.* 
 
 We must never forget, in estimating the character 
 of Erasmus, this coercion in his youth. We never 
 can know of him, more than of dozens of other men, 
 what a happier and more natural development would 
 have made of him. But we must take circumstances 
 into account. The bent of his nature was not towards 
 the priestly life in the days in which it pleased fortune 
 to place him. But circumstances were too strong for 
 him. He became regular canon, he became priest, 
 being ordained by the Bishop of Utrecht at the age of 
 twenty-five. He can only be looked on as a victim to 
 this system. He had no vocation for it ; it was not 
 his place. He was a scholar, a man of letters, a humor- 
 ist by mind and by character ; and no wonder that his 
 career was anomalous, and his position frequently dubi- 
 ous in consequence. I am not going to set up Eras- 
 mus as a very lofty kind of man before you. He is 
 
 * " Fools and blockheads are generally thrust into these places," says 
 Erasmus (Epistle to Grunnius). " If any finer intellect arises amongst 
 them, he is kept down. There are prolonged potations daily, mm sine 
 pudicitia pericuh," &c. He afterwards obtained a dispensation from 
 wearing the monastic habit, and so forth. 
 
56 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 not one whom you feel any disposition to worship. I 
 make my bow to him, and do him honor ; but I do not 
 stand uncovered, or impressed with any reverential awe 
 before him. Only we must appreciate and love him 
 too. We must remember that he was luminous, genial, 
 generous, brotherly. Let us begin, then, by pitying 
 him, in so far as he deserves our pity. When the hea- 
 thens bring a calf to the altar, I feel no strong com- 
 passion ; but what should we think if we heard of 
 their seizing the fiery-hearted horse of Arabia, and 
 robbing the world of his beauty and his power ? 
 
 Good old mother Nature, however, is not easy to 
 beat. The old dame loves her boys, and treats her 
 brilliant darlings fairly enough. Erasmus's head 
 might be tonsured, but that operation was performed 
 on the outside of it. He remained in fact, in purpose, 
 and in influence, a scholar, a literary man. It is curi- 
 ous to read and observe how shy he fought of preferment 
 in his nominal profession. Give him money, if you 
 like : he will take a little money ; for the scholar must 
 dine as well as the dunce ; you cannot make soup of 
 laurels: — yes, he will take a little money ; also a jar 
 of wine, if you choose (not sweet wine, for his constitu- 
 tion is delicate, and it does not agree with him), but 
 sound, fine wine, — giving the preference to Burgundy, 
 if you happen to have any of that. All he wants is to 
 support life decently, while he writes his books, edits 
 his Greek Testament, his St. Jerome, collects and dis- 
 courses on Proverbs, or gives a free loose to his humor- 
 ous heart, and lashes beggarly and ignorant monks. 
 He does not want a living ; he would rather have a pen- 
 sion — a smaller pension even. Literature is his voca- 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 57 
 
 tion. They talked once of making him a bishop ; " at 
 which," say the biographers, "he laughed." Of 
 course he did ; and it is very easy to purse-up one's 
 mouth into an ugly state of orthodox expression, and 
 talk of his levity. But it was far better that he should 
 have laughed, and steered clear of ecclesiastical pre- 
 ferment, than that he should have crushed the natural 
 man in him, and temporized, and been hypocritical ! 
 better be a good humorist than a bad bishop ! Eras- 
 mus is open to censure for failings and weaknesses, 
 like mankind (clerical and laic) ; but it is quite im- 
 possible to deny, that in his relation to the Church he 
 showed much intellectual honesty and personal self- 
 denial. 
 
 In his career as a man of letters he had a hard and 
 strange life of it for many years ; and in informing 
 oneself of the particulars, one meets innumerable 
 causes for surprise, and opportunities of musing on the 
 changed condition of Europe ! How far off lie those 
 days, though only some three hundred and fifty years 
 have passed away since he looked out from the garden 
 of Sir Thomas More's house at Chelsea, and saw the old 
 Thames flowing away beneath him ! He was first in 
 London when about thirty-two years of age, having 
 come from Paris, where he had been reading with 
 pupils, acting as tutor to Lord Mountjoy, living at 
 times in the castle of a great lady in the Low Countries. 
 The life of a scholar in those days was a strange affair. 
 Just as the minstrel of an earlier day had done, he 
 wandered about, bringing with him knowledge as his 
 music ; asking little of the world but moderate pay, 
 bread and meat, in exchange for Latin and Greek, for 
 
 :->•■ 
 
58 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 wisdom and wit. You trace Erasmus from spot to 
 spot ; — as in a dark-lantern hunt at school, one got a 
 glimpse of the boy with the lantern, by the occasional 
 flash he threw out. He is in France, Germany, Eng- 
 land,— always a little spot of light in places of dark- 
 ness, superstition, ignorance, violence. But consider 
 how his knowledge was acquired too ; how different 
 was the task of being a scholar then than in our day, 
 with its grand apparatus of books, maps, globes ; and an 
 intellectual machinery so perfect, that you can turn 
 out moderate literati as copiously as they make pins, 
 getting a few yards of ordinary wire, and working 
 them up, heads and all, in comparatively no time ! 
 To be a great author remains as difficult as ever ; but 
 in the days of Erasmus, you could hardly be a man of 
 attainments without being a man of genius. The first 
 editions of the Classics, works which now are the 
 curiosities of libraries (and I believe fetch large sums, 
 particularly if you can get a copy with the leaves un- 
 cut, which is a bijou), were slowly crawling out from 
 the presses of Yenice, Florence, and farther north 
 sometimes, in Erasmus's younger days. He says once, 
 in a letter, that " if he could get some money, he would 
 buy first Greek books, and then clothes." There were 
 about three men at Oxford capable of teaching Greek 
 at that time. The great scholars in fact taught them- 
 selves,* and by huge personal exertions. It was a 
 time of grand energy and indomitable enthusiasm. 
 Europe began to learn, as, centuries before, she had 
 fought, with a heroism that was demoniac. Erasmus, 
 
 * " Prorsus fui autodidactos" — he says, himself. 
 
ERASMUS, SIR X>. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 59 
 
 Budseus, and those who followed these great leaders, 
 were the Vikings of literature. They embarked on 
 the sea of knowledge with hearts as daring as those 
 with which our forefathers long before had spread 
 their sails on the Baltic and the German Oceans ! * 
 
 Our authority for describing Erasmus's life and 
 ways is very good, — a bulky collection of his letters. 
 These are the main sources of his biography, which 
 has been written copiously, though never very well.f 
 His letters bear out what we hear of him, — that he 
 was a fine, free, genial spirit, open-tongued and open- 
 hearted ; and it is from them that we learn the strange 
 ways in which he replenished his exchequer, and the 
 odd adventures, which give to his studious career, — 
 to the career of a great scholar, an editor of Fathers, 
 and a chief of the republic of letters,- — a flavor of 
 gipsy-like eccentricity, which, in our respectable and 
 somewhat dull days, seems romantic and exciting. 
 
 I have said that he was over thirty years old when 
 he first came to England ; and on that occasion he 
 
 * " On the very day of his wedding, he (Budaeus) withdrew from the 
 company at least three hours, to spend them with his hooks,'' says 
 Bayle. 
 
 t I know of no biography of Erasmus which can be called a work of 
 art. We have three English "Lives '' of him : Samuel Knight's, 1726 
 (chiefly relating to his connection with this country), Jortin's, and 
 Charles Butler's. Of these, Jortin's is far the most important. It was 
 published in two quartos in 1758 and 1760, and " takes as a ground- 
 work " the previous biography by Le Clerc, being based, like it, on the 
 Letters. It is arranged in the form of annals ; and from its mass of in- 
 formation, and its excellent spirit, is of the highest value. But it is not 
 a biography, in the sense in which the Agricola is a biography. The 
 Vie d'Erasme by de Burigni (Paris, 1757, 2 vols.) is also to be recom- 
 mended to those interested in Erasmus's career. 
 
60 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 made his first acquaintance with our famous More. 
 The good old literary story goes, that they met at 
 dinner, unknown to each other'; and that, having had 
 a brisk discussion, Erasmus exclaimed, " Either More, 
 or goodness-knows-who ! " — More rejoining, " Aut 
 Erasmus, aut Diabolus." These two worthies were 
 always good friends. Together, at the time of this 
 first English visit, they studied at Oxford, under 
 G-rocyn and Linacer. Erasmus was now preparing 
 his Adagies (an evidence of his vast reading) ; but he 
 was always poor, always looking out for somebody 
 who would learn himself, or honor learning, and glad 
 enough to get a pension of one hundred crowns per 
 annum from Blount,* Lord Montjoy. " Money, 
 money ; learning, learning ! " they were ill-matched 
 associates. He was bent on going to Italy, to get a 
 doctor's degree ; but that necessitated a horse, — and 
 any horse, except our mythical friend Pegasus, was 
 not so easy to get. Among his patrons in those days 
 was the Marchioness of Vere ;f and there exists a 
 letter, wherein Erasmus urges his friend Battus to go 
 and dun her ladyship, and fairly stimulate that right 
 honorable dame into doing something. 
 
 " You must go to her," says he, " and excuse my 
 shyness to her, on the ground that I cannot tolerate 
 
 * "William Blount, Lord Montjoy, of a well-known old English family. 
 '' This lord," says Jortin, " writes Latin much better than some famous 
 doctors." Vol. i. p. 32. 
 
 t So the title is Anglicized. She was daughter of Wolsard do 
 Borselle, Marshal of France, and widow of Philip, son of Antony of 
 Burgundy, a natural son of Philip of Burgundy. She brought her 
 husband en dot the seigneurie of Weere, in the Isle of Walcheren in 
 Yeeland. So Burigni. 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN". 61 
 
 explaining my difficulties in person. You must tell 
 her the need I am in ; that Italy is the proper place 
 to get a doctor's degree, and that Italy cannot be 
 visited by a delicate man without a great deal of 
 money ; and that it is impossible for me to think of 
 living shabbily there. Explain to her how much more 
 honor I am likely to do her than those theologians she 
 keeps about her : for they give forth mere common- 
 places ; I write what will live for ever. Tell her that 
 fellows like them are to be met everywhere ; while 
 the like of me only appears in the course of many 
 ages; that is to say," adds he, humorously, "if you 
 don't mind drawing the long-bow in the cause of 
 friendship. What a discredit it would be to her, 
 should St. Jerome appear discreditably for the want 
 of a few gold pieces ! "* 
 
 A chief of the republic of letters, stimulating a 
 worthy lady in this style, — at the age of forty-one 
 sleeping two in a bed with a brother philologer, and 
 so forth, — is a strange spectacle to us. It is strange 
 to see him paying in dedications, and remunerating in 
 advice. But if any member of the said republic in 
 our days (who, perhaps makes a hundred times 
 Erasmus's income, with only a hundredth part of his 
 faculty and his scholarship) imagines for an instant 
 that such conduct implies that Erasmus was not quite 
 as honorable and worthy a man as himself, he commits 
 an absurd error. If he even remorselessly asserts that 
 the state of things was wholly false, he is in an equally 
 mistaken state of mind. Yarious notable deductions 
 
 * Ep. 92, written a. d. 1500. Battuswas a faithful friend. " I know 
 your old way of telling fibs in my favor," Erasmus adds. 
 
62 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 may be made from this condition, and from the 
 changes it underwent ; and it is quite easy to show, 
 that what Erasmus did, in those days, when it was a 
 natural thing so to act, is not to be tried by the 
 standard of a quite different state of society. The 
 noble was then different from our noble ; the man of 
 letters was other than our man of letters. The noble 
 was a far greater potentate, to begin with. Then, 
 again, the social world was more stringently and more 
 intelligibly divided. You were noble, or you were a 
 man of letters ; you were gentilhomme, or not gentil- 
 homme. Erasmus would no more have thought of 
 writing himself down " gentleman " than he would 
 have thought of calling himself a pasha. He was 
 Erasmus of Rotterdam: a man of learning, — he 
 planted himself on that brave assumption, and looked 
 the world in the face from his own point of view. 
 There was no " reading public ; " but there was a body 
 of leaders of Europe occupying its high places, and to 
 them learning could naturally and justly appeal for 
 its recognition ; as to them, Courage in the ages before 
 had appealed for its knight's spurs, and Piety for its 
 monastic foundations. Things are often not quite so 
 bad as they look. When a king or prince wrote to 
 Erasmus, sent him a goblet or a clock, it was an honor, 
 in a sense in which no king's gift would be one in our 
 day. And further, it is by no means sure that the 
 man of letters was not then more widely divided from 
 the household fool than he has been known to be in 
 what are called enlightened periods. Erasmus was a 
 guest and dear friend of Sir Thomas More's, and 
 occupied a different position in that family circle from 
 
ERASMUS, Silt D. LIXDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 63 
 
 Harry Patenson, the Chancellor's fool, whose figure 
 may be seen significantly standing in the back-ground, 
 in the picture of that noble group by Holbein. Let, 
 us remember, that the accepting gifts entirely depends 
 on the relation between giver and taker. While the 
 noble was the natural giver, the taker was by no 
 means necessarily as mean as such an act would make 
 him in our time. Any one can illustrate the differ- 
 ence, by reflecting that he would cheerfully accept a 
 " tip " from his grandfather ; whereas he would 
 probably knock a stranger down for offering the same 
 pecuniary compliment. 
 
 Erasmus, one is glad to know, did achieve the visit 
 to Italy, and the doctor's degree. They received him, 
 a cardinal in particular, courteously enough. But by 
 this time Henry VIH. had come to the throne (in 
 1509), and he was summoned to London. The court- 
 eous cardinal came down with a gift; our faithful 
 Blount, Lord Montjoy, added one ; and Erasmus be- 
 gan the journey on horseback. Cannot one fancy a 
 tranquil cob trotting along Alpine defiles, and through 
 Southern vineyards, with the scholar on his back, ■ a 
 middle-sized man, with fair complexion and gray 
 eyes, a good-natured intellectual face, musing over his 
 Encomium, Morice, or Praise of Folly, which is to be 
 written when he arrives in London? "When he did 
 arrive, his friend More entertained him, hospitable 
 and intelligent as ever, — and at the Encomium he 
 went, Latin flowing from him like a mother's tongue, 
 as, indeed, it had become to him.* He talked in 
 
 * It is certain that Erasmus did not employ in his style that scrupu- 
 
6± SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 it, wrote in it, lived in it, as a natural element, and 
 never seems to have learned English, or Italian, or 
 French. The subject of this his first strictly satirical 
 book is purely humorous. Folly harangues the reader 
 to prove her superiority to Wisdom. " See you not," 
 says she, " that those who apply themselves to the study 
 of philosophy, or to arduous business, get old in their 
 very youth? whereas the fool is fat, neat, and com- 
 fortable, and will never feel any inconvenience of old 
 age, unless the contagion of some wise man spoil him." 
 He carries out the idea to the utmost ; and shows how 
 folly is needful to sweeten life every where. Of 
 course, the satiric applications are innumerable ; and 
 the religious orders come in for their ample share. 
 "We hear of those " who erect a wax-candle to the 
 Virgin, but do not emulate her in modesty and good- 
 ness. If there is any trouble to be undertaken, they 
 leave it to Peter and Paul, who have plenty of leisure. 
 The splendor and pleasure they take to themselves." 
 The influence of this book was immense, as its circu- 
 lation was. And, indeed, he has anticipated almost 
 all the Satire of Europe. He was the fountain of 
 Liberalism in the true sense. He disseminated every- 
 where, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, that 
 spirit of practical sense, seasoned with genial plea- 
 
 lous purity which is found in the works of the Ciceronians of his age : 
 but the difference between him and them is, that their works, full of 
 harmonious phrases, teach almost nothing ; while his, full of useful 
 and agreeable matter and learned observations, are read and re-read with 
 pleasure and profit. Although his style is not of the highest perfection, 
 it is far above mediocrity ; and it has merited the esteem of two men of 
 his age the best fitted to judge, Sadolet and Bembo." Burigni Vie 
 d'Erasme, vol. ii. p. 489. 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 65 
 
 santry, which has heen an element in every " reform"* 
 from that time downwards ; which abolished what 
 was outworn in old feudal and mediaeval influences ; 
 washed away pilgrimage when pilgrimage had be- 
 come mere routine ; modified old feudal funerals, 
 and the huge early ceremonialism of European life- 
 excessive pride of pedigree — false glory in mere war. 
 When the street-boys laugh at the beadle, little as 
 they know of Erasmus, they are working in his spirit. 
 Goldstick ought to tremble at his name ; and nothing 
 but a dense skin prevents many a high official, per- 
 forming mummeries and antique capers, of which the 
 meaning has long since disappeared, from starting at 
 the thought of his ghost. 
 
 It was just about this time that he visited Canter- 
 bury Cathedral ;f and there saw the shoe of Thomas 
 a Becket, all glittering with jewels, exposed to the 
 devout pilgrim for kissing. He made good use of 
 this sort of spectacle, — " For," says he, " we kiss the 
 old shoes and dirty handkerchiefs of the saints ; and 
 we neglect their books, which are the more holy and 
 valuable relics. We lock up their shirts and clothes 
 
 * Need I say that " reform" is not used here in its technical political 
 meaning 1 
 
 t Knight's Erasmus (Jortin, vol. i, p. 36.) There is an account of 
 what he saw in the cathedral, in the Peregrinatio Religionis ergo in the 
 Colloquia. " You would have said," says the interlocutor in the dia- 
 logue, " that Midas and Crcesus were beggars, if you had seen the gold 
 and silver there. I sighed that there were no such relics in my own 
 house !" This is his jaunty manner ; and soon afterwards he goes on 
 to inquire whether St. Thomas would not be better honored by gifts to 
 the poor, than in the way now adopted. However light the tone, the 
 matter is always sensible, and the ssntiment good. 
 
66 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 in cabinets adorned with jewels — but leave their 
 writings to mouldiness and vermin." Very just, very 
 true, we must admit. Let us welcome wisdom in any 
 form. But here another remark must, in justice, be 
 made. Erasmus seems to have kissed the old shoe 
 himself, while he ridiculed the . practice ! That is 
 what I do' not like in him ; and, unhappily, that act 
 has a significance which is the key to much else in 
 his career. Don't kiss the shoe, and laugh at it too ! 
 I say : — Luther would not have done that ! 
 
 It was likewise just then that he taught Greek at 
 Cambridge. That was not a very profitable task in 
 those days, particularly if the plague was flying 
 about, which was the case at that time. But he was 
 not a man who was greedy for money ; whether he 
 asked it, or taught for it, he never wanted it or cared 
 for it, except for the unavoidable necessity of keeping 
 himself alive to do his work. We have various of his 
 letters in those Cambridge days, when he was a mid- 
 dle-aged man, of very great reputation, and very ill 
 off. A friend sends him a jar of wine by the Cam- 
 bridge carrier; and receives the last one, empty, 
 back. He finds it difficult to get a class. He com- 
 -plains that the king, Harry VIH., is always hunting ; 
 and there's no getting at him. A friend, who had 
 promised him a horse, was out of the way when he 
 sent to him about it, — " and so," he says, " that fish 
 escaped." He does not like the Cambridge beer. He 
 does not like sweet wine. Every now and then he 
 runs up to town, and tells his correspondent to get a 
 place for him—" a nest well sheltered from the wind, 
 and a bright fire," is all he requires. He would like to 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 67 
 
 know when his " Maecenas," Montjoy, would be back : 
 there — there was always a home for him ; only when 
 the master is out of town, the confounded steward 
 (whom he calls Cerberus) makes it impossible for him 
 to go there ! More's is a hospitable mansion ; but he 
 is delicately afraid that More's worthy dame may con- 
 sider so constant a guest as he is, somewhat of a bore.* 
 
 Such is the tenor of these epistles. It is impossible 
 to get on familiar terms with Erasmus without loving 
 and admiring that genial cheerful spirit, which over- 
 flows, in poverty and ill-health, with perpetual wit 
 and good nature. Nothing damped that fine mind 
 and courageous spirit of his. He went on ever with 
 his studies ; edited Latin Fathers ; wrote moral and 
 religious treatises ; and performed a splendid service 
 to Europe by publishing the first edition of the Greek 
 Testament. 
 
 But not so much either his moral or theological 
 works influenced mankind, and have preserved his 
 name, as that Erasmian element of shrewdness and 
 gaiety which characterized the Encomium and the 
 charming Colloquies, and which played over every 
 thing he wrote. He lashed the monks, who then 
 swarmed in Europe, with a never-failing activity; 
 and by the time he had gained his fame, he had 
 hordes of enemies in every order in Christendom. 
 They abused his life and writings, even when they 
 
 * But he loved the English, in spite of his narrow means here : 
 " This I can truly affirm," he says, " that there is no country which 
 altogether has produced me so many friends, so sincere, so learned, so 
 kindly, so splendid, so adorned with every sort of virtues, as that one 
 city of London." Epist. 114 (a. d. 1506). 
 
68 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 were ignorant equally of his person and of Latin; 
 and so strong was the effect they produced, that for 
 a long time in Europe there prevailed a notion that 
 to be a lettered man was to be hostile to religion. 
 Casaubon, writing sixty years after Erasmus's death, 
 complains of this idiotic superstition.* It was an 
 artful trick, this - of the monks — this depreciation of 
 learning ; for of course they well knew, that igno- 
 rance once fairly established as a merit, their own su- 
 periority was undoubted ! 
 
 How strong was the feeling of the importance of 
 Erasmus's treatment of the abuses of the Church, we 
 know from a saying which became current early in 
 the times of the Reformation. " Erasmus laid the 
 egg," they said, "and Luther hatched it." He was 
 advanced in life, and at the height of his fame, when 
 Luther's work began. This was the trying time for 
 Erasmus. He was at the head of the men of letters ; 
 he had made himself known far and wide as a foe to 
 abuses ; and the reformers looked to him as a natural 
 ally. On the other hand, he was a priest : he had 
 never done any thing to dissever himself from his 
 formal position as a member of the Church ;f and he 
 dutifully got a dispensation from the Pope, allowing 
 him meat on fast-days, as he could not tolerate fish. 
 (" His stomach was Lutheran," he used to say.) 
 " What part would Erasmus take ? " people asked. — 
 "What will Erasmus do?" — Every body made the 
 
 * In the preface to his Treatise on the ancient Satire, mentioned in 
 Lecture First. 
 
 t Thus, in 1521, he applied for a brief to be allowed to read Luther's 
 works. 
 
ERASMUS, SIB D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 69 
 
 inquiry : the one man whose business it was to answer 
 it was the very person who did not know what to say. 
 
 Erasmus would have liked to stand aloof from it 
 altogether. As a tranquil literary man, fond of his 
 books, fast advancing on the wrong side of fifty, and, 
 I am sorry to say, subject to premonitory touches of 
 the gout, it was a terrible business for him. Any 
 thing like Luther's spiritual depth, of course, he did 
 not share, more than he shared the sordid character 
 of those who would have burned Luther. He was 
 more like Cicero than Luther. His soul did not dwell 
 among the fiery splendors of Luther's spiritual at- 
 mosphere ; but in a mild, healthy, classic region of 
 good sense and cheerfulness. He had a genial con- 
 tempt for bigots and ignoramuses. Would destiny 
 but leave him alone, to live at Basle, to edit the De 
 Officiis or the Tusculdn Questions, to superintend the 
 printing of a huge Father by his worthy friend Fro- 
 benius, to exchange letters with Budaeus, to keep a 
 sharp eye on his pensions, and to enjoy (moderately, 
 however) that Burgundy, which is so much better for 
 one's constitution than your mere " sweet wine ! " 
 Destiny was not so kind to the scholar. She said, 
 " Come, you are of the wise heads of the world. 
 What is your oracle in this great crisis ? " People of 
 the highest rank consulted that head ; but when they 
 wanted an oracle, they could only get a ion-mot. 
 
 It is with a feeling of melancholy, not unmingled 
 with a sensation of humor, that one reads the narrative 
 of Erasmus's conduct in this last period of his career. 
 I don't think it takes away your affection for the man, 
 though you are bound to admit that there are much 
 
70 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 higher men than he. But of those who assail him 
 unscrupulously, not the tenth part have ever done a 
 tenth of the good in the world that was done, after all, 
 by our somewhat worldly friend. He did not join the 
 Reformers. Nature had not made him a reformer. 
 The Lutheran idea of faith was quite alien from his 
 character. His light was not spiritual, but scientific ; 
 and we must remember, that though he stayed in the 
 Church, he was not in his own conduct a part of her 
 abuses. Indeed, that said light of intellect was to 
 him, within his Church, a Davy's Safety-lamp ; he 
 carried it safely through all sorts of foul atmosphere, 
 doing his work without explosions, and deserving 
 credit for what work he did. 
 
 It was undoubtedly as a satirist of humor that his 
 main influence was achieved; though of course all 
 credit is to be given him for his other and general 
 labors of scholarship, huge as they are. "We have 
 many specimens of the sharp rays of witty light he 
 threw out aslant the clouds in those troublous and 
 stormy times. 
 
 — The Elector Frederic sent for him at Cologne, 
 just after Charles Y. had been made emperor, wanting 
 his opinion on the Lutheran question. He hesitated, 
 and was pressed. " Luther," said he, " has done two 
 things: he has attacked the Pope's crown and the 
 monks' bellies." They pressed him often to answer 
 Luther. He was Wont to decline this job, with a good 
 deal of quiet significance ; a certain smile lurking 
 beneath it, such as I fancy I can see under his face in 
 Holbein's portrait. " Had not read him ; " " Not 
 equal to the task ; " " Won't deprive the Universities 
 
ERASMUS, SIB D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 71 
 
 of the honor ; " and so forth. His friend Henkel had 
 refused a bishopric. " He hath his reasons, I suppose," 
 quoth Erasmus ; " but as times go, it is better to be a 
 hog-driver than a hog." " Nothing can be more easy 
 than to call Luther a blockhead," is one of his sayings •, 
 " and nothing more difficult than to prove it." When 
 the mob were destroying the images, he remarked, 
 " that now was the time for them to work miracles ; 
 they had done plenty when there was no particular 
 occasion." "When Lather took the decided step of 
 marrying his Catherine, whom he loved heartily 
 (indeed put on a level with his Commentary on 
 Gralatians), there arose a cry from the pope's party, 
 that now Antichrist might be expected ; for there had 
 long been a tradition that he would be the offspring 
 of a monk and a nun. " If that be so," says Erasmus, 
 " he must have appeared already a good many times." 
 The old humorist sat at Basle in those days, working 
 at his books, and shooting out occasionally sun-arrows 
 of this sort, which desolated the black ranks of the 
 bigots ; but any decided step he would not take. 
 Accordingly he pleased neither party. The monks 
 railed at him ; the Reformers distrusted and abused 
 him : he gave the final blow to Luther's good opinion 
 of him by his controversial work on Free-will ; and 
 Luther's Table-Talk gives evidence enough of the 
 intense dissatisfaction of the great Reformer, who 
 expresses himself (the homely thunder-god that he is) 
 about his conduct with his usual freedom. Like the 
 rest of men, I fancy our humorist found life's evening 
 tinged with melancholy from this and other causes. 
 "If these men," (the monks), said he, "triumph, 
 
72 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 nothing will remain but to write the epitaph of Jesus 
 Christ." He always spoke of the Keformation as 
 " the tragedy ; " saying " that it all arose from the 
 hatred of the monks to literature." This was all he 
 saw in it, and he thought Luther had been too violent ; 
 while, on the other hand, Sir Thomas More thought 
 Erasmus himself too violent. And Erasmus had 
 the pain of hearing that Sir Thomas had died in 
 the way we all remember, by the headsman's axe. 
 Sir Thomas More was fifteen years his junior, and 
 they had been friends through life. It was Erasmus 
 who sent Holbein over to England with his portrait 
 to Sir Thomas, who kept him in his house at Chelsea 
 for two years, and employed him to paint a portrait 
 of the family, which he sent by him to Erasmus, who 
 acknowledged it in a letter, still extant, to Margaret 
 the daughter, who married " son Roper," Sir Thomas's 
 biographer. " I recognized them all," says he, " at 
 once," addressing that learned and pious lady ; " but 
 none more readily than you. I seemed to myself to 
 see the beautiful mind shining through the beautiful 
 body ; " and he desires his love and honor to her 
 mother, whose "image he had respectfully kissed." 
 A kindly warm-hearted man; not unworthy of the 
 affection of that holy and peaceful household ! 
 
 As age grew upon him, and as a set-off to troubles 
 public and private, he had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that his fame was fairly established. "Whenever he 
 visited a town, the authorities presented him with 
 wine, which I hope was his favorite Burgundy.* 
 
 * Honors were paid to him on these occasions, as to the potentates 
 of the world. When he left Basle, to reside at Friburg for some years 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 73 
 
 The gout plagued him sadly ; but he bore up very 
 cheerfully. In 1532 he sent a one-eyed copyist of his 
 (whom he nicknamed Polyphemus) to collect free-will 
 offerings ; in fact, to make a haul from the various 
 potentates of Europe for the famous Erasmus. The- 
 money came readily enough ; or if not, came cups, 
 clocks, rings, shells, or other complimentary gifts. 
 When he died, they found his bureau full of letters 
 from great kings and lords ; and a large collection of 
 elegant ornaments, many of pure gold. He made a 
 will ; and left money to be spent in dowering portion- 
 less girls, and teaching poor boys, — two good charitable 
 objects. His death took place at Basle on the 12th 
 July, 1536, when he was over seventy years old. 
 
 His anomalous position ; the inharmonious union 
 in him of priest and man of letters ; official of tradi- 
 tion and reformer of thought; of the ecclesiastical 
 status and the humorist's sympathies, — all this has 
 affected his reputation, and made his name a dubious 
 one. Sometimes they fight for him : and one claims 
 him for Luther, and one for the Pope, who, God 
 knows, has most need of him ! But if we look 
 sympathetically at the man, and at the known effect 
 of his works, it will be clear enough that his real 
 intellectual and moral position was that of a man of 
 letters, while his predominant quality as a writer was 
 his peculiar humor. He was officially a priest, we all 
 know ; but by seizing a sheep, and marking P on it, 
 you don't make it the less mutton. The orthodox laid 
 
 (he returned to Basle again, and died there), many people accompanied 
 his horse, and* some shed- tears. He had letters and presents from all 
 quarters, even from the highest quarters, frequently. 
 
 4 
 
74 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 hold of him in his youth, and did what they liked with 
 him. It was of little service in the long-run. " You 
 have Drought the wrong bird into your old nest, here, 
 my worthy Church," Nature might have said: "he 
 is too young yet to develop : but, behold ! his plumage 
 is growing ; his throat is strengthening ; he is feeling 
 his instincts. This is not a magpie to fetch small 
 pilferings to you : this is a sky-lark ; and when the 
 morning light dawns on him, he will soar up into it, 
 and startle the world with his song ! " 
 
 The Encomium* the Oolloquia, and the Cioero- 
 nianus (the last an amusing little treatise, levelled at 
 certain Italian, scholars, who were servilely attached 
 to Ciceronian expression and wordsf), are choice 
 specimens of the Erasmian vein. The base of his style 
 (as of his character) is worldly good sense :% so he has 
 (as I remarked of Horace) quite a modern tone. If 
 it were not for the learning and the wit, you might 
 sometimes think you were reading a cheap radical 
 newspaper of our own period ! He and his friend Sir 
 Thomas More, who had a great intellectual likeness 
 
 * The bulk of his writings is theological ; and on these, theologians, 
 of course, must be left to pronounce. Our business here is with 
 Erasmus the humorist, and, as far as we may venture to say that we 
 know him, with Erasmus the man. 
 
 t See Bayle, art. Bembo, for some curious illustrations of this contro- 
 versy. Some Italian ecclesiastics complained that reading St. Paul 
 spoiled one's style ! 
 
 X " He was," Mr. Hallam says, " the first conspicuous enemy of 
 ignorance and superstition, the first restorer of Christian morality on a 
 scriptural foundation.'' {Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 352, and see also, i. 
 349.) — Joseph Scaliger relates that his father saw his folly in having 
 written against him, and that he was " un grand personnage." 
 (Scaligeriana.) 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 75 
 
 (though Sir Thomas's mind was more devotional than 
 his), anticipated many of those "reforms" on which 
 one occasionally hears people congratulating them- 
 selves, as if they had been first discovered by us, and 
 our ancestors had been mere barbarians. They knew 
 that foolish wars were the most foolish of all things ; 
 that punishments were too severe ; and that much 
 might be said against the punishment of death. I 
 was glad to find the other day that our harmless friends 
 of the Peace-Society had been looking up Erasmus. 
 His spirit, in fact, was essentially that of a reformer, 
 in the best sense. In the last age he would have gone 
 to Ferney to see Voltaire (to whom Coleridge, in an 
 excellent essay in the Friend, has likened him) ; and 
 if Destiny had placed him in our time, with what 
 delight should we listen to him, on the Gorham contro- 
 versy, the Holy Coat at Treves, the late lamented 
 General Haynau, the Pope's dignified journey to 
 Gaeta, the Game-laws, the charitable society for 
 supplying poor clergymen with old clothes ; and other 
 similar phenomena ! 
 
 If I have at all succeeded in showing you what 
 manner of man he was, you will look with a kindly 
 interest at his portrait when you are next at Hampton 
 Court. As for his character, it was, perhaps, more 
 lovable than such as one deeply reverences. After 
 all, what can we say of him but what Luther says, in 
 his fine hearty way, about Cicero, whom Erasmus 
 resembled, both in his strength and his weakness — it 
 is a grand specimen of Luther's heartiness — " I hope," 
 says he, " God will be merciful to him ! " — 
 
76 SATIRE AKD SATIRISTS. 
 
 I now proceed to treat of two other great notabilities 
 — less remarkable men — but worthy votaries of the 
 Satiric Muse, and members of what was, in those days, 
 a neighboring nation. Do you not remember, in a 
 poem that we all have read with pleasure at some 
 time, a certain feudal figure, that comes out to greet 
 Marmion, as that knight is advancing northward? 
 Let us listen once again to the clear, manly, ringing 
 voice of large-hearted Sir Walter Scott : — 
 
 " He was a man of middle age, 
 With aspect comely, grave and sage, 
 As on king's errand come : 
 But in the glances of his eye, 
 A penetrating, keen, and sly 
 Expression found its home ; 
 The flash of that satiric rage, 
 Which, bursting on the early stage. 
 Branded the vices of the age, 
 And broke the keys of Rome. 
 On milk-white palfrey forth he paced, 
 His cap of maintenance was graced 
 With the proud heron-plume. 
 From his steed's shoulders, loin, and breast, 
 Silk housings swept the ground, 
 With Scotland's arms, device, and crest, 
 Embroidered round and round ! 
 The double tressure might you see, 
 First by Achaius borne, 
 The thistle and the fleur-de-lis, 
 And gallant unicorn. 
 
 Still is thy name in high account, 
 And still thy verse has charms, 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LIXDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 77 
 
 Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 
 Lord Lion King-at-arms." 
 
 The " Lord Lion King-at-arms," was no way an 
 anti-climax in the old days of which good Sir Walter's 
 heart was full. In our period people laugh at these 
 old forms and customs, and at that stately ceremonial, 
 which, after all, however, was nothing but a symbol 
 of a very actual and real life, and not such an ugly 
 life either, behind it. Order among men, rank, 
 loyalty, courtesies and observances founded upon 
 these, — all were typified by the figure on the palfrey, 
 the appearance of which I, for one, am superstitious 
 enough to admire. It was doubtless a great honor to 
 David Lindsay of the Mount to have the situation. 
 Davie (as the Scotch call him) was the son of Lindsay 
 of the Mount, in Fifeshire, a branch of the great house 
 of Lindsay of the Byres, and born in 1490. Let me 
 refer you, for a genial and warm-hearted memoir of 
 him (by one who is his kinsman in blood and in 
 genius), to the Lives of the Lindsays, by the present 
 heir to the chiefship of that ancient family. 
 
 Some vestige of the habitation at the Mount is, I 
 believe, still visible in that undulating and hilly 
 country of Fife, if only as a stone patch in a farm- 
 house. They point out a couple of trees there, which 
 bear Sir David's name; and a generation ago they 
 picked up a stone carved with his shield : — all very 
 characteristic of a country of which every acre has its 
 tradition. 
 
 The Mount, I fancy (though it sounds immensely 
 territorial), was not a very remunerative possession : 
 
78 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 so Davie would be glad, no doubt, to get a place 
 under the James's. He was a young fellow of about 
 twenty-three, when James IV. of that name — the gay 
 and brilliant James — a true Stuart in his good and 
 bad qualities, left Holyrood, and advanced southward, 
 towards the place well known to all Scotchmen as 
 Flodden Field, where, with a swarm of nobles and 
 gentlemen, heads of families, surrounded by a ring of 
 the oldest nobility in Europe, he perished in the thick 
 of the fight. David Lindsay became the tutor, the 
 nurse, almost the father of James Y. He played the 
 lute to the youngster in old Holyrood Palace, and 
 told him stories (in the feudal garb which all stories 
 then wore, when Japhet was spoken of as a " gentle- 
 man," and the Virgin Mary was esteemed to have 
 been a princess of coat-armor,) about Hector, and 
 Arthur, and Julius, and Troy, and Thebes. Lindsay 
 was an accomplished man, heedful of both ancient 
 and modern lore ; humorous, stately ; somewhat 
 pedantic, but not ungracefully so ; and from his birth 
 and education not so merely classical as the Erasmuses 
 and others of the time, but imbued with the spirit of 
 the feudal world, and of the social life, in which he 
 took a great part. It was curious, and an instance of 
 the compensating way in which Nature manages 
 matters, that while Erasmus and others, born in the 
 inferior ranks of life, wrote habitually in the learned 
 tongue, imitating the tone of Horace, the tone of 
 Lucian, and so on, — Sir David, the courtier, the noble, 
 and the Lion King, studied Chaucer ; and when he 
 began to write, wrote in the language of the common 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 79 
 
 people, and continued a popular darling long after 
 the folios of Erasmus were tranquil on their shelves. 
 
 I should like to describe Sir David Lindsay as 
 being a genuine Scotchman ; but I am afraid of being 
 misapprehended. "What is the English notion of the 
 Scotch character? The common idea, that the Scotch- 
 man is a cold, hard, shrewd, calculating fellow, some- 
 what mean, is comparatively modern, and I am afraid 
 I must add, vulgar. In the times we are treating of 
 to-night, it was for their fiery, genial, proud charac- 
 ter, that the Scotch were famous in Europe. When 
 Erasmus, in the Encomium Mbrice, is attacking 
 national pride, the Italians for thinking themselves 
 the only civilized people, and so on, — he quizzes the 
 Scotch for their pride of birth and their love of argu- 
 ment. The meaner imputations are of later date, and 
 were provoked by adventurers, who came over here 
 from James the First to Bute's times, and who were 
 by no means the best specimens of their nation. It 
 is a little too bad, that a country with the most roman- 
 tic of all histories, the most devoted of all martyrs, 
 the most enthusiastic of all loyalists, and the most 
 copious of all writers of high fiction, should be talked 
 of as if it only produced men fit to shine in the retail 
 trade ! * 
 
 That the Scotch are a very sensible people at bot- 
 
 * See a note to Mackintosh's Dissertation in the Encyclopedia Bri- 
 tannica, where the same peculiarities attributed by Erasmus are imputed 
 to them on ancient authority. The phrase " Scotoruni prafervida inge- 
 nia," in fact, expresses the general opinion about the Scotch ; it will be 
 found in Buchanan's Rer. Scot. Hist. lib. 16. " Les Escossois sont 
 bons philosophes." observes Joseph Scaliger. {Scaligcria.no,.) 
 
80 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 torn, I am prepared to admit. But this solid sub- 
 stance is likewise impregnated witli fire, with humor ; 
 and good Sir David is a fine specimen of the mixture. 
 He had been Lion King, ambassador to the Nether- 
 lands, and was well acquainted with the great world 
 (which was then still splendid all over with chival- 
 rous usages, feudal pomp, heraldry, and all the other 
 blossoming-out of the mediaeval life), before he began 
 his career of author. But he was born a satirist ; he 
 had not been reading and observing in vain ; and the 
 sixteenth century had great events on hand. Fate 
 found a Lion King-at-arms,— a functionary, the very 
 soul, one would think, of order, indeed the marshaller 
 and disposer of the symbolism of order, — to co-operate 
 with the purest reform. Light flowed through his 
 atmosphere of azure and gules, and came out pure, 
 luminous, and tinted only with beauty in its passage. 
 Sir David employed his poetic talent in compli- 
 mentary court-verses ; but this was only a small por- 
 tion of his work. When Magdalen of France, James 
 the Fifth's young bride, died, he made an elegant and 
 a sincere little poem on the event. But trifles like 
 this would only have proved him an accomplished 
 gentleman. He is remembered, and has been influ- 
 ential in the world ; and I am speaking of him to you 
 now, because his humorous heart and his quick eye 
 prompted him to make various satirical onslaughts on 
 the abuses of his time, and especially on the abuses of 
 the Church. As Erasmus preceded Luther, so Sir 
 David Lindsay preceded Knox. He made striking 
 assaults on the ecclesiastical system, which undoubt- 
 edly tended to its overthrow ; and there was this fur- 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 81 
 
 ther resemblance, that when the reforming action 
 began in Scotland, Sir David did not join practically. 
 He lived in retirement, and kept aloof: he was good 
 of his kind ; but there he stopped. He was the 
 worldly, easy-going man, too, in his way ; and retired 
 to the Mount, doubtless thinking in this fashion: "I 
 have lashed the rogues for what I saw bad about 
 them ; and now let them take care of themselves, 
 and go — where they like hi their own way." Our 
 business is not to say that Lindsay was inferior to 
 Knox, but modestly to suggest, that it would be well 
 for us all if we were as good as Lindsay. 
 
 In every case where a system has fallen into cor- 
 ruption, there is doubtless some one particular out- 
 ward result of it which represents to the popular mind 
 the whole of its falsity. Thus, at the Reformation, 
 special doctrines would scarcely so much shock the 
 people as to make them stir against the system in 
 which they and their fathers had been born and bred. 
 There needed some practical every-day evil ; and this 
 was found in the conduct of the clergy. Scotland 
 was more completely, perhaps, under the domination 
 of priests than any country in Europe. They had 
 about half the land, according to some calculations.* 
 A nobleman was glad to marry a bishop's daughter, 
 and taint his whole pedigree ■qfith ihe scandal. How 
 tremendous the revolt was, one can judge from the 
 beautiful ruins scattered over Scotland, of grand old 
 abbeys, with their broken arches, where the garden- 
 walls are traceable for hundreds of yards about. You 
 approach the spot through a road over-shadowed with 
 
 * Robertson. 
 4* 
 
82 SATIRE AM) SATIRISTS. 
 
 lime-trees ; and the probability is, that you return 
 (particularly if you have the honor of claiming kin 
 with an abbot or two in the old list of them) in a high 
 state of sentimental melancholy. Some people base 
 a whole system of politics on no better foundation 
 than this lugubrious emotion, and curse the Scottish 
 Reformation during the whole of dinner-time. I hope 
 I am not a barbarian ; but even such spectacles as 
 these ruins do not induce me to depreciate the worth 
 of Knox, or any body who co-operated with him. 
 
 Sir David Lindsay's poems, being written in the 
 common colloquial language of his day for the most 
 part, are of course somewhat obsolete. But a very 
 little trouble bestowed, with the aid of such an edi- 
 tion as that of George Chalmers * (an antiquarian of 
 the last generation, to whom all Scotchmen specially, 
 and the world at large, are under high obligations), 
 enables you to see what humor and shrewdness, and 
 manly love of justice (though the utterance often 
 enough is homely and coarse), belong to his charac- 
 ter. There is " Kittie's Confession," a queer little 
 poem : 
 
 " The Curat Kittie would confess, 
 And she told on both more and less ; 
 When she was talking as she wist, 
 The Curat Kittie would have kissed. 
 But yet a countenance he bure, 
 Digest, debate, daign, and demure. 
 
 * " Works of Sir David Lyndesay." Chalmers was also the author of 
 the valuable Caledonia, of a Life of Mary Queen of Scots, a, Life of 
 Ruddiman, and other learned works. But he will say no more good of 
 a Knox or a Buchanan than he can help ! 
 
LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 83 
 
 Said he, ' Have you any wrongous gear ? ' 
 Said she, ' I stole a peek of bear ; ' 
 Said he, ' That should restored be, 
 Therefor deliver it to me ! ' " 
 
 Kittie gives an account of the kind of men who con- 
 fessed her, saying, — 
 
 " And meikle Latin he did mumble ; 
 I heard nothing but humble-bumble ; " 
 
 and so on. But Sir David's longest satirical work is 
 in the dramatic form (one of the very earliest forms 
 Satire assumed), and is entitled The Satire of the 
 Three Estates. He thought he would take advantage 
 of a form of exhibition 'already used in the Morali- 
 ties ; and accordingly he produced a long play, full 
 of allegorical personages,- — King Humanity, Solace, 
 Verity, Spiritualise (who represents the Church), John 
 Common-Weal, the Pardoner, and various others, — 
 who move about and talk away in flowing rhyme ; 
 though the work, I fear, would be described by a 
 modern theatrical critic as " totally deficient in con- 
 struction, and without plot." It gives me a high 
 opinion of the brave endurance of our ancestors, 
 when I remember that they sat out the nine hours 
 necessary to the performance of this dramatic work. 
 A simple, earnest people, not blase and pampered 
 with pleasantry like us ; for there, in the year 1536, 
 also in the succeeding years, at Linlithgow, Cupar, 
 and near Edinburgh, they assembled in crowds to 
 hear it. In 1539, James the Fifth, with his second 
 wife, Mary of Lorraine, and hordes of the magnates, 
 
84 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 were present at it, — an immense crowd, swarming in 
 the open air, where it went on. The first person 
 prays the "gude pepile" that every man will keep 
 still his " ane tongue," and every woman her " two." 
 Sir David loved to have a satiric slap at the women : 
 he married a " Janet Douglas" (Chalmers confesses, 
 with a suppressed tear, that he does not know from 
 what branch of the Douglases) ; and it may be 
 conjectured that he practised his satirical weapon 
 upon the shoulders of that lady, as they are said not 
 to have been happy. Throughout the drama the 
 Church has many a rub. 
 The Pardoner comes in, wanting to sell relics : 
 
 "The tail-part of St. Bryde's cow, 
 The snout of old St. Anthony's sow, 
 "Whilk tore his holy bell. 
 Wha ever be heires this bell clink, 
 Gif me one ducat for till drink, 
 He sail never gang to hell." 
 
 Of course, the domestic relation of the priesthood is 
 not omitted, though it must be by us. But while all 
 the common topics, their suppressing the Bible, and 
 the rest of it, are well handled, one of the person®, 
 Pauper, is made to complain of his treatment in the 
 Consistory Court in a way which may claim not our 
 faint and distant, but our warm sympathy and condo- 
 lence. He states his case : 
 
 " I lent my gossip my mare to fetch home coals, 
 And he her drowned in the quarry holes." 
 
ERASMUS, Silt D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 85 
 
 Pauper brought his action, as we should say. " And 
 I ran to the Consistory : " 
 
 " They gave me, first, ane thing they call citandum ; 
 Within aucht days I got hut lybellandum ; 
 Within ane month I got ad opponendum ; 
 In half an year I got inter loquendum ; 
 And syne I gat — how call ye it 1 — ad replicandum ; 
 But I could never one word understand him : 
 And then they gart me cast out mony plackis, 
 And gart me pay for four-and-twenty actis. 
 But ere they came half-way to concludendum, 
 The feind ane plack was left for to defend him. 
 Thus they postponed me twa year." 
 
 And he concludes : 
 
 " Of pronunciatidum they made me wondrous fain ; 
 But I got never my guid grey mare again ! " 
 
 The Pardoner complains that nobody now believes in 
 him 
 
 " That reads the New Testament ; " 
 
 and expresses his wish — 
 
 " That Martin Luther, that false loun, 
 Black Bullinger, and Melancthon, 
 Had been smothered in their cude,'' 
 
 viz. the face-cloth worn at baptism. Counsell takes 
 Spiritualitie to task, and says, — 
 
 " Ane bishop's office is to be ane preacher, 
 And of the law of God ane public teacher." 
 
 Spiritualitie has never beard of such a thing ; and on 
 
86 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 being rather rudely referred to " what St. Paul writes 
 to Timothie ; " " for," says Counsel], — 
 
 " Take there the book ; let's see if ye can spell — " 
 
 Spiritualitie answers, — 
 
 " I never read that ; therfor read it yoursell ! " 
 
 All editors have wondered at such satire being 
 allowed ; but such was the case. For many genera- 
 tions Sir David exercised an immense influence over 
 the people of Scotland ; and whenever any new 
 "word" was attempted to be introduced, "Tell no 
 find that in Davie Lindsay," was the conclusive 
 expression which testified to the Lion King's social 
 authority. He deserves honorable remembrance 
 among the great men of his land. 
 
 George Buchanan must not now occupy us long. 
 His fame was gained by his scholastic attainments 
 chiefly, and the wonderful way in which he knew how 
 to put on the ancient armor, and use the native 
 strength and brilliancy of his intellect in that panoply. 
 But he, too, drew a sharp pen in the cause of the 
 Beformation, and suffered also in that cause. He was 
 as famous a man of letters as any in Europe in his 
 day. But now, as Father Prout has truly remarked,* 
 his countrymen show their regard for him rather by 
 glorying in the reputation, he acquired than by 
 reading his works. The last edition of him was the 
 folio one of Buddiman, published in Edinburgh in 
 1715. He is the shadow of a great name. 
 
 * Prout Papers, reprinted from Fraser's Magazine. 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 87 
 
 Buchanan was of a family "more ancient than 
 opulent," as the Lives remark ; and was born in 1506.* 
 His youth was passed in poverty, in studying at St. 
 Andrew's, in studying at Paris, where he taught 
 grammar. Young Gilbert Kennedy, son of the Earl 
 of Cassilis, took him as tutor ; and with him he came 
 back to Scotland, and enjoyed hospitality and leisure 
 at the great seat of the Kennedies, in the south. 
 Kennedy, his kind patron, died ; and Buchanan came 
 about the court of James the Fifth, and taught a 
 natural son of that king's, who was in training to 
 be an abbot. f James having had a quarrel with the 
 Franciscans, asked Buchanan to write a poem against 
 them ; and as his first sketch was not strong enough 
 (for, in fact, George did not wish to provoke them), 
 called for another and stronger dose. Buchanan did, 
 make it hot and strong this time. He was already 
 suspected of new views ; the Franciscans stormed ; 
 James suffered him to go to prison after all ; but he 
 escaped, and got to England. He found Henry the 
 Eighth persecuting all sides there ; so went to Paris 
 again. From Paris he went to Bordeaux ; and, there 
 seems good reason to believe, about this time had a 
 share in the honor of educating Montaigne. The 
 
 * Georgii Buchanani Vila, — Op. vol. i. Chalmers (in his Life "of 
 Ruddimari) doubts whether Buchanan wrote this " Life " himself, as 
 was commonly believed. There is a little book about the Buchanans, 
 by W. Buchanan (published at Glasgow). Buchanan was a son of 
 Buchanan of Moss, and nearly related to the head of his clan. The 
 estate of" Buchanan " now belongs to the Duke of Montrose. 
 
 t The common provision for such youngsters ! — Erasmus taught a 
 natural son of James the Fourth's, who was killed afterwards, with his 
 lather, at Flodden. 
 
88 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 plague drove him from Bordeaux ; and when he 
 went to Portugal, the Inquisition imprisoned him.' — 
 Stormy times these for the literary man ! Shut up 
 in a monastery, where the monks were ignorant, but 
 rather civil than otherwise, he occupied himself in 
 turning the Psalms into Latin. He was again in 
 England — again in Paris ; and there Queen Mary 
 made him her teacher ; and when she came to Scot- 
 land, in 1561, George daily read Livy with her in the 
 palace of Holyrood. He is spoken of as " Mr. George 
 Buchanan," — sometimes as the "godly," always as 
 the "learned Mr. George." As far as the general 
 impression we derive of him goes, he must have been 
 rather a grim man : how he flogged young Jamie, 
 afterwards King James VI., whose preceptor he was, 
 is well known ; and probably survives as a terrible 
 tradition among the many royal descendants of that 
 king. James was in no humor, I imagine, for 
 perching himself on the chair of state after he had 
 bungled over a passage in Virgil to Master Buchanan. 
 His Satires, the Frcmciscanus, and a collection of 
 epigrams called the Fratres Fraterrimi, are full of 
 scorn and wit. His was a more passionate and a 
 darker tinge of character than that of Erasmus.* 
 All that continental experience, poverty, persecution 
 by rascals and blockheads, the dreary dependence 
 of a long-descended gentleman, and a high-aspiring 
 scholar and genius, on people who were sometimes 
 
 * We have a paragraph about him in the curious Memoirs of his 
 contemporary Sir James Melvil. " Mr. George Buchanan was a. stoic 
 philosopher, who looked not far before him ; a man of notable endow- 
 ments. He was also religious ; but was easily abused." 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 89 
 
 neither, acting probably on a nature having a tendency 
 to be what the Scotch call " dour," must have con- 
 tributed to make Buchanan grim. He very heartily 
 joined the Reformers ; and he has had plenty of. abuse 
 from the high-flying historical Alariolaters. There is 
 nothing about him to attract the effeminate sentiment- 
 alists ; and when they lay their servile paws upon his 
 laurels, they excite unutterable scorn. They make a 
 great fuss about his ingratitude, because, having had 
 a pension from Queen Mary, he joined and acted with 
 the party against her. Let us, for an instant, forget 
 her fine eyes and her musical amateurship, and look 
 at this case with the feelings of men. The first 
 scholar in the kingdom gets certain crowns for work 
 done to the queen and to the state ; he is therefore 
 bound never to assert his manhood against the giver, 
 on behalf of his religion and his country, while 
 believing her guilty in the eyes of God and man. 
 Only a person very far gone in plush indeed would 
 stretch his loyalty to this length. 
 
 In his latter years, George Buchanan held such 
 positions in the state as his intellect entitled him to. 
 He was Principal of St. Andrew's ; and there, near 
 the black and huge relics of the enormous abbey, in 
 that queer, quaint little town, where every thing tells 
 of the death of old days, and the Northern Sea, on 
 which it stands, comes lashing up against the walls of 
 hollow ruined castles, — there they show you where 
 the famons man lived. He was Moderator of the 
 General Assembly in 1567 ; and it would be difficult 
 to say what more honorable position a man of letters 
 could have filled at that time in Europe. In his old 
 
90 SATIBE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 age he occupied himself in writing his History of 
 Scotland in Latin. He invariably employed that 
 language, except once in. his prose Satire on Maitland 
 of Lethington, which contrasts strangely, in its Scotch 
 quaintness, with the flowing and pointed style of his 
 classical periods.* 
 
 There are some stories about his dying profanely, 
 and crying out from Propertius about Cynthia, on his 
 death-bed; which may be seen quoted in Bayle, 
 where the unfortunate liar who propounded them 
 exists, like a snake in spirits in a museum, for the 
 observation of those who are curious in snakes.f But 
 as he and his lies have gone to their common parent, 
 we need not waste time on them. Flashes of grim- 
 ness and humor, which characterized the manly, 
 sturdy nature of Buchanan, are found in more credible 
 accounts of his last days. One writer says, that he 
 was summoned, for certain passages in his History, to 
 " compear " before the Council ; and that he sent 
 back word, that he was " going to compear before an 
 higher Judge. " It is narrated, also, that learning 
 
 * This Satire is called the Chamaleon, and begins — ■' Thair is a 
 certane kynd of beist callit Chamseleon, engenderit in sic countreis as 
 the sone hes mair strength in than in this Yle of Brettane, the quhilk 
 albeit it be small of corporance, nogtheless it is of ane strange nature, 
 the quhilk makis it to be na less celebrat and spoken of than sum 
 beastis of greittar quantitie." (Op. end of vol. i.) 
 
 t Bayle, art. Buchanan, Note I). " Father Garasse " was the writer 
 alluded to. The confidence of the Presbyterian party is a, sufficient 
 proof of Buchanan's piety ; dozens of great names might be quoted 
 to prove his fame ; his works exist to establish his genius, — but 
 sealed up from popular perusal in the Latin tongue. I may note here 
 (what does not seem generally known), that the venerable head on the 
 cover of Blackwood's Magazine is the head of Buchanan. 
 
EKASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 91 
 
 that he had just enough money to bury him, he 
 directed it " to be given to the poor ; for the City 
 •would have to bury him at its own expense." The 
 city was Edinburgh, in which he died, in 1582, aged 
 76 years.* He was buried in the Greyfriars' church- 
 yard there ; — but though you find plenty of Mac- 
 thises and Mac-thats of that ilk handsomely entombed, 
 you do not find the grave of Buchanan. Indeed, at 
 some alteration of the boundaries of that ground, both 
 Knox's and Buchanan's remains took their chance, 
 with those of others, of getting a final settlement in 
 what is now the space about the law-courts. " He 
 was wont," says an old writer, " to despise pompous 
 monuments." 
 
 His Satire is of the contemptuous order. He was 
 one of those satirists who do not profess to tickle, nor 
 pretend to that happy temperament which makes a 
 man, with a smiling good-natured face and a perfectly- 
 balanced system, smile while he strikes, and wound 
 without an imputation on his good-nature ; or write 
 an epitaph or a libel with the same impartiality, and 
 similar ease and skill. I fancy Buchanan was, for 
 the most part, very impassioned and serious in the 
 satirical work he took in hand. "Waving the question 
 of art, which would of course deal with productions on 
 a different principle, I confess I would rather have as a 
 friend, and specially as an ally, the man who on the 
 
 * There are some letters (in Latin and French) to and from Buchanan, 
 in the edition of Ruddiman. There is one from Beza, in 1580, in which 
 he says, " May the Lord Jesus bless your gray hairs more and more ! " 
 — I recommend this to the attention of Miss Strickland, who, in her 
 eagerness to whiten Mary, finds it necessary to blacken Buchanan, and 
 does it with gusto. 
 
92 SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 surface looks the more ferocious and bloodthirsty of 
 the two. Of Erasmus's good nature and general 
 friendliness I have the highest opinion ; but I think 
 it likely that Buchanan had the deeper heart, and 
 generally the deeper moral nature. Sir David 
 Lindsay occupies a position between them ; and is to 
 be considered a warm-hearted, truth-loving gentleman, 
 who took up Satire half as an amateur, but produced 
 an effect with it that makes us honor his memory long 
 after the Mount has vanished from his kindred ; in 
 days when the brave and beautiful symbols on his 
 armorial coat look dim and old-fashioned, and when 
 even his gentile name of Lindsay must owe its chief 
 honor to the merits of those who bear it. 
 
 For many ages, every man of any gifts naturally 
 looked to the Church as the field for his employment. 
 But during the period over which these men's lives 
 extended, a new element came into European affairs, 
 in the classical literature, with all the ideas it brought 
 with it, of which the man of letters was naturally the 
 exponent. He thus became superadded as a teacher 
 to the existing staff of the instructors of mankind ; 
 and as poet, moralist, satirist, and in other capacities, 
 was the rival, and, as it soon proved, the natural 
 opponent of the priest. Europe has never been 
 without this element, this truly liberal element. 
 Satirists were found three hundred years before 
 Erasmus's time, in the authors of those Latin rhyming- 
 poems, of whom "Walter Mapes stands as the repre- 
 sentative ; and the minstrel, and even the household 
 fool (who has yet to be investigated, and perhaps has 
 
ERASMUS, SIR D. LINDSAY, G. BUCHANAN. 93 
 
 never been thoroughly appreciated), were all parts of 
 it, — parts, that is, of the representation of the thoughts 
 and passions of mankind, of which the priest was in 
 large measure the regulator. TSfot a minstrel, not a 
 satirist, not a fool, perhaps, but contributed something 
 towards the ripening of that revolt which made its first 
 great triumph in the times I have been speaking of ; 
 and which now walks the world, with many names, 
 hundred-eyed and hundred-handed, " conquering and 
 to conquer." The body of men who succeeded to 
 Erasmus and Buchanan followed up their work. The 
 literary man was the embodiment of minstrel, 
 reformer, and satirist, and superseded these ; and (if 
 only as a new guise, sometimes, of the household fool) 
 is to be traced henceforth as a highly important agent 
 in the affairs of Europe. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 EAELY SATIRE. BOILEAU, BTJTLEE, DEYDEN. 
 
 Beeoee the end of the seventeenth century, Satire 
 had assumed in Europe a polished and developed 
 form ; had derived from the ancient literature what- 
 ever was necessary to it ; and had reached, in point 
 of language and finish, a completeness and correct- 
 ness beyond which it has not made any marked 
 advance. In the famous Boileau, and in the famous 
 Dryden, whose work belongs to the latter half of 
 that seventeenth century, we have the Satire proper 
 (in its form of a satiric poem, and much indebted to 
 Horace and Juvenal) ; — we have it, I say, in full 
 ripeness and perfection. Each of these men is among 
 moderns a classic ; each remains a finished and devel- 
 oped specimen of his class; and the lapse of time 
 and the progress of culture have not enabled us to 
 give to their forms any further force or finish. 
 
 But, as I intimated to yon in my last Lecture, 
 Europe can never have been said to have been with- 
 out this satirical element. In turning our eyes to 
 
WALTER MAPES. 95 
 
 the dawn of intellectual light, we see, among the 
 streaks of color, a light brilliant play on the horizon, 
 of humorous radiance, indicating that our friend the 
 Satirist is alive and awake, like his neighbors. The 
 writers on northern antiquities tell us, that away in 
 the icy North, in old days, the Scandinavians had 
 their " Nithing verses," * rhymed rude compositions, 
 which, in those fighting times, were their intellectual 
 weapons. And in England here, as early as 1197, in 
 which year Walter Mapes was made Archdeacon of 
 Oxford, there existed, ay, in the days of the earliest 
 Plantagenets, and when Heraldry itself was young, a 
 school of satirists. It has been the fortune of that 
 "Walter Map, for such was his name (he was a Welsh- 
 man by birth, and every body admired his abundant 
 jocosity), to give his name to the compositions of, 
 and to stand himself as the traditional type' of, this 
 school. The Camden Society have elegantly printed 
 the poems attributed to Walter Mapes, f comprising 
 that one, of course, from which came the drinking- 
 song, translated by Leigh Hunt, wherein the writer 
 expresses a wish 
 
 " To end his days in a tavern drinking," 
 and a hope that the angels who come for his soul will 
 exclaim — 
 
 * Blackwell's edition of Mallet, p. 302. 
 
 t The Latin poems attributed to Walter Mapes, collected and edited by 
 Thomas Wright, Esq., F. S. A. Printed for the Camden Society, 1841. 
 The publication of a collection so curious as this, is a benefit to the lite- 
 rary world. It may be mentioned, as a proof how much modern satire 
 has at all times owed to those ancients with whom I began, that the 
 authors of these poems were evidently familiar with Juvenal. See the 
 " Contra Ambitiosos et avaros " at p. 152. 
 
96 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 " The Lord be merciful to a man of this gentleman's 
 way of thinking." 
 
 The learned editor, Wright, says, that there is no 
 evidence that Mapes was such an inordinate toper. 
 This is so far satisfactory ! But that the school were 
 not indifferent to joviality as a principle is clear from 
 their tone of composition. They write in the same 
 kind of rhyming Latin doggrel ; they are most hu- 
 morous on the peccadilloes of the clergy and the 
 monastic orders : and, in a word, they were the rep- 
 resentatives of the humorous and satirical element in 
 those distant days, when the man of letters proper 
 was unknown. 
 
 Now this element, of course, will embody itself in 
 every period. In those days there was no organiza- 
 tion, for it; society consisted, according to an old 
 poem, of three great distinctions of men — 
 
 " Clero, chevalier, ouvrier de terre.'' 
 
 The fighting-man found work enough ; the religious, 
 and generally the studious man, had the Church ; but 
 the humorous and intellectual man, though he some- 
 times became an ecclesiastic with a jovial reputation, 
 had to take a course of his own. Such men as the 
 writers of the Mapes' Poems formed a class called 
 golia/rds, goliardi, a kind of scholarly wags or buf- 
 foons — poor scholars — satirical fellows, who lashed 
 the monks, and were rather men of the world than 
 members of its great institutions. There was an old 
 statute forbidding the clerical order to be jokers, 
 goliards, or buffoons. I fear that in those days the 
 
THE FOOL. 9£ 
 
 satirist was not a dignified character. The humbler 
 satirist and wag was a professed buffoon ; and he 
 represented the comic element, for many generations, 
 in the capacity of Fool. I have sard before, that 
 that figure deserves some investigation : — who and 
 what could these men have been who lived in this 
 world on that footing ? "Was he tinctured with insan- 
 ity ; and did he derive his intellectual light from 
 what we popularly call a crack in his skull ? Shak- 
 speare has drawn him, and so as to make him a pro- 
 minent personage. Holbein has painted him as a part 
 of the family group of one of the greatest and wisest 
 men of his time. Surely there must have been some 
 amusing quality about Harry Patenson, if he could 
 interest the leisure of such a man as Sir Thomas 
 More? It is a difficult subject; but it seems only 
 too clear that the poor Fool's position was a very 
 dubious and questionable one : he went loose about 
 the court-yard of the castle like a pet hound, and 
 was summoned when he was wanted. He might say 
 truth now and then ; but he had to invest it in some 
 such form that it looked as if he had tumbled on it 
 by accident : and he cannot have seriously set up for 
 a wise man, or he would have interfered too much. 
 It was Humor in livery ; Satire going about in a 
 mean form, like an Oriental prince under enchant- 
 ment. From the names of fools, it seems pretty cer- 
 tain that they were of the lower orders. I suppose, 
 that when a wag was born on one of a baron's manors, 
 the news came in time to the chateau, — where, you 
 may be sure, the old existing official said that the 
 young beginner was an over-rated fool, and had no 
 5 
 
98 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 real talent as a wag. However, this species of 
 reviewing could not be long successful. Lady Mabel 
 would bear of the younker's merry conceits. — In 
 brief, here was a kind of career, at all events, for 
 many a poor fellow born naturally a small wag : 
 while he behaved himself, all went well ; and if he 
 misbehaved himself, he was whipped. 
 
 However, this is an inquiry more curious than 
 important. To resume our remarks more seriously. 
 The goliards, then, were the satirists of their day, 
 and their Latin rhymes have real spirit and humor, 
 and even elegance. They attacked monks, mendi- 
 cants, loose-living ecclesiastics ; and were among the 
 best-educated men of their time. Their Satire, how- 
 ever playful its form, was a "protest," as all good 
 Satire is, in the cause of truth. Not a seed fell from 
 the blossoms of their satirical nettle but helped to 
 produce hundreds of future nettles, by the aid of 
 which many foul figures got stung and whipped out 
 of England. 
 
 Contemporary with the early religious reformers 
 was the author of the Vision of Piers Ploughman, 
 which dates about 1362. My space makes me only 
 briefly indicate this satirical allegory, wherein the 
 author, Langland, satirizes the Church-abuses. In all 
 ways this is an antique composition ; and all that a 
 general reader can make of it is to recognize, by the 
 help of antiquaries, that here was a fine vigorous 
 shrewd satirist. Compared with him, Chaucer's style 
 is modern. Chaucer's own satire is lively and pictu- 
 resque ; but as it is only incidental, and Chaucer was 
 mainly a poet, he does not fall within my plan. 
 
SKELTON. 99f 
 
 Through every age Satire lived in one form or 
 another ; and in those early times the Church, with 
 its huge ramifications, was its great ohject. 
 
 An early English satirist, who is still readable and 
 anmsing, at least in part, is Skelton* — Laureate Skel- 
 ton — who flourished in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 He was a parson, sometime rector of Diss, in Nor- 
 folk, and came of a Cumberland family. His satire 
 is generally written in very short flowing rhymes, 
 comic helter-skelter doggrel ; in fact — with a rattle 
 like that of a rattle-snake's in it. He was one of 
 your wild, reckless satirists, who, if powder runs 
 short, will fling stones ; and if stones are deficient, 
 do not stick at mud. You will find his quaint and 
 remarkable productions among the English poets in 
 the large collections, where the strip of type of his 
 short lines flows down the page like a thin rivulet, 
 — only somewhat impure at times. People have tried 
 to make the best of old Skelton. They say that 
 the age was in fault : and truly, Erasmus and More, 
 and also Luther, went greater lengths in speech and 
 illustration than their peers dream of doing now. 
 But I am afraid that Warton speaks the truth when 
 he says, that "Skelton would have been a writer 
 without decorum at any period."* However, we 
 cannot all be decorous, I suppose : and it is possible 
 for a man to be somewhat indecorous, and yet quite 
 as honest and worthy as his neighbors. Skelton 
 doubtless believed in mud ; and thought a dead cat 
 
 * Skelton was laureated at Oxford about 1489. He was patronised 
 by Henry Algernon Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland. (Warton.) 
 
 * Warton, History of Poetry, vol. ii. p. 341 . 
 
100 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 a natural object to throw at the man he hated. Of 
 him, and others, we may say, not that they had 
 worse hearts than we have, but that their olfactory 
 organs were coarser. Having made this reservation, 
 I may say that I admire old Skelton, and think him 
 worthy of mention among our grim old natural satir- 
 ists. He was a good scholar, and known to be a 
 strong man ; and Erasmus has spoken with admira- 
 tion of him. He makes contortions like a buffoon, 
 but you admire his sinews ; and he has a ferocious 
 temper, but with gleams of good-nature and heartiness. 
 Skelton raises a tremendous howl of joy and scorn 
 on the occasion of Flodden Field, and taunts the 
 " proud Scots " with having lost their king there, 
 whom he calls " Jemmy," " Jemmy the Scott : " and 
 if you can fancy a strong man tumbling head-over- 
 heels, and intoxicated with the smell of blood, danc- 
 ing till his fool's-bells ring again with joy, you can 
 fancy Skelton on this occasion. There is a similar 
 spirit in his attack on Wolsey, in the poem called 
 Why come ye not to Court ? Here is rattling, gallop- 
 ing, fiery doggrel, — the fire smoky enough, — for 
 Skelton is like those ecclesiastics who s burned their 
 victims with green wood. He has no mercy on 
 Wolsey; and "Wolsey, of course, was to a contem- 
 porary satirist not the dignified figure he is to us, 
 but an over-gorged favorite and a bloated parvenu. 
 Skelton taunts the nobles with their subserviency to 
 the Cardinal. Says he — ■ 
 
 " They dare not look out of a dure, 
 
 For dread of the mastiff cur ; 
 
 For dread of the butcher's dog 
 
 Would worry them like a hog !" 
 
SKELTON. 101 
 
 And he speaks of his 
 
 "base progeny, 
 And his greasy genealogy." 
 
 For the birth of the Cardinal was a capital subject, 
 of course. Satirists are impartial men in this way : 
 they will lash a noble for being proud of his birth, 
 and another man for having no birth at all. Yet, 
 till the end of the world, a man from the lower class, 
 who affects the pride and adopts the vices of the 
 great, will be fair game for the satirical writer. 
 
 However, the Cardinal was too strong for Skelton, 
 who had to fly from his vengeance to sanctuary 
 at Westminster, — where he could meditate on his 
 own superiority to him, as a descendant of the 
 Skeltons of Cumberland, at his leisure, — and where 
 lie died, in 1529. The antiquaries have paid " beastly 
 Skelton," as Pope calls him, a due share of attention. 
 And, indeed, as an original and gifted man, as one 
 who wrote under the old English influences at a very 
 early period, and when the leading men in Europe 
 were almost more Latin than modern, he will remain 
 in remembrance as a curious writer. 
 
 We now approach the time when the study of 
 the classical literature became the predominant 
 feature ; and we shall find the most famous satirists 
 reflecting the Horatian and Juvenalian influence, 
 not only in spirit, but in form. Those who may be 
 called the formal satirists are my principal subjects ; 
 but men of note, whose influence on the world was 
 achieved by satire, I cannot pass by. 
 
102 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Bishop Hall was the great opener of our classic 
 and formal satire, i. e. a special satirical poem, in 
 ȣhe heroic metre. He was born in 1574, and pub- 
 lished his first Satires before that century was out. 
 iHis satiric teacher was Juvenal ; and in what I have 
 read of his Satires, I cannot but respect him as a 
 father of the satirical church. He is grave, shrewd, 
 and stately ; and though his verse is rude, he has 
 fine lines.* Donne, f though he wrote later, is less 
 musical in his Satires than Bishop Hall. His is, too, 
 a character of which we know more, and which, 
 by those who have read Izaac "Walton's IA/ves, will 
 always be held in gracious remembrance. Donne's 
 mind was like some costly, dark-hued, solemn church- 
 garment, embroidered with flowers, and with threads 
 of brilliant wit woven into it. The surface is bril- 
 liant ; but the whole awes you, and the effect is 
 saintly. "When one of these pure and high characters 
 writes satire, I am bound to say the effect is some- 
 what disturbing. Do you remember, in Parnell's 
 Hermit (which, to my mind, is a charming poem), 
 how the figure, who has surprised the holy man by 
 his conduct, suddenly becomes an angel ? You have 
 an effect like that produced on you when you come 
 from Donne's Satires to read of Donne's Life : you 
 wonder that he can have condescended to laugh at 
 
 * See Satires by Bishop Hall, with illustrations by Warton, and 
 notes by Singer. Chiswick, 1824. His autobiographic sketch is very 
 interesting. " What I have done," he says, " is worthy of nothing but 
 silence and forgetfulness ; but what God hath done for me is worthy of 
 everlasting and thankful memory." The Satires were the work of his 
 youth. He died Sept. 8th, 1656, tetat. 82. 
 
 t Botn 1573, died 1631. 
 
BOILKAU, BUTLER, DRYDE3ST. 103 
 
 the pertness of a young attorney, or a new-beneficed 
 divine. It is as if he were using an aureole to burn 
 a booby's fingers. He is one of the first wits who 
 have ever appeared in England, and as holy as witty. 
 Wit was no flaw on his sacredness ; he was a large- 
 hearted man, and wit was an ornament to the beauty 
 of his character, as pearls are to the beauty of a girl. 
 Pope's modernisation of his Satires is ingenious ; but 
 the Satires themselves (though antiquated in form, 
 and though they look odd and quaint, as old oak 
 furniture does) are worthy of his honorable name. 
 
 I now" proceed to speak of Dryden's contemporary, 
 Boileau, — a writer whose name cannot be omitted in 
 any list of modern satirists, whatever our opinion may 
 be of his general renown as a poet, and the importance 
 of his authority in literature. He ranks among the 
 refiners and formers of the French language, one of 
 the great ornaments of the reign of Louis XIV., and 
 generally passed, from his own day to that of Chateau- 
 briand, as a potentate and senator in their literature : 
 a dignified classic figure, supposed to be the model of 
 fine taste ; and when the new school began (as there 
 began, and will have to begin yet, new schools all 
 over Europe, in literature), the classical party set up, 
 amongst others, Boileau's image, calm and majestic, 
 to receive the barbarians, like the old Roman senators 
 sitting in their curule chairs. He is, or was, the 
 "great Monsieur Boileau," the "famous M. Boileau," 
 one of the fathers of French literature, and household 
 gods of the Academy ; — though, by the way (which 
 shows how eminent a writer he was in his own time), 
 
104 SATIRE AND SATIEISTS. 
 
 he did not get into the Academy till the king gave 
 them a pretty strong hint on the subject. 
 
 Nicholas Boileau De"spreaux was born in 1636, of a 
 family that produced one or two notable men, and 
 had a good social position. He tried the bar ; and, 
 like other men, made one or two trials before he hit 
 on his vocation, which clearly was literature. He 
 devoted himself instinctively to Satire; and in 1666 
 published some Satires with great success. There 
 had been famous Satires before, enjoying vogue in 
 Paris; but none written, with such elegance, such 
 harmony, such gaiety. Naturally, the man who 
 improves a language obtains peculiar honor, and 
 blends his personal fame with the fame of his country. 
 It is not wonderful, then, that our satirist acquired a 
 reputation, of which the main characteristic was its 
 extreme respectability. The great king took notice 
 of him, and permitted him to visit him, and to offer 
 him incense ; — for the great king had a taste in the 
 matter of incense, as in all matters which ministered 
 to personal gratification. He did not like coarse 
 perfumes on his altars : Boileau knew that well ; and 
 his sacrifices were of the choicest character. The 
 king made him a historiographer ; and Boileau 
 attended him on one of his campaigns, in order to see 
 what greatness was in action. " G-rand roi," he 
 exclaims, " cease to conquer, or I cease to write." 
 You would think he was rapt into a frenzy of admira- 
 tion ; but he has his eye on the god, in the midst of 
 it, to see how he likes it. " You know," says he, 
 " that my style est nipour la Satire?' He had no 
 talent for praise. No, no. His praise was extorted 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. 105 
 
 from him by sheer greatness. This is the most artful 
 flattery, which disclaims the possibility of being able 
 to flatter. 
 
 It was a part of the stupendous system of worship 
 which attended Louis Quatorze. Birth, and rank, 
 and beauty, and wit, were all offered up to him, to 
 be enjoyed, and begged permission to adore him. He 
 was Augustus. He was the ruler of kings. The 
 narrative of the ceremony of his dressing himself in 
 the morning is as long as the Gospel of St. John. 
 ITo wonder that a man of letters (particularly one 
 who called himself a poet, and was supposed to 
 possess such emotions as reverence) should add his 
 homage ; should'use his intellect as a kind of pastille 
 to gratify the nostrils of the great man. Boileau 
 possessed a good position, then, both for what he did 
 worthily and for what was less excellent. And he 
 used it well, we must say. He praised and gave his 
 support to Moliere, — a man of far more remarkable 
 genius ; he loved and praised Racine. He did not 
 go much to the court in later days ; and said he 
 could be of little use now that there was nobody 
 to praise. We must remember all this ; and also 
 that he was a kindly man to his friends, and the rest 
 of it. He wanted not these good qualities ; which 
 may be conceded, without conceding that he was of 
 the highest order of character ; just as we can con- 
 cede great literary merit to him, without admitting 
 him to any such rank as has been claimed for him by 
 his admirers. 
 
 I suppose that we need not now argue the question, 
 5* 
 
106 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 whether he was a poet or not.* Different qualities 
 are now considered needful to that character from 
 those which constitute the writings of Boileau. His 
 Ode on the talcing of Nam/ur exists as a specimen of 
 what he could do in the way of odes. It is extremely 
 inferior to the famous Alexander's Feast of Dryden, 
 which, with all its merit (and I love Dryden), is not 
 comparable as poetry to the lyrics of Shelley and 
 Keats. The winds are called on to be silent, for " Je 
 vais parler de Louis ! " He is animated by Phoebus 
 with transports " les plus doux." But there is another 
 ode, — against the English, — written in nis youth, and 
 which, I may add, ought not to have been published 
 in his age. He calls on France to " arm," and crush 
 the rebels against Charles ; to crush these " bloody 
 enemies of laws." This ode is a curiosity, however. 
 Boileau did not think, that by contributing to the 
 despotism of Louis, he was helping to produce a far 
 worse revolt than that against Charles, — a revolt 
 wherein Louis's descendants suffered far more than 
 the Stuarts. 
 
 Boileau's Satires are very pleasant reading ; and 
 were, long ago, among my earliest studies in the 
 satirical department. He says, in an epitaph which 
 he wrote for himself, that he was " original even in 
 imitation ;" and that he had striven to unite in him- 
 
 * Keats's " one Boileau," which so shocked the seniors of his 
 generation, does not seem half so audacious to us now. Those who 
 reverence the name of Boileau for its " classical " authority, may see 
 in Landor's Imaginary Conversations (" The Abbc§ D6Iille and Walter 
 Landor ") what a low opinion is entertained of him by a man of genius, 
 who well knows the truly " classical " works of the world. 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. 107 
 
 self " Horace, Persius, and Juvenal." And this is 
 so far true, certainly, that he fuses all that he gathers 
 from the old satirists into a light and lively mixture, 
 which has its own flavor and its own spirit and taste. 
 Whatever he owes to any body, he is yet in a position 
 of his own, as a brilliant French writer, who reflects 
 his epoch. 
 
 To place a man in his proper rank among his 
 brother satirists, we must first determine and state 
 ■his point of view, his moral ground ; and next, his 
 special literary talent. Boileau is a satirist of society, 
 and a brilliant wit, rather than a satirical reformer or 
 a deep-hearted humorist. The epigrams in his 
 Satires are bright enough ; but they gleam among 
 commonplace and conventionalism, and on back- 
 grounds of borrowed ethical reflection ; — they are 
 like little lamps, such as belong to Yauxhall, more 
 than higher lights. Boileau was what is called a 
 man of the world ; and that at a period when the 
 world was not a very noble one. " Its philosophy is 
 that of Rochefoucauld ; the courts of Louis and of 
 Charles H. are specimens of its morals ; to Moliere 
 (a better, deeper-hearted man than Boileau) we owe 
 its comic aspect. Boileau himself is a type of its 
 sensible shrewd man, whose satire laughs at what is 
 offensive to its taste and its largely-developed organ 
 of common sense. 
 
 Lord Bacon remarks, that in all men " their fortune 
 works upon their nature, and their nature upon their 
 fortune."* So, a man who is worldly in his life, will, 
 for the most part, be worldly in his books. If he is 
 
 * In his History of Henry the Seventh. 
 
108 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 so constituted that he must have great society and the 
 smile of the grand inonarque, he will see every thing 
 from that point of view, — will love and hate, and 
 praise and sath-ise, from that point of view. Conven- 
 tionalism in sentiment will stamp itself on what he 
 does ; and I should as soon expect beautiful natural 
 emotion from him (and therefore poetry as the 
 expression of that), as I should expect to see the 
 chamberlain's official stick break into blossoms ! 
 
 ISTow, all high satire needs both sentiment and 
 humor : feeling is the essential condition of both 
 of these. They are both in Juvenal ; and I should 
 not have introduced Sir David Lindsay (even though 
 I belong to Scotland, and love its history), if I had 
 not seen quite clearly that the bottom of his character 
 was huge natural sentiment, which made him love 
 and sympathise, — which made him satirical when it 
 was necessary for these qualities to fight against their 
 opposites. Boileau, I think, as a character, was 
 deficient in heartiness and spontaneity ; and his 
 laughter echoes the want. It is clear and fine, and it 
 is not ungenial ; but it is not warm and deep, — itiis 
 not passionate and tender. 
 
 What do we learn from him ? Certainly a great 
 many ingenious things, illustrative of the age in which 
 he lived : — that it is a pity you should be a fool, if 
 you want to be an author ; that it is a pity you 
 should write verses with a fatal deficiency of ear. 
 His own main fight in the world was against rival 
 authors, in his attempt to establish a pure classical 
 style in France; hence we never go very far without 
 meeting cuts at Chapelain and the Abbe" Cotin, 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DKYDEN. 109 
 
 These are the very best specimens of light ridicule 
 to be met any where. Every body remembers that 
 abbe" by these attacks, — and very galling they must 
 have been to a sensitive man ; particularly as Boileau 
 was so extremely felicitous in expression, that the 
 jokes are the most portable in the world; as easy 
 to consume and as light to carry as ion-ions. Yon 
 know how easily a wit, or set of wits, can fix a name 
 on a person or an institution. When Paris heard 
 that every body naturally slept at the sermons of 
 Cotin, the next effect was, that it became ridiculous 
 to try and keep awake there. Society is very timid 
 about sarcasm, as we know from all memoirs ; and 
 once a wit, every body is prepared to laugh with 
 you. Boileau had plenty of enemies ; but the world 
 is always ready to be amused, which is achieved by 
 a good laugh ; while a serious vindication, which 
 demands sympathy, threatens instantly to be a bore. 
 When the world laughed with Boileau, it was not 
 that its heart was touched, — his influence does not 
 affect that region ; it tickles your sense of the 
 ridiculous, to be sure ; but that, you must observe, is 
 not a high feeling ; that, I suppose, we all have ; but 
 we have it in common with the heartless and even 
 with the dull. To be able to laugh at something 
 which touches our sense of the ridiculous is a very 
 low stage in the development of the human nature : 
 it is common to savages, to the ignorant and low 
 amo»g the population ; and it is a faint participation 
 in it which we see, or perhaps fancy we see, in the 
 chattering of the ape. Without presuming to make 
 decisions on those deep questions about the nature 
 
a 
 
 110 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 and conditions of humor, which employ the philoso- 
 pher, I may venture to say, that it is the presence or 
 absence of the heart-element which distinguishes high 
 from low humor. This can be at once ascertained 
 by applying the test to the humorists in literature, — ■ 
 by any one who analyses the laughter produced in 
 him by Horace Walpole, and compares it with that 
 which is excited by the family of the Shandies ; by 
 any one who contrasts the quiet, genial, humorous 
 delight excited by the comedy of Lamb, with the 
 pleasure produced in so many people by the works of 
 Theodore Hook. 
 
 Boileau's amusement as a writer, which every 
 body who takes up his Satires becomes sensible of, 
 I is produced by an appeal to your sense of the ridicu- 
 lous, as a sensible and polished person. You laugh 
 with him from the same instinct which would make 
 you laugh, if the parson came into the pulpit of your 
 church with his nightcap on, and proceeded, with 
 solemn unconsciousness of the fact, to begin the ser- 
 vice. In proportion to your social feeling of his 
 extreme respectability would your sense of the con- 
 trast be ; and though you would not show it so much, 
 you would feel it more acutely and vividly than 
 honest Jack Gibbins the gardener, whose immediate 
 sensation would rather be awe, and his reflection, a 
 Lord a' mercy ! that the poor gentleman should 
 make such a figure of himself. Boileau, I mean to 
 say, deals most in conventional ridicule. Hence he 
 appeals as an author to the polished classes, and to 
 the more worldly among them ; and further, I fear, 
 if he was not satirical, he would be nothing. When 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLEK, DRYDEN. Ill 
 
 he discourses, he is often a bore; and if you view 
 him apart from his exquisite faculty of expression, 
 you admire him less and less. 
 
 ^ It -will serve to give us a just view of his true 
 status, if we inquire into the degree of invention 
 he possessed. He professes himself an imitator ; and 
 therefore in his general satires, — as, for instance, 
 when he attacks false nobility — nobility without 
 personal virtue (the subject of his fifth satire*), — 
 he takes up the whole view, the actual contrasts and 
 points (to use a significant expression) of the Roman 
 Satirists. Of course we know the talent required 
 to make a modern application of the old Satires. 
 But again, a bad effect of this is, that one is apt, on 
 taking up a traditionary subject, because it stands 
 among the satirical models, to lash away at evils 
 which really do not call for lashing in our own day. 
 Often enough you find in satirical literature, owing 
 to unwise imitation, that " Catiline " and " Clodius " 
 are applied to unhappy moderns, who, though bad 
 enough in their way, are no riper for murder and 
 sacrilege than the indignant satirist himself; who 
 also, by the by, has no earnest conviction that Cati- 
 line and Clodius are ; but simply intends to write a 
 satire, and is himself a harmless, good-natured fel- 
 low, who lashes his leonine tail, not to work himself 
 into a cruel anger, but only that you may admire the 
 flexibility of the tail ! I cannot help considering our 
 friend Boileau Despreaux one of the promoters of 
 conventional satire generally ; and thinking that in 
 particular he might, if a great satirist, have found 
 
 * As of Juvenal's admirable eighth. 
 
112 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 objects for satire, of which, as it was, he steered very- 
 clear. 
 
 However, when we remember that he had a right 
 to choose what kind of satirist he would be ; also 
 that nature had helped to choose for him; that he 
 had a 'right to base himself on the Classics, and to 
 be ostentatiously servile to the grand monarque if 
 he chose, — we must take good care to praise his real 
 merit, and his execution of what he took in hand. 
 His style is charming ; he is clear, lively, and rapier- 
 like in the extreme. His forte, to my mind, is epi- 
 gram : he winds up a run of easy verses with nothing 
 particular in them, with some sharp turn of thought, 
 -which hits the object in the bull's eye, and sets the 
 bell ringing. He is a capital man to quote, and one 
 of those men who can be judged of from quotations. 
 He is a cutting, but not a bitter or bloody satirist ; 
 and his blows, sharp, pungent, and annoying, have a 
 good deal the effect of a pea-shooter. 
 
 He exercised for generations an authority which, 
 to many moderns, seems quite beyond what is justi- 
 fied by his genius or his character. He was of great 
 literary weight in England in his day ; and Tickell 
 tells us, that the " famous M. Boileau formed his 
 first opinion of the English genius for poetry from 
 reading Mr. Addison's Latin poems." Poor M. Boi- 
 leau ! He must have departed from this world with 
 strange notions about the English genius. John 
 Milton had gone to his grave in the famous M. Boi- 
 leau's own time ; and there was not a " drawer," 
 whose vocation in the time of M. Boileau's grand- 
 father had been to bring in Canary in the Mermaid, 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLEE, DEYDEN. 113 
 
 who did not know more about English literature 
 than this ! 
 
 During this same century England produced one 
 great comic and satirical writer, who is peculiarly an 
 original man, one of our own making, in the person 
 of Butler, the author of Hudibras. We know little 
 about his personal history ; " all," says Dr. Johnson, 
 " that can be told with certainty is, that he was 
 poor."* This remarkable and beautiful expression 
 of the Doctor's gives us the essence of what was tem- 
 porary and conditional and material about Samuel 
 Butler. The essence, however, of the man in the 
 high sense, his genius, we have in his works ; and in 
 them we can see, too, his character. He had been 
 secretary to some knight of the Hudibras cast ; had 
 held other situations of the sort; had seen a good 
 deal of English life ; and was a man of large reading. 
 Considering that he produced the Cavalier Epic, and 
 the one great lasting work of literature which that 
 party have to set up against the JPa/radise Lost of the 
 other side, something ought to have been done for 
 Butler, as the phrase goes. A very clever man, said 
 the Royalists ; King Charles reads him. Buckingham 
 admired him. But so the matter ended. Butler 
 died ;f and lies buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, 
 Covent Garden, just by the spot where they put up 
 
 * " In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, — a man whose 
 name can only perish with the language. The date of his birth is 
 doubtful ; the mode and place of bis education are unknown ; the events 
 of his life are variously related ; and all that can be told with certainty 
 is, that he was poor." Lives of the Poets. 
 
 t He died in 1680. 
 
114 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 the hustings, and talk what poor Butler happily 
 cannot hear.* 
 
 Many of the literary men of that day, as well as 
 Butler, were Royalists : Bishop Hall, who lived to 
 a great age, and died in 1656 ; Cowley, Herrick, 
 and others. Nothing can be more natural than that 
 there should have been Royalist satirists, therefore. 
 The English are a satirical people. Bacon tells us, in 
 a work previously quoted, that on a certain occasion, 
 " swarms and volleys of libels sprang forth containing 
 bitter invectives against the king ; for which five 
 common people suffered death ;" — this being the way 
 of reviewing satirical literature in those days ! During 
 the Civil "War the same weapons of satire were 
 resorted to. Cowley wrote a Satire on the Puritans ; 
 Clieveland was immensely popular on the same side ; 
 but Butler's work is the only one which can be said 
 to live as a part of our literature. 
 
 Butler seems, from JEudibras, to have been some- 
 what of an odd fellow, — a quaint and eccentric man. 
 His reading and illustration are all out of the way ; 
 and his manner, dry and crabbed at one time, flowing 
 and free and popular at another. I should call him, 
 therefore, a humorist, not only in the literary sense, 
 but in the sense in which we apply the word to one 
 who has some strong peculiarity of character, which 
 he indulges, in whims, in oddities, in comic extrav- 
 agances, according to the bent of his inclination. 
 There is a kind of likeness between Butler and old 
 
 * He was buried " in the yard belonging to the church of St. Paul, 
 Covent Garden, at the west end of the said yard, on the north side 
 under the wall of the said church, and under that wall which parts the 
 yanl from the common highway." Dr. Grey's Ilndihras, 1744. 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLEK, DRYDEN. 1 15 
 
 Burton of the Anatomy of Melancholy. Both men 
 had various and unusual reading ; both were at once 
 comic and grave ; and both, amidst wild and homely 
 pleasantly, shoot out flashes of thought and fancy 
 which are equal to the efforts of anybody. 
 
 I have little doubt that it was the peculiarity of 
 Butler's temperament which prevented his getting on 
 in the world in those days. With his wit and know- 
 ledge of the world, he only wanted a little courtier 
 talent to have got the something which, according to 
 every body, ought to have been done for him, actually 
 done. Charles the Second's court was not inaccessi- 
 ble to attractive qualities in either sex^All you 
 wanted (besides wit) was tolerable breeding and some 
 audacity. But I can quite see, from what Butler 
 reveals of his character, that he was a shy, strange, 
 and unmanageable sort of a man, who did not " come 
 out " in society. 
 
 Among humorous writers he must always occupy 
 a very high place. He is a thinker, old Butler, as 
 you see through all his odd comic poem ; while as a 
 man of wit, it would be perhaps impossible to name 
 one in whom wit is so absolutely redundant. In par- 
 ticular, his range of witty illustrations, sayings which 
 join wit and fancy (the wit, as it were, taking wings 
 of fancy), he is not surpassed, I do not think he is 
 equalled, in the whole range of comic writers with 
 whom I have any acquaintance. You remember — 
 
 " For loyalty is still the same, 
 Whether it win or lose the game ; 
 True as the dial to the sun, 
 Although it be not shone upon." 
 
116 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Ho image can be more exquisite than this : — and the 
 variety of them is the most remarkable thing about 
 him. Some brilliant men can only draw from a par- 
 ticular province; but Butler lays not only nature 
 under contribution, but history and the arts, and the 
 follies and fancies of mankind, laws, and customs, 
 and sciences, and the common fashions of life. He is 
 the most figurative of writers. He seems to hold his 
 intellect on the feudal condition of rendering a rose, 
 or a snowball, or some symbolic object, at any moment 
 it may be required. 
 
 Sudibras, as a portion of satirical literature, occu- 
 pies the historical position, nominally, of a satire on 
 the Anti-Royalist party ; but its merit consists in the 
 higher fact, of its containing satire on the world's 
 weaknesses generally. The fine sayings which are 
 now quoted (almost as often as Shakspeare's) from its 
 pages tell with equal force against all parties. I de- 
 cline to concede Butler to the Royalists as their pecu- 
 liar property. In his Remains* he satirises the vices 
 
 * Genuine Remains, edited by Thyer, 1759. These should be read 
 by all who would fully appreciate Butler's powers. The prose works, 
 Characters and Thoughts on various Subjects, are full of keen sense and 
 wit. In these is found the good joke against a degenerate noble, that, 
 " like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is under 
 ground;" a joke which Hazlitt quotes as his friend Holcroft's, with 
 much applause. I quote a paragraph or two from the Thoughts : 
 
 " Most men owe their misfortunes rather to their want of dishonesty 
 than of wit." 
 
 " This age will serve to make a very pretty farce for the next, if it 
 have any wit at all to make use of it." 
 
 In the Characters he has this reflection : 
 
 "•AH acts of oblivion have of late times been found to extend rather 
 to loyal and faithful services done, than rebellions and treasons com- 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. H7 
 
 of Charles the Second's time, the fashions and the 
 wickednesses of that basest of all periods, just as severe- 
 ly as he does the bad aspects of the life of the oppo- 
 site party. Chance had led him amongst the worst 
 specimens of the various sections who were on the 
 side of the Parliament. But still, whatever our views 
 may be, we must allow every satirist his opinions, and 
 give him full powers of castigation against the knaves 
 and fools of all sides. The Parliamentary party had 
 its ludicrous side undoubtedly ; and it will be long 
 before men forget the pictures of sectarian principles 
 drawn by Hudibras. His epigrams are our watch- 
 words now, when a rancorous and hypocritical bigot 
 attempts to thrust himself between us and the sun, or 
 to poison God's wholesome air with the odor of his 
 sanctity ! 
 
 The eight-syllable verse of Hudibras is very favor- 
 able to comic and laughable satire ; and has been ad- 
 1 mirably used by Swift and Churchill also. The style 
 of Hudibras is very homely and effective, as in the 
 following lines, where he gives us the satirical view 
 of the opening of his century's " troubles :" 
 
 " Did they for this draw down the rabble, 
 With zeal and noises formidable, 
 And make all cries about the town 
 Join throats to cry the bishops down 1 
 
 mitted. For benefits are like flowers, sweet only and fresh when they 
 are newly gathered, but stink when they grow stale and wither." 
 
 How melancholy is the tone here ! — I may add, that in his character 
 of the " Risker," he gives us a good notion of the satire the cavalier 
 ranks were open to — had the wonderful light of his humor been turned 
 on them for the purpose. 
 
 UK 
 
118 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 When tinkers called aloud to settle 
 Church-discipline for patching kettle ; 
 The oyster- women locked their fish up, 
 And trudged away to cry ' No bishop !' 
 Botchers left old clothes in the lurch, 
 And fell to turn and patch the Church. 
 Some cried the Covenant! instead 
 Of pudding, pies, and gingerbread ; 
 And some for brooms, old boots and shoes, 
 Bawl'd out to purge the Commons' House. 
 Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry 
 A Gospel-preaching ministry ; 
 And some for old suits, coats, or cloak, 
 No surplices, nor service-book. 
 A strange harmonious inclination 
 Of all degrees to Reformation !" 
 
 The queerly-laughing satirist, and good-natured after 
 all ! 
 
 " On Butler who can think without just rage, 
 The glory and the scandal of the age 1 
 Fair were his hopes when first he came to town, 
 Met every where with welcome of renown. 
 
 But what reward for all had he at last, 
 After a life in dull expectance past ? 
 The wretch, at summing up his misspent days, 
 Found nothing left but poverty and praise : 
 Of all his gains by verse he could not save 
 Enough to purchase flannel and a grave. 
 Reduced to want, he in due time fell sick, 
 Was fain to die, and be interr'd on tick ; 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. 119 
 
 And well might bless the fever that was sent 
 To rid him hence, and his worse fate prevent." 
 
 So sings one who died three years after Butler, in the 
 thirtieth year of his age, after having achieved the 
 satiric laurel, — one to whose memory Dryden paid a 
 (tribute — John Oldham.* He has been called the 
 ' " English Juvenal :" but the great name of Juvenal 
 must not be too lightly bestowed. The genuine 
 satiric wrath and satiric wit were in Oldham, un- 
 doubtedly, — the impulsive heart, the ready hand, the 
 quick eye ; yet he has not left any thing up to the stand- 
 ard at which his promise induced his contemporaries to 
 rate him. But Dryden kindly and gracefully likens 
 him to Marcellus ; so let us give to his memory, in 
 thought, the " lilies " and the " purple flowers " with 
 
 * Born 9th August, 1653 ; died 9th December, 1683. He was the 
 son of a nonconformist minister, and educated at Oxford. He was for 
 some time usher of the free-school at Croydon, and a tutor in private 
 families, but found his way (as all wits do sooner or later) to London. 
 He was taken a great deal of notice of, as sour Antony Wood, who had 
 no great love for poets, light-literature men, and the like, testifies. " He 
 became acquainted," says Antony, " with that noted poet for obscenity 
 and blasphemy, John Earl of Rochester, who seemed much delighted in 
 the mad ranting and debauched specimens of poetry of this author, 
 Oldham." William Pierrepoint, Earl of Kingston, took Oldham under 
 his kind patronage ; and at his seat the young satirist was carried off 
 by the small-pox. For Dryden's lines to his memory, — 
 
 " Farewell, too little and too lately known, 
 Whom I began to think and call my own," — 
 
 see Scott's Dryden, vol. xi. p. 99. Oldham has imitated both Juvenal 
 and Horace very successfully. Works and Remains, seventh edition, 
 1710. 
 
120 SATIRE AND '■ SATIRISTS. 
 
 which Marcellus' grave is honored in Virgil's divine 
 lines.* 
 
 For the memory of John Dryden, the last satirist 
 who is to occupy us this evening, I entertain an un- 
 affected regard and a high admiration, neither of 
 which are at all lessened by the attacks made on him 
 of late years. Such attacks on men of the Drydenian 
 rank one must read in the course of one's duties as a 
 litterateur ; just as the poor weary sentinel at the 
 gate of a fortified town must cry out, "Who goes 
 there?" and be wide-awake to receive the comer, 
 whoever he may be. A general-officer going the 
 rounds comes ; the sentry turns out and presents 
 arms. Comes another step: Who goes there? — a 
 poor country clown with a donkey-cart, carrying cab- 
 bages : him, too, the sentry must hail, and keep his 
 eye on, and bid him " Pass, friend," with his donkey. 
 ^IJhave satisfied myself that Dryden was a warm- 
 hearted, generous-minded, modest man,' who dearly 
 loved literature, worked har"3~aFIt7per?ormed incom- 
 parable services to^it-by. his fine~Tntellect, and was 
 poorly rewarded in his time ; "anfljHteave it to pros- 
 perous successors ofTiTnTtb deal with what was weak 
 in his character, and unhappy in his position,f to sneer 
 
 * a ' 
 
 ' Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenis 
 Purpureos spargam flores, animamque nepotis 
 His saltern accumulem donis et fungar inani 
 Munere." 
 t Mr. Bell's publication {Poetical Works of Dryden, edited by Robert 
 Bell, vol. i. p. 56) of the Exchequer warrant of 6th May, 1684, has 
 altered the complexion of one charge against Dryden. Dryden did not 
 become a Roman Catholic in return for a hundred a vear from James 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLEK, DRYDEN. 121 
 
 at his memory, and, elated by a success won by meaner 
 qualities, to thank God they are not as other men are, 
 or even as this poet ! My present business with him 
 is in his capacity of satirist; but in that relation we 
 can scarcely appreciate him without glancing at his 
 characteristics generally. 
 
 Dryden's nominal rank is that of a poet,— and I 
 am ready enough to acknowledge all his merits : but 
 a more accurate definition of him is that of a man-of- 
 letters. He was a teacher and illustrator of literature 
 of all kinds ; a fine prose writer* and translator, a 
 dramatist, and didactic-verse essayist. He spent 
 seven years at Cambridge, and was all his life essen- 
 tially a book-man, though any thing but a pedant. 
 He read during the morning, and wrote ; dined with 
 his family at two ; and then went to Will's Coffee- 
 house, where he talked about reading and writing, 
 while he smoked his pipe. There is this interest, too, 
 about him,' — he was one of the earliest men who made 
 authorship his profession, and faced the world upon 
 that ground : he was a kind of literary gardener, and 
 sold you a violet, or a slip from his laurel-bush, with 
 the most business-like impartiality. He wrote and 
 translated at so much a line ;f and if a volume of 
 
 the Second. This will annoy some men-of-letters ; but it is true. Of 
 course, it is still open to lovers of English literature (!) to maintain, that 
 he turned Catholic, in order that the additional pension of Charles might 
 be recognised and renewed by James. If a man chooses to think so, 
 who can hinder him 1 
 
 * Those who overrate Addison constantly choose to forget the prose 
 of Dryden and Cowley, — quite as natural, familiar, and easy, — and more 
 powerful. 
 
 t " He usually received fifty guineas for about fifteen hundred lines,' 7 
 says Malone ; — far smaller pay than is now-a-days got by libelling him ! 
 
122 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 translations appeared too small for the money, added 
 a long and charming discourse on the subject by way 
 of preface, and threw that in !* He wrote prologues 
 for a couple of guineas a-piece ; and authors and book- 
 sellers went to the famous man's shop and bought what 
 they wanted. He took up the tradition of dedications, 
 and got presents for dedicating ; — but it was unfortu- 
 nate for him that the tradition was outworn, or be- 
 coming out- worn, in his time. When your great men 
 are no longer fit to be your patrons, when money has 
 become the patron, and the sentiment of loyalty and 
 kindness has vanished from the relation between merit 
 and the great, then don't dedicate to the "great!" 
 Dryden, however, did not feel the sad propriety of 
 this yet ; and it was natural for him to dedicate : he 
 over-did it, I admit, in the mere profusion of elegant 
 language which flowed from him naturally whenever 
 he took pen in hand ; but he was no more debased by 
 it than a portrait-painter is debased because he flatters 
 a likeness. 
 
 The cause of all Dryden's embarrassments was, that 
 he took np literature as a profession. He was a man 
 of very good family and connections ; and if he had 
 sold himself to making money, the way to do it was 
 surely open enough. Only his instinct made him im- 
 prove the English language : he would 
 
 * " Read all the prefaces of Dryden, 
 
 For these our critics much confide in, 
 Though merely writ at first for filling, 
 To raise the volume's price a shilling.'' 
 
 So sings " Cousin Swift :" but Malone has shown that he was wrong. 
 The truth is, Dryden loved writing, and wrote from his heart. 
 
BUTLEK, DEYDEX. 123 
 
 "join 
 
 The varying verse, the full-resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine." 
 
 (Pope.) 
 
 And he would follow his intellectual instinct ! Of 
 course he had a penalty to pay for his independence 
 and his immortality. Literature was an anomalous 
 profession, without organization and known status. 
 Many a man of meaner talents than Dryden has made 
 a huge fortune by them, and has established his fam- 
 ily in the peerage.. Dryden inevitably had to suffer ; 
 he was glad to sell himself to a theatre to write so 
 many plays a year ; glad to get a small pension, which 
 was irregularly paid ; he worked away under disad- 
 vantages of many sorts, and was probably never 
 better "off all his life than a brother of his, a grocer,* 
 whose connection with trade was probably, according 
 to Scott, a sore point with the titled family into Avhich 
 the poet married. 
 
 There was about John Dryden that element of good- 
 ness and bonhomie, that brotherly quality of kindness, 
 which belongs to certain personages in history, and 
 for the sake of which we shut our ears to what men 
 (who are no better) .say about their public misfSkes. 
 You love Dryden ; you like his warm-hearted zeal for 
 poetry and knowledge. I can at once discern the ele- 
 ment in him which made him drop away from his 
 Puritan connections, and join the Stuart cause. He 
 came up to London with his manners trhged with the 
 
 * Erasmus Dryden, of King Street, Westminster, who late in life 
 succeeded to the family baronetcy. 
 
124 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 austerity of a Puritan household,* such as we can 
 fancy that of a country gentleman in those homely 
 and serious days. He was a handsome, plain-man- 
 nered, shy boy, with these sable leading-strings still 
 perceptible in his walk. But Puritanism is one way 
 of looking at nature,— and when sincere, of course, a 
 right worshipful one ; and the artistic and literary 
 view of life is a different one! A man of wit and 
 social sympathies, a lover of the beautiful, and a hu- 
 morist, could not be expected to remain a Puritan. 
 There are sacred birds, and singing birds ; trees that 
 utter oracles, and trees that produce blossoms and 
 fruit for summer afternoons. Young John Dryden 
 followed his bent. 'At the age of thirty-two we are 
 called on to view him with more solemnity, and com- 
 passion too ; for he marries the Lady Elizabeth How- 
 ard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. Dryden's 
 was a good family ; but you must lower your preten- 
 sions if you marry a Howard, unless you are a very 
 high man in that line indeed. This, it seems, was an 
 unhappy marriage ; the lady being proud and passion- 
 ate, and, in fact, rather eccentric. She did not appre- 
 ciate Dryden's intellect ; and Dryden could not appre- 
 ciate hers, for a very satisfactory reason. If we could 
 Iook*into that house in Gerrard Street, Soho (five 
 doors from Newport Street, on the left hand, — I have 
 peered at it with interest many a time), as it existed 
 
 * " Clad in one uniform cloathing of Norwich drugget," according to 
 an old gentleman who wrote a sketch of him in the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine for 1745, and who professed to remember him well. Dryden was 
 always a "homely" man; which is probably what Pope meant when 
 he said he was not " genteel." 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. 125 
 
 when John was there, and the back of it looked out 
 on the gardens of Lord Leicester's house, we should 
 see some odd squabbles perhaps. I fancy that the 
 brothers " in trade " did not present themselves there 
 when her ladyship was in one of her moods, and par- 
 ticularly when she was on good terms with her family, 
 and Sir Robert or the Honorable Edward is coming. 
 The critics remark, that Dryden was always severe on 
 matrimony : — a tolerable proof that matrimony had 
 been severe on him ! 
 
 \He was in the full prime of his intellect when he 
 published his Absalom and Achitqphel and his Mae- 
 Flechnoe j* Satires which will always be remembered 
 among the highest specimens of the art. He went to 
 work to satirize with the same bluff heartin ess.with 
 which he did every thing else. HijTjvarm ,natn*e 
 made him scorn and lash as it made him love ; and his 
 bright wit and fine versification were as ready for an 
 enemy as to praise a friend. He makes no disguise 
 of his relish for satire, and says plainly that you have 
 aright to "attack a particular person when he has 
 become a public nuisance." The ethics of Satire are 
 in an unsatisfactory state ; and I fear that if you 
 applied the moral test strictly, and made justice your 
 standard, you would have to strike out a good deal of 
 very fine satire. "Who is to be the judge when a man 
 has become a public nuisance ? Obviously the satir- 
 ist himself ! But Dryden was sincere. He seized the 
 thong with genuine impulses ; and he had been much 
 calumniated, though he was the king of English lite- 
 rature. I sympathize with Dryden. I believe in Sa- 
 
 * Absalom and Achitophel appeared in 1681 ; Mack-Flccknoe in 1682. 
 
126 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 tire myself; and think that the literary man should 
 lay about him on proper occasion. 'But there is a dif- 
 ference between a spontaneous effusion of rage and 
 hate, and a cold and malignant preparation of bitter- 
 ness. / The satire which indignation makes will always 
 be the most sympathized with ; and the genial man, 
 like Dryden, the most admired. 
 
 Dryden professes to prefer Juvenal to Horace for 
 his own reading ;* and this I can quite understand. 
 There are the marks of personal heat in old Dryden's 
 Satires, and generally a blending of humor and passion, 
 a qualification of scorn by fun, which show you that 
 it was natural for him to hold that opinion. In him, 
 as in Juvenal and some others, the personality and the 
 savageness are accompanied by traces of the satirist's 
 other private qualities — his wisdom, fancy, homeli- 
 ness. The rod with which he castigates has the leaves 
 and blossoms still sticking to it. The goodness of his 
 nature shows itself when he is angry, even ; conse- 
 quently you sympathize with him, and do not pity his 
 victims so much. Though Dryden's great successor, 
 Pope, polished and elaborated more, and ever had 
 the file in his thin fingers, — though he is more uni- 
 formly finished and cutting, he has not more brilliant 
 strokes than Dryden, nor finer-sounding lines. And 
 besides, though Pope had noble personal characteris- 
 tics, I cannot bring myself to believe that he was so 
 good-hearted a man as Dryden. The faults with 
 which Dryden's memory is reproached are strictly 
 weaknesses, deficiencies of moral energy ; all his itn- 
 
 * In the Essay on Satire, addressed to Dorset, in which the last 
 quoted remark also occurs. 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN. 127 
 
 pulses were good : — lie was not malignant, nor sly, nor 
 artificial. As a satirist, he will bear honorable com- 
 parison with — indeed will appear the superior of Pope, 
 if the motives of their satire be contrasted. 
 #*The Absalom and Aohitophel labors under disad- 
 vantages as a political poem, with a particular form of 
 invention ; for who will trouble himself much about 
 so mean a political period ? But the special delinea- 
 tions of character are admirably good. " Zimri " 
 is familiar as well as immortal. In the second part, 
 two of Dryden's enemies, Settle and Shadwell, appear, 
 and ludicrously peer out from that tapestry of the 
 satirist's working for the benefit of all succeeding 
 times. Shadwell glories in the scriptural name of 
 Og: 
 
 " Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home, 
 Round as a globe, and liquored every chink, 
 Goodly and great he sails behind his link : 
 With all that bulk there's nothing lost in Og, 
 For every inch that is not fool is rogue. 
 . * . . . . . . * 
 
 With wealth he was not trusted ; for heaven knew 
 What 'twas of old to pamper up a Jew • 
 To what would he on quail and pheasant swell, 
 That even on tripe and carrion could rebel? 
 
 A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull, 
 For writing treason, and for writing dull ; 
 To die for faction is a common evil, 
 But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.'' *; 
 
 In Mac-FUcJcnoe, a mock-beroic poem, in which 
 
128 SATIHB AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Dryden makes Shadwell succeed to the throne of 
 Flecknoe, the most abject of bards, he makes Dulness 
 say:— 
 
 " Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he 
 Who stands confirmed in full stupidity ; 
 The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
 But Shadwell never deviates into sense.'' 
 
 — f Pope was a follower of Dryden's, and formed 
 himself upon him : it was Dryden who gave to that 
 English heroic metre its high popularity ; so that 
 down to Byron's time it remained the legitimate and 
 standard measure for a satirist to employ. 
 
 In order that we may see what manner of man 
 Dryden was when he was old, and took the royal 
 seat at Will's, and when his snuff-box was the foun- 
 tain of literary honor, I will read from the well- 
 known passage in which Dean Lockier describes his 
 adventure with him, on the occasion of the Dean's 
 first visit to London : 
 
 " I was about seventeen years of age," say's he, 
 " when I first came to town, — an odd-looking boy, 
 with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness 
 which one always brings out of the country with 
 one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and 
 appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself 
 into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most 
 celebrated wits of the time, who used to resort 
 thither. The second time I ever was there, Mr. 
 Dryden was talking of his own things, as he 
 frequently did, especially of such as had been lately 
 
BOILEAU, BUTLER, DRYDEN". 129 
 
 published. ' If any tiling of mine is good,' says lie, 
 ' 'tis my Mac-Fleclcnoe : and I value myself the more 
 on it, as 'tis the first piece of ridicule written in 
 heroics.' " — Lockier, hearing this, plucked up his 
 spirits so far as to say, in a voice just loud enough to 
 be heard, that Mac-Fkoknoe was a very fine poem ; 
 but that he had not imagined it to be the first that 
 ever was wrote that way. On this Dryden turned 
 round upon him, as surprised at his interrupting ; 
 asked him how long he had been a dealer in poetry, 
 and added with a smile, "But pray, sir, what is it 
 that you did imagine to have been so writ before ? " — 
 Lockier instanced the Lutrin of Boileau, and a poem 
 of Tassoni's. " True," says Dryden ; " I had forgot 
 them." — A little after, as he went out, he spoke to 
 Lockier, and desired him to come and see him ; which 
 Lockier, we may be sure very cheerfully did, and 
 was well acquainted with him as long as he lived. 
 
 His kindness in this way is elsewhere spoken of, 
 and might serve as an example to his inferiors ! It 
 shows that satirical severity is not inconsistent with a 
 character even of uncommon kindliness. The same 
 fact has, I hope, been evidenced in the cases of the 
 men with whom we have dealt up to the present 
 time; and we shall meet with proofs of it, as we 
 continue our progress from the age of Dryden to our 
 own. 
 
 6* 
 
LECTURE IY. 
 
 SWIFT, TOPE, CHURCHILL. 
 
 Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St. Patrick's, 
 has left among his numerous volumes such a mass of 
 Satire, and his whole attitude towards the world was 
 so essentially that of a satirist, that he fairly comes 
 within the province which I have selected to make an 
 excursion in. He is such a huge figure in our litera- 
 ture, and his personal story is so strange, so interest- 
 ing, and so awful, that generation after generation of 
 men gather round his monument with wonder, and 
 try to understand the meaning of it ; — as they gather 
 round a pyramid, and speculate on the moral pheno- 
 mena which produced it. Compared with Swift's life, 
 the lives of his contemporaries are commonplace, and 
 their characters to be read off at first sight. A pious- 
 minded, semi-conventional essayist, with a fine sheen 
 of humor playing over him, — here is his friend Addi- 
 son ; Pope is not such a very difficult man to under- 
 stand ; and Bolingbroke is still easier : — but Swift is a 
 portentous figure. We just begin, I think, to com- 
 prehend and to judge of him fairly, when we admit 
 that he is altogether the most unfortunate man of 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 131 
 
 genius in the history of England. That history is not 
 without several instances of men of genius who have 
 suffered from misfortune. Mere poverty is only bitter 
 in so far as it cramps a man's abilities, and prevents 
 his achieving what Nature has fitted him to achieve. 
 It is bad enough ; and Swift for a while had his share 
 of it. But he had to struggle all his life under far 
 deeper obstructions. He had giant energies, and a 
 wretched field for them ; a soul for worship, in an age 
 of unbelief; a heart for love, yet under the ban of a 
 mysterious destiny ; and he had to fight his fight 
 under the closest of all restrictions, — the restriction on 
 the very energies of life within him, by disease ; — he 
 moved from youth in a cloud of hypochondria. Her- 
 cules had the poisoned shirt on him all his life. 
 
 Now I am quite aware that all the criticism in the 
 world will not make Swift an every-day favorite ; he 
 is an exceptional man — entirely an out-of-the-way 
 person. A building, his fame is (as I have observed 
 elsewhere*) more like a Tower of Pisa than an ordin- 
 ary edifice, — far from straight to the eye, according to 
 the established notion of what a tower should be. 
 Well, let us admit the fact ; but what then ? The 
 tower has another relation besides its relation to our 
 eye ; it has its relation to the centre of gravity and 
 the laws of nature; and our business is with them, 
 and to inquire how it is that it stands so firm, and de- 
 fies breeze and rain ? This is the interesting fact 
 about the Tower of Pisa, and cannot be explained by 
 bill-sticking it, much less by pelting it with mud! 
 What we must try to do, is to find out what is essen- 
 
 " In Singleton Fontenoj. 
 
182 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 tial in Swift ; and how did Swift's fortune act upon 
 that? Let us embark upon that mysterious sea, and 
 try for soundings. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that Swift has had very 
 various treatment from critics.* You know he acted in 
 public life with the Tory party ; so of course the "Whigs 
 assail him. Accordingly, you are probably acquainted 
 with Jeffrey's essay on him, — a sharp, slashing, libel- 
 lous assault, as if he were in the dock, and somebody 
 had hired a rhetorician to get him hanged. Jeffrey, 
 with his quick Figaro-like tongue, and his dexterous 
 wrist and arm, was fighting and screeching in those 
 days, in the blue-and-yellow livery, against all comers, 
 — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other men living ; and 
 he took it into his head to do with this dead one as 
 Charles II. did with Cromwell and Admiral Blake, — ■ 
 disinter him, and hang his bones. Well, one likes 
 energy even in a hangman ; and I am not going to say 
 of Jeffrey's Essay that it is not a very capital speci- 
 men of its kind. Only, you observe, all understand- 
 ing of the man is impossible on the system there 
 
 * Were one to judge of Swift by his friendships, — as with Pope, 
 Bolingbroke, Berkeley, Addison, Arbuthnot, Steele, Prior, Gay, &c. 
 &c., — one would rank him high enough ; and indeed his assailants in 
 early days were only the scum of party. The book which supplied ma- 
 terials for much abuse of him was the Remarks, &c. of Lord Orrery, 
 published in 1752, seven years after his death. Orrery calls him " his 
 friend Swift," and blackens him slyly throughout. — There is a good 
 story accounting for this poor dilettante's spite. He had courted and flat- 
 tered Swift with much assiduity : and one day, calling when the Dean 
 was out, found a letter of his own on the table unopened, with " This 
 will keep cold, " written on it in Swift's hand ! This story came from 
 the Rev. Dr. Berkeley, son of the Bishop of Cloyne. See Monck 
 Berkeley's Inquiry. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 133 
 
 adopted. There is no attempt in Jeffrey's Essay to 
 explain Swift as a problem ; it is a brilliant saying 
 and enforcing of every thing about Swift that could 
 possibly look bad in a conventional point of view. If 
 your mind is made up on the anti-Swift side, here is 
 pleasant reading for you ; if you are neither "Whig 
 nor Tory, but a simple lover of truth and nature, 
 who wish to know what the phenomenon of Swift's 
 career meant, here is no help for you. In truth, one 
 is sick of the spirit of such essays as this, and the one 
 by the same writer on Christdbel. It is natural to us 
 to love and believe in great men ; and if they look 
 bad and ugly, we wish to see the fact explained, not 
 crowed over and exulted in. These reviewers do not 
 see their own interest ; if the great men are such bad 
 fellows, what are we to think of the little ones ? 
 
 In our own days, however, we have had an examin- 
 ation of Swift's character by a very superior man to 
 Jeffrey. When a humorist deals with a humorist, one 
 may expect appreciation. The creative power (for the 
 breath of genius is the breath of life) brings a man 
 before you in " his habit as he lived." Mr. Thack- 
 eray's picture of Swift is human and lifelike ; and no 
 man who wishes to know Swift henceforth can dis- 
 pense with it. But ought we to love Swift more than 
 this portrait makes us ? I hope I am properly sensible 
 of the modesty with which it becomes me to give such 
 an opinion. But (and without making my remarks 
 more controversial and polemic than I can help) I 
 wish to lay before you such a view of this great man's 
 character, career, and position, as shall give you a 
 notion of his person more consonant with the admira- 
 
134 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 tion which (whether we love him or not) we must 
 have for his genius. 
 
 In the first place, it may be remarked, that Swift 
 was by no means a man of letters ; and this is the 
 great distinction between him and many satirical wri- 
 ters. In fact he was properly a man of action, and 
 the whole of his writings are eminently practical. 
 He never did and never would have written for writ- 
 ing's sake, nor could have found a vent for his whole 
 nature in that mode of activity. The man-of-letters 
 proper is quite a different nature from his ; his cousin 
 Dryden was as different from him as man could be. 
 The man-of-letters (who is only that) has a peculiar 
 character of his own : he is more a passive man and a 
 thinker than a man of direct energy ; he sees and 
 enjoys action as an intellectual object, and can make 
 beautiful pictures of it. But Jonathan Swift was, 
 from the first, a man of the world ; he observed man- 
 kind, and his studies were all aimed at enabling him 
 to work among them. He gets made Sir William 
 Temple's secretary,* and gets a glimpse of the great 
 
 * He was twenty-one years of age (in 1688) when he began his con- 
 nection with Temple ; whose wife was a relation of his mother's ; 
 whose father had known his family in Ireland ; and who engaged him 
 at " 201. per annum, and board." In 1693 Swift left him ; on which 
 occasion Temple was " extremely angry, '' as he found him useful. In 
 1695 he returned, and remained with him till his death, in 1698. " I 
 was at his death," says Swift in 1726, "as far to seek as ever." 
 " Madam, " to Temple's sister, in 1709, " I pretend not to have had the 
 least share in Sir W. Temple's confidence above his relatives or his com- 
 monest friends : — I have .but too good reasons to think otherwise." 
 (Courtenay's Memoirs of Temple, vol. ii. p. 244.) Even Sir Walter 
 Scott calls Temple " selfish and cold-hearted." (Scott's Swift, vol. xv. 
 p. 260, note.) When Swift, at thirty, applied himself again to the cler- 
 
' SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 135 
 
 ■world, and tries his swan-like wings by watching the 
 flight 'of that stately and artificial peacock. The first 
 of his works in which his peculiar powers are appa- 
 rent was written to serve Temple. He expected 
 Temple to give him his chance. When he did get his 
 chance for himself, and became a working power, he 
 wrote away at pamphlets ; in fact, all his life, his 
 influence was practical. His works of imagination 
 have all the direct object and tendency of spreading 
 opinion and affecting the institutions of the world. 
 He was for and of the world, in its strictest sense ; 
 and his struggle through life was — what ? To get his 
 proper position and influence there ! This was the 
 intellectual side of Swift's life ; and we will first look 
 at it. 
 
 Now I am not going to argue that the writing a 
 good comedy, or book of satires, or any merely lite- 
 rary feat, ought to be rewarded with a feudal title. 
 I think a man with no other claim a fool if he wants 
 it ; I am sure he is a fool if he expects it. But this 
 is quite a different question from the problem : What 
 ought to be done with a thinker and a practical man 
 of genius ? Here you have him in Swift, for example. 
 He makes his appearance in the world of honorable 
 parentage ; he is well-read, of high powers, and says 
 he to society, " What are you going to do with me? " 
 Well, he gets made a secretary to a superannuated 
 mediocrity; and there goes one sheaf of the first crop 
 of his intellect. What is he to do ? How is he to 
 live now that the mediocrity is bound to another 
 
 ical profession, he was duped of an appointment, under circumstances 
 of peculiar infamy 
 
136 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 region, conducted on different principles ? Nothing 
 can be done for him unless he becomes a parson. 
 Let him get that badge, and he may obtain an open- 
 ing. He pauses, — his nature is essentially serious and 
 reverent :* he knows, and, what is more important, 
 he feels the value of religion. f But two considera- 
 tions come in, — what kind of hands has the Church I 
 am to join now got into % Is it in this age the sphere 
 for which my powers are best suited? No other field, 
 however, presents itself : so he takes holy orders ; and 
 there, for some years, does provincial work in obscurity 
 and narrow circumstances. 
 
 Any one who represents Swift's career as guided 
 by a merely selfish wish to get on, does not do justice 
 to all the circumstances; — and how else can we judge 
 of men fairly than by looking at them ? A man of 
 his intellect has a right to expect power and position ; 
 and he may strive for these without being only selfish. 
 It is the indestructible instinct of his faculty to seek 
 a field for its exercise. It is his struggle for the light 
 and the upper air. I do not find that men who are 
 as ambitious as Swift, on a smaller scale, consider 
 themselves dishonored by the struggle to get fair re- 
 cognition in the world. He is down — this first genius 
 of his time — in a country place in Ireland, in the 
 prime of his life, doing duties that some thousands of 
 men are competent to do. He pants for air, and play 
 
 * " At first it may seem a paradox, but it is perfectly true, that the 
 gravest nations have been the wittiest ; and in those nations some of 
 the gravest men.'' Landor. 
 
 t " Although he has been often accused of irreligion, nothing of that 
 kind appeared in his conversation or behavior." Orrery. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUKCHILL. 137 
 
 for his great limbs ; and leaves this pond, where he 
 can scarcely stretch them, to revel in the sea of the 
 great world. Swift did what Nature had intended 
 him for — what he was best fitted for — (therefore his 
 duty, in a far higher sense than it was his duty to read 
 the collect to clowns) — when he came up to London 
 and joined Harley and Bolingbroke, and was the life 
 and soul of that Tory ministry. 
 
 It may be very convenient, but I protest against its 
 being just, to omit all mention of the peculiar social 
 questions which belong to the matter of Swift's posi- 
 tion in this country. It is a question of high import- 
 ance, — why such a man had no better position ? 
 Your Harleys, and your St. Johns (not to mention a 
 crew whose names live only in epigrams and in peer- 
 ages), parcel out every thing amongst themselves. It 
 is like a Saturnalian feast, where the slaves have the 
 good things, and their masters wait upon them. That 
 is the effect of looking at the Queen- Anne period to 
 me. Davus takes the chair ; Leno is opposite him ; 
 Gulosus is beside them : and at these orgies of power 
 and plunder, who are the waiters ? Jonathan Swift 
 advises the direction of the whole ; Mat Prior comes 
 tumbling in with the wine ; Joseph Addison says 
 grace, and helps the carving, with his sleeves turned 
 up; Mr. Pope sings. A scandalous spectacle, and 
 absurd feast, indeed ! And how shall we understand 
 what makes Swift ferocious and gloomy, if we don't 
 remember the nature of it ? 
 
 I am really at a loss to know why, if it was honor- 
 able for Addison to get himself made Secretary of 
 State, Swift is to be likened to a highwayman for 
 
138 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 seeking a reward for still greater abilities: and I 
 think it of the first importance to recognise the fact, 
 that his public life is (not to veil the matter) an 
 instance of the monstrous and unnatural injustice of 
 the relation between men of genius and English in- 
 stitutions at that period. 
 
 Swift, then, — who, if born in a higher place, might 
 have been any thing ; who, if born in the middle 
 ages, would have been a bishop or primate,- — came 
 up to London, and exercised an influence during the 
 Harley and Bolingbroke days, which one cannot ap- 
 preciate without going to the fountains of information. 
 He held probably the most potent position that a 
 writer has ever held in this country; but all the 
 while held it in a dubious and unrecognised way. He 
 was the patron of men-of-letters ; got them places, and 
 got them money. He " crammed " the ministers ; and 
 his pen was not employed in quizzing hoops or patches, 
 or sneering at City people, — it was an engine of power 
 over all England. He used it as an orator does his 
 tongue, — to do something with. In a word, he was a 
 power in the State ; and, indeed, it is one of the few 
 pleasant things to read about in the records of those 
 days, — how those who, in their hearts, tried to despise 
 him as an " Irish parson," — how, I say, they dreaded 
 him ; how they flattered and courted him ; and how 
 they felt that he was their master ! When Harley 
 and Bolingbroke were quarrelling, and could not ac- 
 commodate their egotisms, Swift mediated. As he 
 had helped to govern England, so that his name 
 occurs in the public history of the time, I suppose he 
 expected England to do something for him, in return. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 139 
 
 Harley got his share, and Bolingbroke his share ; and 
 the tag-rag and bob-tail of party, we know, are never 
 without their share ; — now where is the mighty sel- 
 fishness of Swift's expecting hist I deny that Swift 
 had no motives but those "highwayman" ones of 
 getting place. A man is not necessarily a " highway- 
 man" because he wants his proper position. Yet, 
 after all the genius he spent in politics they put him 
 off with the exile in Dublin,— where he had a decent 
 place, perhaps, for an ordinary parson ; but no ade- 
 quate place for the first man of his age. There, — he 
 was like the giant under iEtna ; when he moved him- 
 self, he set going a volcano of fire and mud. But 
 before I grumble at his misanthropy, I must have 
 more respect than I have at present for the men whom 
 he hated. 
 
 I like Swift for this, — he was a great, genuine, 
 brawny, outspoken man. He moves about, in the 
 court-world of Anne's time, the most genuine man in 
 it, at all events ; the man whose talk, action, writing, 
 loves and hates, are most of a piece, and most cohe- 
 rent and natural. Bolingbroke's writingis artificial and 
 stilted compared with Swift's, — very elegant, and full 
 of grace and point, but tainted with affectation and 
 falsity. Swift's is the plainest in the world, and the 
 most perspicuous. It is of a piece with his letters, his 
 talk, and with what his action naturally was ; — but to 
 act, in his circumstances, was a very difficult matter. 
 
 When he came into the world, observe, the evil of 
 his position was instantaneously felt. The " Irish 
 parson," the ex-dependent of Temple, — they treated 
 him every way but in a genuine and manly one. 
 
140 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 They flattered him, they feared him ; but they looked 
 on him as an Aladdin, about whom the best thing 
 was his wonderful lamp.* They liked Aladdin to 
 come to dinner, and bring his lamp along with him, 
 you know ! He tells you himself, that the Lord- 
 Treasurer affected to be sulky and distant one day, 
 after having been friendly the last. Swift took him 
 to task at once ; and told him that he must not treat 
 him like a boy. He had had enough of that with 
 Temple, when he was young and poor, and only be- 
 ginning to feel his strength. He tells us so. He 
 had to make that all clear to my Lord-Treasurer, 
 — whose ears must have tingled when he found him- 
 self set right on a point of breeding. But instances 
 are not few. James Bridges, Duke of Chandos, 
 was the Dean's friend, it seems, till he got the duke- 
 dom ; or, as the Dean has it in the beginning of an 
 epigram — 
 
 " James Bridges and the Dean had long been friends, 
 James is beduked, of course their friendship ends ; 
 And sure the Dean deserved a sharp rebuke, 
 From knowing James, to boast he knows the Duke ! " 
 
 Not a dunce nor a fool of quality but thought he 
 had the right, while many tried to exercise it, of 
 playing this kind of trick with Swift. The brusque- 
 ness of his manner was assumed, as a kind of protec- 
 tion against insolence and pertness ; and, whatever 
 else may be said of it, can be explained without 
 imputation upon his heart. There are several 
 
 * " He was employed, not trusted," says Lord Orrery. This is not 
 quite true ; but it is certain that he was deceived. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 141 
 
 anecdotes of the display of what we may call the 
 Orson-element* in the Dean : — as that of Lady Some- 
 body, who declined to sing to him when her husband 
 asked her, — when Swift said, " I suppose you take 
 me for one of your hedge-parsons." The lady cried. 
 There was a scene. When Swift next visited the 
 house, he said, ' ; Well, madam, are you as proud and 
 ill-natured as you were last time I saw you ? " " No," 
 says she, smiling ; " I'll sing for you, if yon please." 
 This was a good-hearted lady ; and you may depend 
 she had better means of knowing the true state of 
 the case, and the precise degree of real offensiveness 
 in Swift's conduct, than we have. The fact is, Swift 
 was a great favorite with women :f I don't mean 
 only with your Stellas and Yanessas, but with 
 sensible cultivated ladies, who had not a passion for 
 him, like these famous two, but who liked his society. 
 His deanery was a great haunt of the most estimable 
 ladies in Dublin.:}: And if you want to know how 
 the great ladies estimated him, you have a specimen 
 of it in the # letters to him by the Duchess of Queens- 
 berry, who wrote to him as a woman might write to 
 her relation — letters of genuine affection and respect, 
 — at the time when she had Gay in her house ; and 
 
 * « 
 
 1 Swift," said Pope, " has an odd blunt way, that is mistaken by 
 strangers for ill-nature." But why should we now-a-days so mistake 
 it 1 
 
 f He had the esteem of such ladies as Lady Betty Germain, Lady 
 Betty Brownlowe, Lady Kerry, and others. " Adieu, my honored old 
 friend," writes the first of these, in one of the later letters. 
 
 t Lord Orrery, with an affectation of epigram as feeble as might be 
 expected, speaks of the " deanery" as being a kind of " seraglio of 
 virtuous women." Remarks, $c. 
 
142 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 when Mr. Thackeray would insinuate that Swift was 
 courting her patronage through Gay.* You best 
 understand what a magnetism of force of intellect, 
 and of character, was about Swift, when you see how 
 people wrote to him ;f how he beat down all 
 prejudices, and conquered all spitefulness, ■ — which 
 yet, I fear, broke out in sly traits of personal insolence, 
 and rewarded transcendent intellect with a third-rate 
 Church appointment ! 
 
 The common explanation of the smallness of Swift's 
 recognition is, that he was destined to be a bishop, 
 
 * See his English Humorists, p. 176. The period here spoken of is 
 1729 "and 1730. Swift had long before gained his highest fame. 
 " Pray, do you come to England this year? " writes Gay. " I wish you 
 would ; and so does the Duchess of Queensberry. She often wishes 
 she had known you. She sends you her services, &c." Had Swift 
 wished to " warm himself in her radiance," he had nothing to do but 
 accept her many invitations to Amesbury ; which he never did, 
 however. After Gay's death, the duchess wrote to Swift, saying, " I 
 wish to be your friend ; I wish you to be mine." Her share of the 
 .correspondence proves her to have had an excellent head and heart ; but 
 I can find nothing in Swift's to lower his dignity. 
 
 t I doubt if even Swift's writings give us a fair notion of his powers ; 
 and incline to lay more stress on the personal impression made by him. 
 Compare the following : " Sir, that you may enjoy the continuance of 
 all happiness, is my wish ; as for futurity, I know your name will be 
 remembered when the names of kings, lords-lieutenants, archbishops, 
 and parliament-politicians, will be forgotten.'' Cartehet (in 1735). — 
 "Adieu, dear sir ; no man living preserves a higher esteem or a more 
 warm and sincere friendship for you than I do " Bolingbkoke (1734). 
 — "You have ^overturned and supported ministers; you have set 
 kingdoms in a flame with your pen." Bathukst (1730). — By the by, 
 good Lord Bathurst seems to have understood the humor of Swift's 
 Modest Proposal, SfC. (for roasting children) perfectly ; and in a letter to 
 the Dean (Scott's Swift, vol. xvii. pp. 289, 90) says, that Lady Bathurst 
 and he thought of beginning with their youngest boy. It was not a 
 satire on matrimony, but on English government of Ireland. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 143 
 
 but that the piety of that period could not bear the 
 notion of giving a bishopric to the author of the Tale 
 of a Tub. Odious and sickening cant. The osten- 
 sible reason was the Tale of a Tub — the real reason 
 was, that he had satirized a favorite ; for this was the 
 age of favorites and back-stairs influence ; and Swift 
 had scattered some of his terrible Greek fire over the 
 sycophants of St. James's ; — so, according to common 
 practice, the name of religion was brought in to back 
 up malignity ; and genius was sacrificed to a revenge- 
 ful woman, in the name of God. Poor Swift! 
 Nature had intended him for something better than 
 an eighteenth-century bishop, I am glad to say. But 
 I will not countenance any such cant as the pretence 
 that Swift was not a good-enough bishop for that 
 age, at all events ; that he could not have handled a 
 crosier sufficiently well to keep Trulliber's pigs in 
 order, or to manage the black-coated gentry, who 
 were little better than tipper servants to the nobility ;* 
 
 * Oldham speaks of the parson of his time (that is, of the time of 
 Swift's youth), as one — • 
 
 " Who, though in silken scarf and cassock drest, 
 Wears but a gayer livery at best ; 
 When dinner calls, the implement must wait 
 With holy words to consecrate the meat ; 
 But hold it for a favor seldom known, 
 If he be deign'd the favor to sit down 
 
 The menial thing, perhaps for a reward, 
 Is to some slender benefice preferred, 
 With this proviso bound, that he must wed 
 My lady's antiquated waiting-maid, 
 In dressing only skilled, and marmalade." 
 
 A Satyr addressed to a Friend, #c. 
 
144 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 a generation forming a happy link between the 
 persecutors of John Bunyan and the calumniators of 
 John Wesley ! 
 \j Take Jonathan Swift, then, all in all, — with his 
 hopes and impulses, with his high views of nature, 
 and history, and duty; take him for good and evil, 
 in his greatness and his littlenesses,— and compare 
 him with the other men of his time : — I will back 
 him as a specimen of manhood and real honesty, and 
 generosity, and nobility of tendencies, against any of 
 them. And I beg your attention to this, that but for 
 his openness, and his general daring way, we should 
 never have had a chance of hearing these stories of 
 occasional rudenesses, and the like, which, taken in 
 a lump out of his long struggle in a chequered and 
 embarrassed life, look so formidable. Some critics 
 remind me of a story I have read of Lord Ches- 
 terfield. His servant being reprehended by him for 
 bringing a dirty plate, replied pertly, that "there 
 was a saying, that every body must eat a peck of 
 dirt in his life." " Yes," replied Lord Chesterfield ; 
 " but not all at one meal, you dirty dog ! " I entreat 
 the Jeffreyan critics to think of this. Don't let us 
 have all the bad little traits about a man gathered 
 together in a lump, out of years of life and struggle. 
 Not all the dirt at one meal, gentlemen, I beg ! 
 
 This disappointment of Swift's — all traceable to 
 the fact, which I defy any one to gainsay, that in 
 an age of hollowness and falsity he found his great 
 genius not duly employed in the world, — embittered 
 (together with increasing disease) his last years, and 
 deepened a character, not naturally cheerful or light, 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 145 
 
 into solemn gloom and cloud, out of which broke 
 angry lightning, and where thunder ever rolled. All 
 the great men of that age admired him ; the Irish 
 worshipped him ; fools and rogues (which is one sat- 
 isfaction) feared him: he had tender love and wor- 
 ship of a higher character, too, for some time ; but 
 he sickened, and grew more and more silent from 
 year to year."-" The disease of brain, which had tor- 
 tured him all his life, became madness; and the 
 great and gloomy man stalked in silence about his 
 rooms. His last Satire was his epitaph ; and having 
 expressed in it that " fierce indignation could no 
 longer lacerate his heart," the time mercifully came 
 when his great heart felt it no longer, and he was 
 laid (near Stella) in the Cathedral of St. Patrick's. 
 
 His " misanthropy," and the endless " Stella and 
 Vanessa" controversy, are the two features about 
 Swift which have most affected his reputation with 
 posterity. He is the fiercest, and take him all in 
 all, the greatest of all the satirists : — and as for his 
 scorn for the world, it did not prevent him loving 
 and honoring his friends, from Pope down to Gay ; 
 it did not hinder him from being loved by the poor, 
 whose gratitude may be set against whatever ill effect 
 the story of his freaks of rudeness may have upon 
 your opinion. I have not presumed to speak of him 
 without making myself acquainted with these stories, 
 and the other stories about him. I read him first 
 years ago, when I had no possible interest in believ- 
 
 * " For some years before his death, he never took leave of a friend 
 in an evening, but he constantly added, ' Well, God bless you ; and I 
 hope I shall never see you again ! ' " Sheridan's Life of Swifb. 
 7 
 
146 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 ing on one side or the other, and long before I ever 
 dreamt that I should lecture upon him ; and all I 
 can say is, that an image of his general greatness of 
 mind and character impressed itself npon me : upon 
 which there might be specks, perhaps, the result of 
 disease and misfortune, but not such as to warrant 
 any one in maintaining that Swift was, taken all in 
 all, a bad and unlovable man. 
 
 For his misanthropy, his Yahoos, and his Struld- 
 bugs, — those who know what kind of an age that 
 was, will moderate their indignation. The age of 
 Walpole's voters, and Chartres ; the age that supplied 
 Hogarth with his Progresses ; the age of Lord Mohun 
 and the Mohawks, of Sir Eobert Walpole's after- 
 dinner talk, and Sporus Hervey's loftiness of view ; 
 the period that put De Foe in the pillory, and saw 
 the massacre of Glencoe, and trained the warrior of 
 Culloden to stamp his bloody hoofs on the loyalty of 
 Scotland ; the time which had a court like George 
 the Second's, — was not so very, very unfit for claim- 
 ing kindred with the Yahoo. Swift's life extended 
 from the second lustre of Charles the Second's reign 
 nearly to the half of last century ; and many a fine 
 fellow cut a great figure during those many years, 
 who had only a superficial superiority (of outward 
 culture and cleanliness) over the Yahoo ! Besides, 
 the Yahoo is only intended as a type of the baser 
 section of mankind, and may rank as an embodiment 
 of that, along with the Satyrs of antiquity, and other 
 curious conceptions allowable in art. "With all his 
 ferocity and sadness, Swift had a side of deep ten- 
 derness ; and a vein of most cordial, homely fun, to 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUKCH1LL. 147 
 
 be seen in the Journal to Stella, and in the playful 
 facetiae which he interchanged with Dr. Sheridan, 
 Richard Brinsley's grandfather. Any body who has 
 an eye for a man will get points of sympathy with 
 the Dean, after all. He had more heart than many a 
 more smooth person, about whom we hear no scandal- 
 ous outcry. His offences are not against the instinct- 
 ive feelings of the heart itself, ■ but rather against 
 society ; against a body existing with certain codes 
 of mutual flattery and compromise, concealments, 
 and polite hypocrisies, and servilities, and cow- 
 ardices. 
 
 Poor Swift ! He was bent on acting greatly and 
 bravely ; he had a right to expect that room should 
 be made for him in the palaces of the world. No 
 wonder that destructive literature — that Satire — was 
 his forte ! But his spirit has deeply worked in the 
 history of Europe. He helped to form Voltaire ; he 
 helped to form Byron ; he has nourished the souls of 
 generations of men, who have resolved that govern- 
 ments shall not use Swifts as the giant used the 
 dwarf. The most scandalous sight that the world 
 ever sees is, when this operation is parodied, and the 
 dwarf uses the giant ! 
 
 I am not going to deal with the "Stella and 
 Vanessa" question at any length. The truth is, that 
 in our present state of knowledge, and in the obscu- 
 rity in which it is involved, we cannot judge of Swift's 
 conduct to Stella, I say, we cannot judge of it fairly. 
 Swift is more to be pitied than any thing else, it seems 
 to me.* His love for Stella, however, was the pride 
 
 * Though there are many works on the subject of Swift's life (the 
 
148 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 and joy of her life. She fell in love with Swift during 
 dreary Moor-Park days, when the stately coxcomb and 
 ■unlearned pedant of that place extended a cold patron- 
 age and a jealous kindness to Swift. To attempt to 
 solve the mystery of Swift's subsequent conduct to 
 her, is like trying to see in the dark. Your eyes ache, 
 and your heart is dull. He placed her in Dublin, 
 under the guardianship of a Mrs. Dingley. He wrote 
 to her during his busiest time his charming and affec- 
 tionate Journal. He lived near her in Dublin ; taught 
 her ; loved her ; patronised her : she had the honor 
 and consideration, to some extent, of his alliance ; but 
 though he married her (which, however, some people 
 still deny*) they did not live together. We have not, 
 in fact, the means of forming an opinion, — only we 
 know that Swift loved her : can we say with equal 
 certainty, that dubious as their relation was, she was 
 not happier in that lot than any other lot would have 
 made her? If a mysterious destiny compelled him to 
 
 leading events of which I necessarily suppose known to my audience), 
 his biography is still in a very obscure and uncertain state. A mystery 
 hangs over his relation to Temple, over that of Stella to Temple, over 
 even the fact of his marriage with Stella, and over the reasons of his 
 living on such a strange footing with Stella. Much depends upon mere 
 suppositions ; and when he is attacked, the worst of what is supposed is 
 generally taken for granted. I remark this, to show how cautious we 
 should be in condemning him wholesale ; and I hope, at a future period, 
 to give to some of the problems of his life that detailed discussion which 
 is impossible in my present limits. 
 
 * Yet this story has a respectable pedigree. It can be traced in one 
 line to Dr. Sheridan, through Dr. Madden, as we know from Johnson ; 
 in another, to Ashe, Bishop of Clogher (who is said to have performed 
 the ceremony), through Bishop .Berkeley, from whose widow Monck 
 Berkeley received it. Again, Thomas Sheridan had it from his father, 
 one of Stella's dearest friends. Still, some inquirers doubt it. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 149 
 
 make her suffer, did not he, too, suffer with her? — 
 With regard to Vanessa, she seems to have flung her- 
 self at Swift's head, in the teeth of prudence and judg- 
 ment, when she must have had means of knowing 
 what was the state of things about Stella. She was 
 (I fear) a vain dilettante kind of a woman, who was 
 dazzled by his reputation first, and had the ambition 
 of being Laura to a Petrarch, or Heloise to an Abelard ; 
 — and positjons of that sort require deeper feeling and 
 a stronger nature than Vanessas usually possess. Poor 
 woman ! She flew like the moth to the lamp, — it is 
 not the lamp's fault. But we are to pity her and 
 love her, if we like ; and pity and admire Stella too ; 
 only let us keep ourselves in a state of moderation 
 about the poor lonely Dean, whom they would love 
 in spite of his destiny ; and go and behave well to our 
 own Stellas and Vanessas, if we are happy enough to 
 get them. 
 
 Swift's works, of which the Tale of a Tub* is per- 
 haps the best, and Gulliver's Travels the next, abound 
 in satire. There is an admirable Satire of his, called 
 Poetry, a Hhapsody ; an excellent one on his own 
 death ; his pamphlets and essays are full of satire ; so 
 are the Drapiers Letters y and there are oceans of 
 squibs, libels, and epigrams. He is the greatest of 
 the English satirists, I think, in all ways. Not that 
 he has written any one piece more absolutely severe 
 
 * The Tale of a. Tub was published in 1704 ; Gulliver's Travels in 
 1726. I have thought it right to look into Cyrano Bergerac, whose 
 Moon- Voyage is supposed to have much assisted Brobdingnag. (Ber- 
 gerac, (Euvres, Amsterdam, 1709.) I see no reasons for attaching any 
 importance to that work. 
 
150 SATIRE AND SATIKISTS. 
 
 and polished than Pope, who is our classical satirist, 
 as author of the Satire proper ; — but his nature alto- 
 gether was larger than Pope's. He was more largely 
 related to nature than the other was. He had more 
 humor, for example, than Pope, who had it not in him 
 to produce a downright side-shaking bit of rollicking 
 fun. There is more laughter, altogether, about Swift's 
 satire, as there was about the man ; for Pope never 
 laughed, though he had a very sweet smile. The 
 Dean, however (gloomy as he was), had a real 
 humorous side; a manly enjoyment of the ludicrous 
 and the low ; and could relish mere buffoonery, and 
 even practical jokes. There are capital stories about 
 the Dean. Then he was a deep thinker ; he has say- 
 ings about human nature which are as good as any- 
 body's ; and his satire goes very deep : it is not only 
 bitter satire against individuals, it is philosophical 
 satire, which goes to the root of things. He was a 
 lord of all the weapons in this line, — invective, ridi- 
 cule, humor; and includes in himself, like the Trojan 
 horse, many different fighting-men. And yet, as I 
 said when I began, it does not at all seem that he was 
 mainly a literary man. He scattered abroad his 
 writings as a tree does leaves ; and his writing seems 
 so much talk, that must be talked in this way. He 
 was deep in all the great questions ; and yet could 
 write what would seize the fancy of a child or a clown. 
 He includes Cobbet, Junius, and Rochefoucauld, and 
 more men, in his huge bulk ; and after equalling 
 Juvenal in a slanging-match, he might go off and 
 beat Hook in anecdotes. And to think that, after all . 
 this, he must go home to suffer like Rousseau ! Let 
 
151 
 
 us pity Swift ; and at least be civil to him. — When 
 Jeffrey published his Essay, a Blackwood writer (most 
 probably Professor "Wilson) said, that " if it proved 
 Jeffrey was alive, it proved still more clearly that 
 Swift was dead." It was just as well for Jeffrey that 
 he was dead ! Don't let us crow too much on the 
 strength of it ! 
 
 £^I need not go at any length into Pope's biography 
 or character. As the sturdiest of his admirers cannot 
 altogether defend his conduct, so the worst of his 
 depredators cannot deny his genius. His whole 
 nature was small, thin, and fine, rather than large or 
 broad. Like a tongue of flame, however, thin and 
 small as it was, it was high-aspiring. Its tendency 
 was upward. He loved sublime objects ; had a 
 feeling for the sublime and high, and specially for 
 the elegant, rather than for the sacred or the 
 beautiful. This, as it was his artistic condition, so it 
 was his moral one. He would do a noble thing on 
 occasion — he always acted nobly in theory ; but when 
 a temptation came to do a shabby thing, a tricky 
 thing, down flickered the fine flame of his nature from 
 the aspiration which was its tendency. He acted in 
 accordance with his high impulse when he wrote 
 nobly and generously ; but yet he was capable of s. 
 most paltry stratagem to have a pretext for publishing 
 his letters. There was something small in Pope's 
 faults,- — something that resembled his physical peculi- 
 arities, his puny limbs, and his feeble body. He 
 was quite as capable of anger and cruelty, and the 
 unamiable passions, as his friend the Dean ; and, 
 
152 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 indeed, their correspondence is curious as a moral 
 exhibition^ They are magnificent in their recognition 
 of each other ; but with regard to mankind generalh/, 
 they are rather distrustful and bitter. As good friends 
 exchange jam, or turkeys, or oysters, these potentates 
 occasionally sent each other little pots of gall, or 
 preparations of poison, as friendly gifts. In fact, 
 there is much that is very melancholy in their letters ; 
 and all Pope's hates, prejudices, jealousies, scorns, are 
 faithfully represented in his works. His best Satires 
 are personal attacks ; and unless you are familiar 
 with his personal relation to Addison and Lord 
 Hervey, you cannot duly appreciate and enjoy his 
 Atticus and his Sporus. We can illustrate this by 
 looking at the Sporus, which, to my mind, is the 
 prince of personal satires ;* that is, of fierce ones ; for 
 the Atticus is more subtle and more dignified, and is 
 higher art. 
 
 " Let Sporus tremble ! What, that thing of silk 1 
 » . Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk ? 
 ..v ■ Satire or sense, alas, can Sporus feel % 
 Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel 1 
 Yet, let me flap this bug with gilded wings, 
 This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings ; 
 Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, 
 Ye wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : 
 So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 
 In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 
 Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, 
 As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. 
 * " Language cannot afford more glowing or more forcible terms to 
 express the utmost bitterness of contempt. We think we are here 
 reading Milton against Salmasius." Warton. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUKCHILL. 153 
 
 Whether in florid impotence he speaks, 
 And as the prompter breathes the puppet squeaks ; 
 Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, 
 . Half-froth, half- venom, spits himself abroad." 
 
 It concludes : 
 
 " Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have expressed, — 
 A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest ; 
 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, 
 Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust." 
 
 This Satire, or libel if you like, has every merit 
 which such a work can have : brilliance, epigram, 
 cutting discernment of weak points, and demoniac 
 subtlety of misrepresentation. Mark how pregnant 
 it is with personal allusion : 
 
 " That thing of silk, 
 Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk." 
 
 Hervey was weak in body, and drank asses' milk 
 for the sake of his health. The " butterfly " makes 
 his personal elegance (which was remarkable) ignoble 
 at a stroke; "painted child of dirt" demolishes the 
 beauty of his rouge ; " the ear of Eve " is an allusion 
 to his position in the household of Queen Caroline ; 
 and how subtly is the handsomeness of his person 
 (which Lord Chesterfield's ballad celebrates) made 
 loathsome by the cherub comparison ! Hervey had 
 joined Lady Montagu in assailing Pope.* Pope 
 
 * Hervey had been as bitter as he could be ; yet " even in this case," 
 remarks Warton, " Pope had given the first provocation." 
 
154 SATIRIC AND 8ATIKISIS. 
 
 replied in prose and in verse ;* went to work with 
 the calm and severe elaboration of a poisoner working 
 with a glass-mask on in his laboratory ; and flung the 
 mixture in Hervey's face, and branded it intohideous- 
 ness for ever ! 
 
 It is this elaborateness and finish, this awful com- 
 pleteness which makes Poped om- classi cal English 
 Sati rist. No controversies, as to his being a " poet " 
 or not, will ever drive him from his place by the side 
 of Horace and Juvenal ; from his leading position in 
 the group of those great and fine intellects wjio have 
 in various ages seized the very spirit of human 
 society, and depicted it in their pages, or corrected 
 its corruptions, by the force of their inspiration from 
 the sources of moral truth. For the sake of the 
 finished excellence which proves him to have been 
 a great man and a great artist, we must make what 
 allowances we can for drawbacks which it is impos- 
 sible to hide and useless to ignore. His motives, 
 often enough, were ignoble and paltry, — base even, — 
 tainted with egotism and meanness : but that does 
 not spoil the effect which his genius knew how to 
 produce. The clear crystal-bright liquid of the 
 chemist, it looks quite different from the shrubs and 
 the plants, rooted in dirt, whose product it is ! If 
 
 * In prose, in the Letter to a Noble Lord, Nov. 30, 1733, which 
 Johnson calls a specimen of " tedious malignity," and which indeed is 
 not equal to the incomparable verses in the text. Both Atticus and 
 Sporus were first sketched in prose. The letter has several of the 
 touches which are worked up in the Satire. He speaks of Hervey's 
 face as " so finished, that neither sickness nor passion can deprive it of 
 color." His best prose Satire is that marvellous specimen of irony, 
 the Guardian on Phillipp's Pastorals. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUKCHILL. 155 
 
 Pope had not indulged in spite and rancor, — had not 
 only been revengeful, but cherished his revenge and 
 warmed it in his bosom, we should not have had 
 some of his best Satires^ Among all satirists, there- 
 fore, no man has higher literary pretensions : * but it 
 is doubtful whether he is to be ranked among the 
 first of them for his moral position, and the impulse 
 which made him write Satire.-)- Like other men, he 
 expressed himself in his books : his feeling for the 
 sublime is plain enough in the conclusion of the 
 Essay on Mam, (the splendid address to Bolingbroke), 
 and in the wind-up of the Dunciad, which, however, 
 has rather the qualities of oratory than of poetry. 
 For mere satirical severity, the Dunciad is unrivalled 
 in literature ; it is the most Popian of Pope's satires. 
 He had much in common with Horace, — moral 
 insight of the same kind, — similar mastery over a 
 subtle gaiety of ridicule (by dint of which likeness 
 he has imitated him so well) ; but he was bitterer 
 
 * " Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say he is the 
 poet of reason, the first of ethical writers in verse." Warton. 
 
 t " What did Pope mean, sir," asked Boswell, " by saying — 
 
 ' Let modest Foster, if he will, excel 
 
 Ten metropolitans in preaching well'?" 
 " Why, sir," answered the Doctor, " he hoped it would vex somebody." 
 Has Swift (it may here be asked) any where been more " misanthropi- 
 cal" than Pope, in those lines, of which one is — 
 
 " Nothing is sacred now but villany ; " 
 and in the magnificent prediction of impending barbarism which con- 
 cludes the Dunciad ? I may add, that contempt of the world was 
 always expressed more sincerely by Swift than by Pope, in whom it 
 often appears to be affectation. Swift despised the age en r.iasse 
 earnestly ; Pope was most earnest in his hate and spite against 
 individuals. 
 
156 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 by nature and temper, and makes wounds that do 
 not heal. Horace was a fatter man (if I may he 
 permitted the liberty to mention such a fact) ; was 
 more happily circumstanced, under the kindly pro- 
 tection of a great emperor, and a great emperor's 
 favorite ; lived in a lovely climate ; was an easier, 
 more playful, more essentially humorous man, and 
 a more healthy man. Pope could be either ferocious 
 or light ; but his ferocity was so deliberate and so 
 sly, — there is such a snaky coldness of self-command 
 about him while he is inflicting hellish torture, that 
 he appears more unamiable than the most violent 
 professors of satiric indignation ; so that it is difficult 
 to believe that he was as good-natured as Juvenal, or 
 Dryden, or Swift, or Churchill. Often his malignant 
 ridicule is like the shock of the electric eel ; and the 
 reader has not that sympathy with him which a great 
 satirist ought to inspire. But often, also, when he 
 
 "Bares the mean heart that lurks beneath a star;" 
 
 when he wings with fancy a great and generous 
 thought, and sends it, pointed with satire, home, — 
 he unites, in one triumphant moment, all the quali- 
 ties of his art, and attains to a kind of prophetic 
 epigram, where perfect insight is embodied in perfect 
 expression. He was indeed an artist ; and genera- 
 tions of writers have imitated his subtle flow of 
 rhyme, — as street-organs go on grinding the music of 
 the composers of Italy. 
 
 \Pope admired objects rather as high and lofty 
 than as objects of sentiment ; indeed, altogether, he 
 was more susceptible of admiration than of love. I 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUECHILL. 157 
 
 could easily illustrate this, by an analysis of the 
 Epistle of Eloisa, as well as from his whole works 
 and conduct. It is a fact of corresponding charac- 
 ter, that his feeling for proportion and form is deeper 
 than his feeliug for beauty. The appreciation of 
 elegance is kindred t^.wit, and belongs to his order 
 of mind. The illustration of this remark is to be 
 drawn from the Rape of the Loch, one of the most 
 
 c harming o f compositions ; gay, "light, and f ull nf 
 .grace andpoint, displaying" his wit and fan cy in 
 their a miabl e aspect, and more playful an d jocun d 
 than hjimorous_m a deepsense. 
 
 -i It does not seem to me that humor is very promi- 
 nently a quality of Pope's, though his eve for^ the 
 ridiculous was lynx-like. A man who was never 
 known to laugh can scarcely have been a man of 
 deep humor. But what is more striking is, that 
 he had little sense for the low or the ludicrous 
 aspect of life ; this is why the Narrative of the 
 Frenzy of John Dennis was a failure. He wasn't 
 homely enough for that kind of fun. Now Swift 
 had all that ; had wider sympathies than Pope ; had 
 a relish even for buffoonery and low life ; and was 
 not squeamish, t j Shakspeare could relish clowns a nd 
 clodhoppers, and sprawl with th eja-4-bTrt~Bape was 
 blunt on that side : he was sensjtj^j^-^thaiRskmaec^ 
 and" it~sEocked hisTasTeT A's Isaid before, Swift 
 was a bigger and more universal man, and there is 
 more nature in all his writings than in Pope's.* It 
 
 * Dr. Johnson remarked, that Swift " rarely hazards a figure :" but 
 there are many most excellent figures in the Dean's writings ; and 
 particularly in the Tale of a Tub. 
 
158 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 is ray opinion that we overrate the Queen-Anne 
 period altogether ; but whether that be true or no, 
 Swift was the most natural man in it, and his writ- 
 ings have more of that quality than those of any of 
 the rest. 
 
 Hitherto I have endeavored to choose my satirists 
 for their relation to history, and their influence on 
 mankind. Koman society had its Horace and Juve- 
 nal ; mediseval corruption had its Erasmus, its Lind- 
 say, and its Buchanan ; Wolsey his Skelton ; the 
 absurdities of French taste their Boileau ; and some 
 of the bad men of Charles the Second's time their 
 Dry den. Swift -and Pope took up the tradition; — 
 what has been their influence ? 
 
 The influence, of course, can never be estimated in 
 detail ; but it can be speculated on. Both of these 
 men influenced Yoltaire, to begin with. But just con : 
 &ider the sale and spread of Oulliver''s Travels, for 
 example. The fifth generation of readers are now 
 beginning with that work, and getting their first delight 
 out of it ; that is, they are enjoying the exquisite real- 
 ism of the story ; feeling themselves huge fellows 
 when they read Lilliput, and shrinking into pigmies 
 when Gulliver is lifted up in Brobdingnag. As a story, 
 I appeal to every one's recollection, whether the book 
 is not as fascinating as Crusoe. "Well, — a second stage 
 of interest opens in a few years to the reader. When 
 he again comes to Gulliver he has enjoyment the sec- 
 ond, as he becomes an appreciator of the satire. 
 What humor, what scorn, what ridicule, what a glory 
 of invention and wit ! There can be little doubt that 
 Gulliver and even that one line of Pope — 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 159 
 
 " The right divino of kings to govern wrong, " 
 
 helped the House of Hanover to keep down the Jaco- 
 bites ; and had a distinct action on the American and 
 French revolutions. 
 
 Charles Churchill's Temple of Fame (a building 
 which is out of fashion now, and has been hidden by 
 new temples, new warehouses, and many big edifices 
 of lath and plaster) is a half-way house on the great 
 literary road between Pope's temple and Byron's. He 
 " blazed, " as Byron says, 
 
 " The comet of a season, " 
 
 from 1761 to 1764, in the days of Wilkes and liberty, 
 — of Bute, Sandwich, and George the Third's youth ; 
 and having brought Satire into high renown, and 
 flourished his cudgel with triumph for a brief period 
 of dazzling glory, he sunk into the grave at Dover, 
 in the prime of his manhood, in his thirty-fourth year. 
 His fame declined too, and his poems were neglected ; 
 though a famous name never dies altogether, but still 
 hangs up, — looking like the Y.R.'s, and other letters, 
 the day after an illumination, — distinguishable to read, 
 though the glory of the light has gone from it. Yet 
 Churchill is every now and then read ; he was pub- 
 lished among Pickering's Aldine Poets in 1844 ; and 
 there was an essay upon him in the Edinburgh Review _ 
 so late as the beginning of '45. 
 
 Churchill's father was a clergyman, who held an 
 Essex living, and the curacy and lectureship of St. 
 John's, Westminster. He was born in that parish in 
 
160 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 February 1731, and went to Westminster School,* 
 where he was a very clever but not too studious fellow, 
 and got a foundation of liberal knowledge. f He was 
 a fine strong youth, prefiguring the fine burly man he 
 turned out ; but also, alas ! giving that kind of pro- 
 mise whose performance is somewhat shocking and 
 startling. For Charles Churchill, while yet a boy 
 (and you can fancy what kind of boy, by imagining a 
 Tom Jones with an infusion of Dry den in him), made 
 an altogether preposterous marriage at the hands of 
 the official of the Fleet Prison. He then retired to 
 the Worth, it appears. It is also said, though appa- 
 rently without truth, that he held a curacy in Wales, 
 and that he carried on a eider manufactory ; though, 
 for my part, I doubt whether cider was ever the liquor 
 of main interest to Charles Churchill. His early his- 
 tory is obscure ; only it is certain that he went into 
 holy orders, was ordained priest in 1756, and officiated 
 as curate for his father in Eainham, Essex, — the 
 
 * " The figure which he (Cowper) afterwards made in literature 
 showed the benefit which he had derived both from the discipline of 
 "Westminster and its indiscipline ; from that play and exercise of the 
 intellect, which, in the little less profitable hours of school-idleness, he 
 enjoyed with those schoolfellows who may properly be called his peers, 
 — Lloyd, Churchill, and Colman. Cowper had a higher opinion of 
 Churchill than of any other contemporary writer. Cowper made him, 
 more than any other writer, his model. No intimacy, however, appears 
 to have subsisted between Cowper and Churchill, notwithstanding'these 
 points of sympathy, and their acquaintance at school, though they were 
 of the same standing.'' Sodthey. 
 
 t "Young Charles received his grammatical education in Westmin- 
 ster School, in which he soon distinguished himself so far, as to make 
 his tutors sensible that he was a lad of considerable abilities." Kippis 
 (Biog. Brit.) 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 161 
 
 church being the line of business which his relations 
 thought the best provision for him. This is what he 
 says, of their choice himself : — 
 
 " Bred to the church, and for the gown decreed, 
 Ere it was known that I should learn to read ; 
 Though that was nothing ; for my friends (who knew 
 What mighty dulness of itself could do) 
 Never decreed me for a working priest, 
 But hoped I should have been a dean at least. 
 Condemned (like many, more and -worthier men, 
 To whom I pledge the service of my pen), — 
 Condemned (whilst proud and pampered sons of lawn, 
 Crammed to the throat, in lazy plenty yawn,) 
 In pomp of reverend beggary to appear, 
 To pray and starve on forty pounds a year."* 
 
 This is tolerably emphatic. But a parson he became ; 
 and on his father's death, in 1758, he succeeded to his 
 father's pulpit in Westminster. Churchill did not find 
 this office satisfactory.-)- He did not excite scandal ; 
 
 * From The Author, published in 1763. 
 
 t " The emoluments of his situation not amounting to a full hundred 
 pounds a year, in order to improve his finances he undertook to teach 
 young ladies to read and write English with propriety and correctness. 
 Mr. Churchill conducted himself in his new employment with all the 
 decorum becoming his clerical profession. Still, however, his method 
 of living bore no proportion to his income ; so that he contracted a 
 variety of debts, which he was totally incapable of paying. From this 
 wretched situation he was relieved by the interposition of Dr. Lloyd, the 
 second master of Westminster School, and father of Robert Lloyd the 
 poet. The doctor undertook to treat with Churchill's creditors ; and suc- 
 ceeded in engaging them to consent to a.composition of five shillings in 
 the pound. In an instance which fell under the knowledge of the writer 
 of the present article, as an executor and a guardian, Mr. Churchill, 
 when he had obtained money by his publications, voluntarily came and 
 paid the full amount of the original debt." Kippis. 
 
162 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 but he was soon in debt ; and Mrs. Churchill (says Dr. 
 Kippis), it was " always understood in "Westminster, " 
 was of an imprudent turn too. We can fancy what 
 was " always understood in Westminster" about this 
 couple ; about the big burly figure, for which the sur- 
 plice was no fit garb ; and abont the wife, whose 
 honeymoon had risen from over the horizon of the 
 Fleet Prison wall. He found the situation untenable 
 after three years ; and casting about for some field for 
 the energies of which he must have been conscious, he 
 commenced a close attendance on the theatres ; and, 
 in March 1761, when he was thirty years old, brought 
 out that famous theatrical Satire, The. Rosciad* 
 There was a lull for a little, before the roar of popu- 
 larity began ; and then out it burst. Churchill had 
 found his element at last ; green-rooms were in an up- 
 roar, and coffee-houses in delight. In a short time it 
 was openly stated, to prevent false reports, who was 
 the author. The author himself was not a retiring 
 and morbid individual. No, no ! He was soon sepa- 
 rated both from the church - )- and from his wife ; he 
 attired his manly figure in " a blue coat with metal 
 buttons, a gold-laced waistcoat, a gold-laced hat, and 
 ruffles." He strode abroad with a significant cudgel 
 in his fist, to awe enemies, and, if we may be allowed 
 to parody Addison — ■ 
 
 * He put his name to the second edition. The first " stole into the 
 world, " little advertised, and published on the " author's own account." 
 
 t " The parishioners, who had invited him to succeed to his father, 
 were compelled at length to lodge a formal complaint against him for the 
 total dereliction of his professional duties ; and he resigned in conse- 
 quence a cure which he could no longer have been suffered to retain.'' 
 Southey. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 163 
 
 " Pleased the satiric office to perform, 
 Bides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 
 
 Let us just see what kind of treatment he had 
 bestowed upon the most sensitive and thin-skinned 
 of mankind. Here is a specimen, in the case of 
 Yates : — 
 
 " So, Yates ! without the least finesse of art, 
 He gets applause, — 1 wish he'd get his part : 
 When hot impatience is in full career, 
 How vilely ' hark'ee ! hark'ee ! ' grates the ear ! 
 
 In characters of low and vulgar mould, 
 Where nature's coarsest features we behold ; 
 Where, destitute of every decent grace, 
 Unmannered jests are blurted in your face ; 
 There Yates, with justice strict attention draws, 
 Acts truly from himself, and gains applanse. 
 But when, to please himself or charm his wife, 
 He aims at something in politer life, 
 When, blindly thwarting nature's stubborn plan, 
 He treads the stage by way of gentleman ; 
 The clown, who no one touch of breeding knows, 
 Looks like Tom Errand dressed in Clincher's clothes. 
 Fond of his dress, fond of his person grown, 
 Laughed at by all, and to himself unknown, 
 From side to side he struts, he smiles, he prates, 
 And seems to wonder what's become of Yates." 
 
 For a man to know (what, of course, reflection 
 would tell him) that every friend he had in the world 
 had such a sketch as this of him by heart, must 
 
164 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 have been a bitter business. The small actors were 
 mad ;* Garrick first affected indifference, then grew 
 frightened, and presently became servile.-(- Indeed, 
 when Churchill revenged himself in the " Apology " 
 on the Critical Review, of which Smollet was the 
 presiding genius, then the world fairly admitted his 
 potence. He now " made hay " according to the 
 
 * " The author soon found that he had no occasion to advertise his 
 poem in the public prints : the players spread its fame all over the 
 town ; they ran about like so many stricken deer ; they strove to 
 extract the arrow from the wound, by communicating the knowledge of 
 it to their friends. The public, so far from being aggrieved, enjoyed 
 the distress of the players. No one man, except Mr. Garrick, escaped his 
 satirical lash." Da vies, Memoirs of David Garrick, vol. i. pp. 314-15. 
 
 t Garrick foolishly gave himself airs, as if Churchill's praise were all 
 very pleasant, but no such mighty matter. " Whether he was induced 
 to look cold upon his panegyrist," says Davies, " or had dropped some 
 expressions which were officiously carried to Churchill, I know not ; 
 but the poet, in a very short time, printed the Apology, in which he 
 treated the profession of acting in a most contemptous manner. That 
 he aimed at Mr. Garrick in the following lines cannot be doubted 
 
 ' Let the vain tyrant sit amidst his guards, 
 His puny green-room wits and venal bards. 
 Who meanly tremble at a puppet's frown. 
 And for a play-house freedom sell their own.' 
 
 These sarcastic strokes were not bestowed in vain upon the manager ; 
 he felt all the force of them. To insure a reconciliation, he wrote a 
 long letter to Churchill, which comprehended an apology for himself 
 and the players. This epistle he read to a friend, expecting his 
 approbation of it in very ample terms ; but here he was disappointed. 
 He was told, that as the satirist had attacked him on very slight or 
 scarce any provocation, it was too much condescension in him, &c." 
 Memoirs, &c. vol.'i. pp. 318-19. Davies add, in a few pages : " He 
 was frequently entertained by Mr. Garrick at Hampton and at his house 
 in town ; but would never accept of any play-house freedom or other 
 favor from him." (p. 326). 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUECHILL. 165 
 
 invariable practice ; charged half-a-crown — instead 
 of the shilling which he had charged for the Eosoiad 
 — for his productions ; and before long he became a 
 man-about-town, and genius by profession ; lived 
 with a set of wits, who talked sarcasm and drank 
 Burgundy ; and assumed a. hostile position towards 
 the big-wigs of the world generally. He adopted, 
 in those years of triumph and excitement, that kind 
 of moral opinion which has been exemplified in 
 Fielding's Tom Jones, by Charles Surface, and 
 partially by Robert Burns, — the doctrine, namely, 
 that if yon are a good-hearted fellow and hate 
 humbug, you may set the respectable moralities at 
 defiance. This school, which has had, in every age 
 lately, some brilliant disciples, is rebellious and 
 radical in opinion, high-flown in liberality and the 
 generous qualities, and — does not go home till 
 morning. Its "porch" is the tavern porch, and its 
 " garden " is Vauxhall : and though it has a basis of 
 truth as against an opposite school, it is a very 
 unsatisfactory and unprofitable school, and is only 
 tolerable as a stage towards higher theories of life.* 
 
 Fame, like heat, ripens good and bad things 
 indifferently ; and while it brought out, in full 
 efflorescence, Churchill's genius, it also stimulated 
 his dangerous passions. He became a loose-living 
 man; partly, no doubt, through the influence of 
 Wilkes, who was now in the full vigor of his vulgar 
 
 * Southey, in narrating {Life- of Cowper, u. 4) the most unfortunate 
 event of Churchill's life, remarks, that " his moral sense had not been 
 thoroughly depraved." Compare Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxxi. pp. 
 77, 78. 
 
166 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 and showy intellect, and of his plausible but unsound 
 character. This cock-eyed, blasphemous, and waggish 
 demagogue, who fostered Churchill's weaknesses, 
 and afterwards neglected his memory,* found good- 
 natured, excitable, hasty Charles Churchill a potent 
 ally. Churchill took up his cause against Hogarth, 
 Warburton, Sandwich, Wedderburn, and other men 
 of note. Wit cost him nothing ; versification he had 
 mastered by the study of his much loved Dry den ; 
 he loved popularity and excitement, and satire for 
 satire's sake. So he lashed away at the Scotch, and 
 at Bishop Warburton and others, with all the zeal 
 with which a warm-hearted man goes about any thing 
 he takes up. A better-hearted man than Churchill 
 never lived; he was an affectionate, enthusiastic, 
 loving soul, and English in his tastes and his preju- 
 dices. I am glad to be able to read an extract from 
 one of the few of his letters which exist. This 
 extract, which is from a letter written two years 
 before the Satirist's death, shows that his life was not 
 invariably such a hurly-burly course of dissipation as 
 some worthy people — and a good many canting 
 people — were wont to assert. 
 
 * Churchill's will (3d Nov. 1764) contained the following paragraph : 
 " I desire my dear friend, John Wilkes, Esq., to collect and publish my 
 works with the remarks and explanations he has prepared, and any 
 others he thinks proper to make." The " dear friend " never discharged 
 this duty ; and indeed the scraps of notes towards the design, which he 
 left, and which were swept into that strange ragbag, Almmi's Wilkes 
 Correspondence, are not such as to make us regret the loss, in a 
 literary point of view. The strange dullard who concocted that 
 work dwells on the likeness of Wilkes to Catullus, and also to Algernon 
 Sidney (vol. iv. p. 217). It may be admitted that he was about as like 
 to one as to the other. 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUECHILL. 167 
 
 " When we meet," says Churchill, writing to 
 Wilkes, in the July of 1762,* "you will be amazed 
 to see how I am altered. Breakfast at nine ; two 
 dishes of tea, and one thin slice of bread-and-butter. 
 Dine at three ; eat moderately ; drink a cooling pint ; 
 tumble the bed till four. Tea at six ; walk till nine ; 
 eat some cooling fruit, and to bed. There is regularity 
 for you ! " 
 
 From 1761 to 1764 Churchill lived in a blaze of 
 fame, published satire after satire, and was a power 
 generally, partly by instinct, partly by accident, on 
 the anti-side. "I fear," says he to Wilkes, "that 
 
 the d d aristocracy is gaining ground in this 
 
 country ! " What kind of man he would have 
 mellowed into, we can never know ; for death blotted 
 his sun out in its noon. Having crossed the Channel 
 to visit Wilkes, he was seized with fever, — moved 
 over to Dover, determined, they say, to die in Eng- 
 land, — and died at Dover, on the 4th November 
 1764, in his thirty-fourth year. When the news 
 came to his dear friend Lloyd, the son of his old 
 master Lloyd, of Westminister, an intimate chum 
 of Churchill's, who had been faithful to him through 
 good and bad luck, he was at dinner. He rose from 
 the table like one struck with fate, and died a little 
 while afterwards. The world wondered and moral- 
 ized, and went its road ; and one dull, evil-minded 
 individual gathered up his strength for a biographic 
 bray, and achieved the same in a hostile spirit in the 
 Annual Register.^ Nobody now-a-days, that I hear 
 
 * Tooke's Churchill, vol. i. p. xcv. 
 t Annual Register, vol. vii., for 1764. 
 
168 SATIHE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 of, meditates lecturing on him ! When this sort of 
 animal wanders for browsing purposes into a church- 
 yard, it shows sad negligence in the beadle ! 
 
 Churchill had all the qualities that go to make up 
 a fine satirist, — warm feeling, penetrating sense, 
 bright wit, and fancy. He did not imitate Pope, as 
 almost every body who wrote in the heroic metre 
 did during that century. His master was Dryden ; 
 and he often achieved the flowing vigor and manly 
 ease of that famous writer. I will give you two 
 specimens of Churchill's style. The first is from his 
 Prophecy of Famine, a Satire in the pastoral form, 
 against Scotland, written to serve the cause of the 
 opponents of Bute. 
 
 " Far as the eye could reach no tree was seen, — 
 Earth, clad in russet, scorned the lively green ; 
 The plague of locusts they secure defy, 
 For in three hours a grasshopper must die : 
 No living thing, whateVr its food, feasts there, 
 But the chameleon, that can feast on air. 
 
 No flowers embalmed the air, but one white rose, 
 Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows ; 
 By instinct blows at morn, and when the shades 
 Of drizzly eve prevail, by instinct fades." 
 
 This is Churchill's view of the country : but hear 
 what he says of the people : 
 
 " Pent in this barren corner of the isle, 
 Where partial fortune never deign'd to smile, 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHURCHILL. 169 
 
 Unknown amongst the nations of the earth, 
 Or only known to raise contempt and mirth 
 Long free, because the race of Eoman braves 
 Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves ; 
 
 Considered as the refuse of mankind, 
 A mass till the last moment left behind, 
 Which frugal nature doubted, as it lay, 
 Whether to stamp with life, or throw away ; 
 Which formed in haste, was planted in this nook, 
 But never entered in Creation's book." 
 
 My next extract is in a different metre ; from the 
 Duellist,- — a sketch, of Bishop Warburton : 
 
 " The first entitled to the place 
 Of honor, both by gown and grace, 
 Who never let occasion slip 
 To take right hand of fellowship ; 
 And was so proud, that should he meet \, i 
 The twelve apostles in the street, ~Y~ 
 
 He'd turn his nose up at them all, 
 And shove his Savior from the wall. 
 
 Was by his sire a parson made, 
 Only to give the boy a trade; 
 But he himself thereto was drawn 
 By some faint omens of the lawn ; 
 And on the truly Christian plan, 
 To make himself a gentleman, — 
 A title in which form array'd him, 
 Though fate ne'er thought on't when she made him, 
 A curate first, he read, and read, 
 And laid in, whilst he should have fed 
 3 
 
170 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 The souls of his neglected flock, 
 
 Of reading such a mighty stock, 
 
 That he o'ercharged the weary train 
 
 With more than it could well contain, 
 
 More than it was with spirits fraught 
 
 To turn and methodize to thought, ^ 
 
 And which, like ill-digested food, 
 
 To humors turned, and not to blood. 
 
 Brought up to London from the plow 
 
 And pulpit, how to make a bow 
 
 He tried to learn ; he grew polite, 
 
 And was the poet's parasite. 
 
 With wits conversing (and wits then 
 
 Were to be found 'mongst noblemen), 
 
 He caught, or would have caught, the flame, 
 
 And would be nothing, or the same : 
 
 He drank with drunkards, liv'd with sinners, 
 
 Herded with infidels for dinners ; 
 
 With such an emphasis and grace 
 
 Blasphemed that Potter kept not pace : 
 
 Liv'd with men infamous and vile, • 
 Truck'd his salvation for a smile ; 
 To catch their humor, caught their plan, 
 And laugh'd at God to laugh with man ; 
 Praised them, when living, in each breath, 
 And damn'd their mem'ries after death." 
 
 Such was Churchill, as a man and satirist. Coming 
 in that artificial age, his fresh feeling and his fine mind 
 made an instantaneous and dazzling success. But 
 writing his Satires hastily, and from casual impulses, 
 not always original and genuine, his influence passed 
 away, like the influence of meaner men. Living re- 
 
SWIFT, POPE, CHUECHILL. 171 
 
 belliously, and dying young, he left a dubious personal 
 name ; and one has to step aside from the highways 
 of literature, and with sentiments more generous than 
 those of the crowd, if one wishes to find and do 
 honor to his early and half-forgotten grave. 
 
LECTUKE V. 
 
 POLITICAL SATIRE AND SQUIBS. BURNS. 
 
 Churchill, though a man of genius, did not add 
 any thing to the development of the satiric art. He 
 falls into the ranks above Oldham, but below Dryden ; 
 and does not interfere with the supremacy of Pope, 
 as the king of finished English Satire. He was, how- 
 ever, the greatest master of ridicule and invective 
 among the English satirists between Pope and Byron, 
 as his contemporary Cowper was of that more amiable 
 and more purely ethical Satire, of which, in Pope's 
 days, Young was the representative. Young's Satires 
 have been quite eclipsed by the fame of his Wight 
 Thoughts ; a work the sublimity and dark splendor 
 of which is fleaked with the wit and fancy which were 
 essential constituents of his mind. His Satires, enti- 
 tled the Universal Passion, preceded the greatest 
 efforts of Pope : they are grave in tone and purpose, 
 but sparkle with epigram ; and are made lively by a 
 peculiar kind of dry shrewdness; — qualities charac- 
 teristic of their author, who to piety and melancholy 
 joined something of the courtier and place-hunter. 
 He lived to a great age, dissatisfied with the propor- 
 
EABLY SATIRE. 173 
 
 tion which his share of worldly preferment bore to 
 that of the fortunate wits and writers of his younger 
 days. 
 
 I now proceed to speak of a class of Satires of 
 which this country has been prolific. I quoted, in a 
 previous Lecture, Lord Bacon's statement, that in 
 Henry the Seventh's time " swarms and volleys of 
 libels sprang forth, for which five of the common 
 people suffered death." Libels, " pasquils," and the 
 like, have abounded in this country in all periods of 
 excitement. "Like straws," as Selden says, "they 
 show how the wind blows." We have collections 
 containing specimens "from the reign of John to 
 that of Edward the Secoud;" and to this hour, when 
 any political crisis occurs, broadsides are cried about 
 the streets, ridiculing the leading statesmen in homely 
 doggrel. The British are a satirical people. v What 
 nation excels us in satire and caricature ? To politi- 
 cal satire some of our very best writers have con- 
 tributed. When we have a King Midas, a thousand 
 channels murmur out the secret of the state of his ears. 
 Our statesmen are known to multitudes only by bur- 
 lesques of their features. Hence I venture to make 
 an excursion in this political province. I must select 
 a notable man, who has distinguished himself in it, 
 here and there; though, of course, masses of such 
 productions have perished. A " lillibullero," catch- 
 ing the quick ear of a young Sterne, has its name 
 handed down and made familiar ; but generally these 
 songs and rhymes must have died when the fervor of 
 
174 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 public feeling cooled, and melted into air, like the 
 notes to which they were sung. 
 
 The earliest class of political songs comprises va- 
 rious Latin rhyming ones of the " Mapes " kind, as 
 well as old specimens of the modern languages ; for 
 a collection of which we are indebted, in a quarter 
 where I have already paid my acknowledgments, to 
 the Camden Society, and the learned editor, to whom 
 also we owe the satires and caricatures illustrative of 
 the history of England since the accession of the 
 house of Hanover. These old satires are of a very 
 fossilized appearance just now, affecting you as old 
 spear-heads dug up from a moss do. What rusty old 
 nails are these, which once made the blood spurt from 
 the crucified malefactor ! With a strong effort only 
 of the imagination, and with a strange sad longing of 
 the heart, do we picture to ourselves the days when 
 this old Latin and English rhyme flowed from the 
 heart, fresh as the wine of its day, as the green trees 
 now sunk into peat ! The wars with the Scotch, the 
 hopes and fears of the followers of Simon de Montfort, 
 the ostentatious and wild high-hearted overbearing 
 ways of barons and clergy, — these the early songs 
 picture for us, and faintly echo the innumerable 
 noises once so stirring and vivid in England. The 
 Church appears, in very early times, to have been 
 the leading subject of satire in Europe ; and satire to 
 have been one of the chief forms in which the spirit 
 of liberty embodied itself, from the days in which 
 the lively goliards, fresh from the mss. of Juvenal, 
 quizzed the vicar and his coqua, to the days when the 
 epigrams of Voltaire crackled about France, and set 
 
CLIEYELAND. 175 
 
 its dry old rotten institutions on fire. Indeed, it is 
 the business of the Satirist to represent the heart and 
 natural instincts of mankind ; he is essentially of the 
 every-day world, and warm with its life: and thus 
 he co-operates with the poet, the dramatist, and the 
 reformer. 
 
 Under the Tudors generally, it was ticklish work 
 libelling great people. Queen Elizabeth would bear 
 the pleasantry of her fool Clod, when the satire was 
 couched in those peculiar disguises which the fool 
 adopted, who (poor functionary !) had almost to stand 
 on his head if he presumed to use it. But we know 
 that punishment awaited breaches of authority in her 
 day. But when the Civil "War began, there was a 
 fine harvest for the satirists on both sides. On the 
 Royalist side was one man in particular, John Cleve- 
 land, who achieved great reputation as a poet and 
 satirist, going through some twelve editions; and 
 who is still worth looking at, as a brilliant curiosity. 
 We can approach these terrible libellers of old days 
 now, as we look at the wasps and deadly insects in a 
 museum, fingering them without the least fear of 
 that sting which set the flesh quivering two hundred 
 years ago. Here lies, for instance, poor John Clieve- 
 land, pinned to his card, with a little memorandum, 
 " Eoyalist satirist ; old specimen ; presented by the 
 17th century." A touch of fancy, however, and we 
 see the purpled and dyed wings flutter, and the active 
 body moving again. 
 
 Cleiveland was a clergyman's son in Leicestershire ; 
 
176 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 born in 1613.* He was a Cambridge man, and in 
 much repute there for his Latinityjf and they say 
 that he was the first man who drew pen in the royal 
 cause. Many of the wits of the age were on that 
 side, — Cowley, Herrick, Butler, among the most fa- 
 mous. We are not going now into the right or wrong 
 of the cause of either of the great parties ; but we 
 can easily see how that royal side was a very natural 
 one for the gay, brilliant, and light men in the time 
 to take. A brilliant fellow like Cleiveland arising in 
 those days, with a taste for wit and wine, with a 
 quick sense of the ridiculous, and a natural love of 
 the elegant, was born a Royalist, irrespective of all 
 controversies. What a Puritan really meant, he did 
 not know ; it was a condition of feeling remote from 
 his spiritual perceptions. But his eye told him a dis- 
 tinct enough story about the external phenomena. 
 The Puritan was a grim, severe man ; his appearance 
 was eccentric ; there was nothing genial or jovial 
 about him. He used Scripture phrases and grave 
 expressions, and was hostile to the flagon. He had 
 no chance with Cleiveland, as you see at once by a 
 glance at Cleiveland's portrait. So, at that time, the 
 
 * There is a memoir of him, by Bishop Percy, in Kippis's Biographia 
 Britannica. Percy's grandmother was the youngest of four daughters 
 of Cleiveland's brother. 
 
 t " He was," says Fuller, " a general artist, pure Latinist, exquisite 
 orator, and (which was his masterpiece) eminent poet. His epithets 
 were pregnant with metaphors, carrying in them a difficult plainness, — 
 difficult at the hearing, plain at the considering thereof. His lofty 
 fancy may seem to stride from the top of one mountain to the top of 
 another, so making to itself a constant level and champion of continued 
 elevations." Fuller's Worthies. 
 
THE "METAPHYSICAL POETS." 177 
 
 two parties deepened each other's peculiarities by 
 their opposition.* The sterner the Puritan became, 
 the louder was Cleveland's catch, and the deeper his 
 draught. f Besides, men of his class are impression- 
 able and warm-hearted ; the fancy had something to 
 attach itself to in the' old institutions ; the feeling for 
 picture was gratified : and, on the other hand, what a 
 field for the satirist was afforded by the peculiarities 
 of the other party ! Cleiveland felt that his whole 
 nature was gratified when he kissed Charles's hand, 
 and quizzed Cromwell's nose. 
 
 But, besides being a satirist, Cleiveland was, in 
 the language of his day, a poet ; and he belonged to 
 that school of " metaphysical poets " (to use John- 
 son's expression), which comprised Cowley and other 
 distinguished men. They wrote love-poefry with 
 much ambition, in particular ; celebrating their mis- 
 tresses with a profusion of wit, at once so picturesque 
 and so quaint, that it resembled tattooing rather 
 than any more natural style of ornament. The poet 
 of this class was consumed with passion, according 
 to his own account; but in the height of his emo- 
 
 * " Every stage, and every table, and every puppet-play, belched forth 
 profane scoffs upon them (i. e. the Puritans) ; the drunkards made them 
 their songs ; and all fiddlers and mimics learned to abuse them, as find- 
 ing it the most gameful way of fooling." Lucy Hutchinson. 
 
 t " Some men also there were of liberal education, who being either 
 careless or ignorant of those disputes bandied about by the clergy of 
 both sides, aspired to nothing but an easy enjoyment of life amidst the 
 jovial entertainment and social intercourse of their companions. All 
 these flocked to the king's standard, where they breathed a freer air, and 
 were exempted from that rigid preciseness and melancholy austerity 
 which reigned amongst the parliamentary party." Hume. 
 
178 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 tion he exercised the subtlety of a middle-age doc- 
 tor, and the minuteness of a Dutch painter. He 
 adored his " mistress ; " and to prove it- to her, he 
 illustrated his passion from the Talmud, from the 
 feudal law, from the most complicated operations of 
 science, and from the peculiari'es of astrology or of 
 witchcraft. lie played innumerable tricks with his 
 art, which resembled the freaks of the mechanicians, 
 who made wooden birds that would fly. It was a 
 devotion like the zeal of the illuminators, who doated 
 on the beauties of an ms., and threw all their wor- 
 ship and their genius into some exquisite illuminated 
 initial letters. Cleiveland relates how a bee was 
 attracted by the person of his love, and flew to her ; 
 
 and he says : — 
 
 * 
 
 " Live honey all ! The envious elf 
 Stung her, 'cause sweeter than himself; 
 Sweetness and she are so allied, 
 The bee committed parricide !" 
 
 The same ingenuity is exhibited in his peems about 
 Charles. Of his Satires, the chief was one against 
 the Scotch, for their conduct to the king : — 
 
 " Nature herself doth Scotchmen beasts confess, 
 Making their country such a wilderness, — 
 A land that brings in question and suspense 
 God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence, 
 But that Montrose anl Crawford's loyal band 
 Atoned their sin, and christened half their land. 
 
 A land where one may pray with just intent, 
 Oh, may they never suffer banishment ! 
 
CLEIVELAND. REIGN OF CHARLES II. 179 
 
 Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, 
 *Not forced him wander, but confined him home." 
 
 When the Newark garrison, in which he held the 
 office of Judge-Advocate, yielded, Cleiveland may 
 have expected martyrdom, as a bitter foe: but the 
 grim commander, David Lesley, only said, " Let the 
 poor knave sell his ballads ; " and set him free, — as 
 if you opened the window to let out a wasp ! * He 
 lived, after his cause was defeated, in chambers in 
 Gray's Inn, dependent on the kindness of the party 
 which admired him ; and died in 1658. He was a 
 pungent satirist ; saying of Oliver, " he is so perfect 
 a hater of images, that he hath defaced God in his 
 own countenance." His popularity in his day was 
 immense ; but not many years after his death, the 
 wind scattered abroad the leaves that formed his 
 crown. He ceased to be reprinted and to be read ; 
 and went as completely out of fashion as the love- 
 locks, the Yandyke-beards, and the steeple-hats. 
 
 Charles the Second's reign was a good one for the 
 satirists and squib-writers. The State Poems f com- 
 prise several sharp and stinging satires against the 
 government. Andrew Marvell's^: name, honorable 
 
 * He was afterwards seized at Norwich, as a man dangerous from 
 his " great abilities," in 1655 ; but Oliver let him go. 
 
 t The extract which follows is taken from " The Second Part of 
 
 the Collection of Poems on Affairs of State, by A M 1, and 
 
 other wits. London, 1689." But we must not be too hasty in attribu- 
 ting to Marvell pieces in such collections, which, with some smart 
 things, contain many dull and many obscene ones. 
 
 t Born 1620, died 1678. Marvell's wit was great; but his poems, 
 too, have fine and deljcate touches. In one of his prose pieces occurs 
 this remarkable piece of advice : " You will do well to make use of all 
 
180 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 for his fidelity to his principles, is famous among 
 wits. You find it put to verses, where the private 
 and public life of the Court is treated with bitter 
 scorn ; they remain now, to testify to us that all the 
 glitter of the crown, which, indeed, was at that time 
 like an ancient supper-crown of roses (an emblem of 
 gaiety, whose attraction was connected with the 
 debauchery of to-night and the sickness of to-mor- 
 row), did not impose on the best hearts in England. 
 There is a dialogue between the horse at Woolchurch 
 and the horse at Charing Cross. They complain 
 alternately : 
 
 " To see Dei gratia writ on the throne, 
 And the king's life say, God there is none ! 
 
 That he should be styled Defender of the Faith, 
 Who believes not a word that the Word of God saith. 
 
 That the duke should turn Papist, and that church defie 
 For which his own father a martyr did die. 
 
 Though he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil, 
 Not to think his own father is gone to the devil ! 
 
 To see a white staff make a beggar a lord, 
 
 And scarce a wise man at a long council-board, &c." 
 
 There is plenty of this, and of stronger scandal, 
 against the king's most intimate acquaintances. Such 
 rhymes, such sportive effusions, fell like thistle-seed 
 in many various places, and all came to ripe growth 
 in due time. It was at the close of that century that 
 Fletcher of Saltoun made his famous remark, that 
 " if he might write the ballads, he did not care who 
 
 that can strengthen and assist you, — the word of God, the society of 
 good men, and the books of the ancients." 
 
LAMPOONS. 181 
 
 made the laws." To write a lampoon in those days, 
 indeed, was one of the necessary accomplishments of 
 a gentleman. Dorset* is lauded by Dryden for his 
 little squibs, in language fit for the celebration of a 
 Juvenal. Buckingham and Rochester threw them 
 off frequently for pleasure or from spite. Congreve 
 took up the tradition of polite lampooning, and 
 exquisitely employs his talent for it in the Doris, and 
 in other brilliant little pieces, unrivalled in this 
 department but by Moore alone. 
 
 In the early part of the eighteenth century,f we see 
 what importance was attached to such effusions ; for 
 no less a man than Swift used to issue them forth when 
 occasion required. It is very curious to read these, 
 and see how so great and so serious a man could adapt 
 himself to writing doggrel for the mob. When he 
 had an object to carry in Dublin, he used to load the 
 hawkers with these fruits of his wit, who went chant- 
 ing rhymes, ending probably with some such chorus 
 as " Down, derry down, " by the friend of Pope and 
 Bolingbroke ! This was like a king's scattering largess. 
 Within the present generation, I believe, squibs of the 
 Dean's have been taken down from recitation, having 
 been preserved by tradition among the poor. When 
 
 * Dorset was kind to men-of-letters, in a singular degree. Prior has 
 written nothing better than his sketch of him in his dedication to his son. 
 
 t Blackmore was so indignant at the public taste for squibs, that he 
 published, in 1700, a Satyr against Satyrs. 
 
 " How happy were the old unpolished times, 
 As free from wit as other modern crimes ! " 
 
 he says. He seems to have hated wit, — and he carefully kept his com- 
 positions free from it ! 
 
182 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 England had once began to be governed by the par- 
 ties, squibbing became an engine of warfare, and was 
 cultivated as an art. The last century was the century 
 of libels-pa?' excellence. Due diligence would enable 
 one to trace a line of libellous singers, from those who 
 triumphed in William's ill health and Queen Anne's 
 favoritism, down through the era of the amours of the 
 early Georges and the talk of the third George, to the 
 Queen-Caroline trial. Not a turn of events, not a 
 celebrated man, but has had libellous celebration. 
 History treats the persons with gravity and dignity ; 
 but go and ask their contemporaries, — ask those who 
 knew something of them personally, what kind of 
 people they were ! The eighteenth century, painted 
 by itself, is a marvellous object. When you read 
 what each of the contending parties said of the other, 
 and only suppose them to be speaking with moderate 
 truthfulness, what a notion you form of them ! I 
 confess, that when I read their attacks on each other, 
 I feel inclined to come to the conclusion which I did 
 about a public controversy some years ago. Two lite- 
 rary gentlemen (both Reformers, by the by) assailed 
 each other in print for a considerable time : one 
 accused the other of shabby conduct ; he retorted, by 
 calling him " cadaverous." I gathered, from what I 
 read of the dispute, that they were both in the right ! 
 And this is the result of reading the ferocities of the 
 last century's controversies, — you get disgusted with 
 both sides ! 
 
 One conclusion you are pretty sure to come to, 
 when you read political satire and squibs, — a sense of 
 disappointment with their literary merit. You hear 
 
THE beggars' opeea. 183 
 
 that a writer made his friends exult, and his enemies 
 writhe; jou examine his weapon, and think it mar- 
 vellously blunt. This is the case with the great mass 
 of party satire ; and it is not a sufficient answer, that 
 you are not acquainted with all the circumstances. 
 A satirist should be able to make you know quite 
 enough of his object to enjoy the castigation. Juve- 
 nal does ; Horace does ; Swift and Pope do. The 
 truth is, that in most cases the hate was the element 
 which made the libel successful ; it needed that atmo- 
 sphere for the squib to burn bright in. 
 
 The Beggar's- Opera belongs to the best class of 
 political satire. Though Gay wrote it, it was Swift's 
 suggestion from which it sprang ; and Pope's influ- 
 ence is perceptible in it. All that jocosity about poli- 
 ticians had a deeper intention than it gets credit for. 
 
 " The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, 
 The lawyer beknaves the divine ; 
 And the statesman, because he's so great, 
 Thinks his trade's as honest as mine." 
 
 — So sings the scoundrel Peaehum. 
 
 " Since laws were made for every degree, 
 To curb vice in others as well as in me, 
 I wonder we ha'n't better company 
 
 Upon Tyburn tree. 
 But gold from law can take out the sting ; 
 And if rich men like us were to swing, 
 'Twould thin the land such numbers to string 
 
 Upon Tyburn tree. 
 
 — So sings Macheath, marvellously in the style of 
 
184 SATIKE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Swift. Swift had always deeper objects than Pope in 
 his satire ; but they both were, in their hearts, bitter 
 against English government generally. Government 
 stopped Polly, the second part of the Beggars' Opera ; 
 and Gay never got any thing from the Crown but the 
 office of " Gentleman Usher" to the Princess Louisa, 
 — a high and puissant princess of two years old! 
 Those who did get places gave a pretty strong quid pro 
 quo in most cases. If any body supposes it was lite- 
 rature that was rewarded in those days, he is mistaken. 
 "We owe it to the Revolution indeed that talent got 
 better pay than it had had just before ; for parties fight, 
 and must have fighting-men. But writers were re- 
 warded as servants of party, and not as the apostles 
 of letters ! What is the Campaign of Addison but a 
 poetical pamphlet? While satire of the high kind, 
 like Young's and Churchill's and Dr. Johnson's, ap- 
 pealed to the public, which has alone saved men of 
 genius in later times, — satire of the .inferior order 
 found ample employment in party-wars, in squibs and 
 pasquinades and lampoons, and took the consequences 
 — temporary fame, and subsequent neglect. It is a 
 species of literature which illustrates an age ; let us 
 therefore look at it a little more in detail. 
 
 Thanks to themselves and their successors, we 
 have no want of information about the last century. 
 It is an endless field for the commentator ; and a 
 very amusing thing it is to see how he deals with it. 
 Every now and then we have a fresh batch of 
 Memoirs, edited by somebody of distinction (of 
 course), and which is to settle all about Frederick the 
 Prince of Wales, son of George the Second, and tell 
 
THE LAST CENTURY. 185 
 
 us whether he hated his mother, or his mother him 
 first; whether the said king did meditate flying to 
 Hanover, or not. Little enough is to be learned 
 about Herbert or Cowley ; but plenty is to be known 
 of Bubb Doddington. The commentator girds up 
 his loins for the task, and assumes the editorial pen. 
 The volumes consist of memoirs of some forgotten 
 big-wig, or letters about the family intrigues of some 
 aspiring dunce. The commentator is in his glory, 
 and notes spring up like toadstools. Dozens of 
 forgotten individuals stir from their obscure vaults, 
 and rattle their dry bones before you, by the aid of 
 such annotation as this : " Hon. Henry Plebson : he 
 was the second son of the first Lord Cadd of Mush- 
 room ; ob. 1762. Charles De Gomorrah : Chatham 
 made him President of the Rag-Bag Office ; married 
 in 17 — Augustina, daughter of the 150th Earl of 
 Plunderville ; separated 17 — ; ob. 1770." Human 
 nature shudders over the labor of reading such 
 matter ; tires, even of Horace Walpole's .sprightliness, 
 finding no end to his spite, his cant, and his affecta- 
 tion ; and is indignant at the hundred attempts to rob 
 the grave of its prey in such publications. 
 
 There was one squib-writer of the last age, whose 
 amiable labors extended over many years, and who 
 may be read, in part, with more amusement than this 
 section of satirical literature usually affords. I allude 
 to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. He was a Welsh 
 gentleman, member for Monmouthshire ; and he took 
 the side of Sir Robert Walpole, which there was some 
 need to do ; for Sir Robert was opposed by powerful 
 and notable men,— Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and others. 
 
186 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Every man of note almost wrote squibs at that time, 
 and complained of the factiousness of those who 
 wrote them against himself. Horace Walpole's 
 letters give abundant instances of the violence of 
 party feeling, particularly that against Sir Eobert, 
 who, as " Robin," as the " Triumphant Exciseman," 
 and so forth, was libelled and caricatured year after 
 year. His son Horace tells us, that he heard a man 
 say, " D — n him, how well he looks ! " Those who 
 opposed Pulteney, again, were quite as unscrupulous. 
 When he was made Earl of Bath, they called his 
 spouse " the Wife of Bath." Know we not, says Sir 
 Charles, how 
 
 " Sands, in cause and person queer, 
 Jumped from a patriot to a peer, 
 
 No mortal yet knows why ; 
 How Pulteney truck'd the fairest fame, 
 For a right honorable name, 
 
 To call his vixen by ! " 
 
 Sir Hanbury Williams (Horace Walpole tells us) 
 did Pulteney more harm in three years than Pulteney 
 and his set had done Sir Robert all the time they 
 had been at him. Indeed, he is a gay and genial 
 writer, with a sharp rather than a strong vein of 
 wit ; and embodies his sarcasm with such elegance 
 and lightness, that it is like poisoned champagne, 
 and bubbles with beautiful gaiety. Compared with 
 your Swifts and Popes, of course, he is a pelter of 
 ion-ions; but of course you are to consider all the 
 squib-writers that. He was a good-natured, fine- 
 mannered person ; had no place-hunting propensities 
 
SIB CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS. 187 
 
 himself; and had a right to persifler the jobbers. 
 He wrote with great freedom, as is curiously instanced 
 in a ballad which nearly subjected him to deadly 
 consequences. Isabella Duchess of Manchester, 
 an heiress, whom many fine gentleman tried for, 
 disappointed her countrymen, and married Hussey 
 (afterwards Lord Beaulieu, as the commentators 
 carefully note), an Irish gentleman. Sir Charles, after 
 stating the many good offers she had had, concludes : 
 
 " But careful heaven reserved her grace 
 For one of the Milesian race, 
 
 On stronger parts depending : 
 Nature, indeed, denies them sense, 
 But gives them legs and impudence, 
 
 That beats all understanding." 
 
 Our Satirist had the lively vanity of a man of 
 showy parts. He is smart on the dunce, as we may 
 see in his verses in answer to a pamphlet (supposed 
 to be by Pulteney) called Faction detected. 
 
 " Your sheets I've perused, 
 
 Where the Whigs you've abused, 
 And on Tories have falsely reflected ; 
 
 But, my lord, I'm afraid, 
 
 From all that there's said, 
 'Tis you, and not they, are detected. 
 * * # 
 
 But stay, let me see, 
 
 What best could it be, 
 That such a huge book could indite ; 
 
 For of all these you've made, 
 
 If there's one that can read, 
 I'm sure there's not one that can write. 
 
188 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 It's above poor Sir John ; 
 
 Not by Sands could be done ; 
 And Bootle's too stupid and dark ; 
 
 Ord hardly reads well ; 
 
 Jeff never could spell ; 
 And you know Harry Vane makes his mark." 
 
 As, during the last century, the course adopted by 
 Sands and others was the surest road to a peerage, 
 it is interesting to see what a clever English gentle- 
 man, who belonged to that sphere of life thought 
 of these men ; and what he could say of them with 
 admiration and applause. 
 
 A wag of that period, who was also a screw, once 
 exclaimed, while he was eating oysters, " What 
 grand things oysters would be, if one could make 
 one's servants live on the shells ! " They achieved 
 that in government ; for the parties got the oysters, 
 and the people the shells. When a bevy of the 
 opposite side got in, this is the way Sir Charles 
 welcomed them : " Bat," in the first stanza, is 
 Bathurst : 
 
 " Dear Bat, I'm glad you've got a place ; 
 And since things thus have changed their case, 
 
 You'll give opposing o'er. 
 'Tis comfortable to be in, 
 And think what a d d while you've been, 
 
 Like Peter, at the door ! 
 
 See, who comes next 1 — I kiss thy hands ; 
 But not in flattery, Samuel Sands ; 
 For, since you are in power, 
 
JUNIUS: HIS INFLUENCE ON JOURNALISM. 189 
 
 That gives you knowledge, judgment, parts, — 
 The courtier's acts, the statesman's arts, — 
 Of which you'd none before ! 
 
 See Harry Vane in pomp appear ; 
 And since he's made Vice-Treasurer, 
 
 Grown taller by some inches. 
 See Tweeddale follow Carteret's call ; 
 See Hanoverian Gower, and all 
 
 The black funereal Finches." 
 
 Sir Charles was for some time Envoy to the 
 Elector of Saxony. That he was a sharp, brilliant 
 man, is obvious enough ; but, after all, nothing in 
 his writings is up to the tradition of his fame. 
 
 George the Second was so provoked by the libels 
 of the Pulteney set, that he, with his own hand, 
 struck his name out of the list of the Privy Council ; 
 and when that king left this world, the coming 
 generations were quite ready for his successor and his 
 ministers. Bute had as much abuse as any one 
 minister, perhaps, has ever had ; but in Junius came 
 a satirist destined to wield a fiercer lash than any 
 man of his time. 
 
 Who Junius was, is a question of second-rate im- 
 portance, though a matter of high curiosity in its 
 way. But his name (if we ever discover it) will add 
 nothing to the finish of his language, or the point of 
 his epigrams. A strong personality is stamped on his 
 writing, so that we think of Junius the figure as 
 familiarily as we do of many an author. His satire 
 is his great characteristic ; for he has not contributed 
 any wisdom, to the stock of thought, nor is he a better 
 
190 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 reasoner than many other men, who do not excite so 
 much. 
 
 He belongs, then, to our satirical literature, and to 
 this political department of it. He may be called the 
 father of journalism ; for what man ever wrote so 
 well, independently and anonymously, and in a news- 
 paper, before him? "We had political essayists and 
 pamphleteers ; but they wrote for parties, and in 
 special organs, or in special forms. Junius was the 
 first genuine newspaper-man who spoke to the public 
 on that peculiar footing. One great cause of his suc- 
 cess was, that writing in a newspaper, he had such 
 information, and wrote so well. The prestige of his 
 name gave a great impulse to newspapers ; for all 
 his force had been exerted there, and his anonymity 
 aided the anonymous system ; besides which, his ex- 
 ample was an immense stimulus to every man who 
 devoted himself to journalism. 
 
 If one adopts a theory about the authorship of 
 these Letters, one is perpetually tempted to be ex- 
 plaining the Letters by that light, which is a mislead- 
 ing plan, and prevents our forming a fair estimate of 
 them by themselves. 
 
 The moral impression that they produce upon me 
 is not so strong as the feeling I have of the man's 
 literary power. I believe more in his hate than his 
 patriotism. Without some genuine emotion — sincere 
 emotion — they would never have been so strongly 
 marked as they are ; that he hated Grafton, Bedford, 
 and the King, seems clear enough ; but also there is 
 a great air of artifice about them, of tragic, dramatic 
 assumption. This is naturally congenial to the rays- 
 
ART OF JUNIUS. 191 
 
 tery, and, I suppose, was assumed along with the de- 
 termination to be mysterious. The hate, the indigna- 
 tion (and let me add, the very natural indignation 
 often), is at the bottom of his heart ; but when it is 
 to be expressed, the writer projects himself into a 
 prepared figure, and speaks from it. He is some- 
 thing of a swaggerer, our friend ; and I fear that if 
 you did pull the disguise off him, you would find the 
 figure inside not so imposing as it looks in its cloak. 
 The sarcasm, however, is unique in these Letters ; 
 still owing something of its effect to the writer's 
 solemn way, which delivers an epigram as if it were 
 an oracle ; but which, after you have got familiar 
 with it, and with whatever is to be learnt about him, 
 appears terribly artificial. Junius has a sibylline 
 effect for a while upon you ; yet in time you dis- 
 cover that the sibyl is of the eighteenth century, with 
 a share of trick. 
 
 Much admiration belongs justly to these elaborate 
 Letters. Knowledge of the world is to my mind the 
 writer's chief characteristic, rather than wisdom or 
 nobleness of view. He knows how to produce 
 effects ; and is a lord of manner, making his bow, 
 and planting his dagger-stroke with extreme tact. 
 Thus, when he would bring himself into the king's 
 presence, he would deliver his sentiments " with dig- 
 nity, but not without respect." " Without intending 
 an indecent comparison,"" says he, " I may express 
 my opinion, that the Bible and Junius will be read 
 when the commentaries of the Jesuits are forgotten." 
 Certain ensigns " infest our streets and dishonor our 
 public places." In these cases we see the artfulness 
 
192 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 of the man, who studies to wound, with the air of a 
 superior being. In serving up slander and scandal, 
 the same dramatic dignity is preserved : he would 
 have you believe that the mud he flings at you fell 
 from heaven. This theatrical side of the Junius 
 character is very curious and peculiar, and makes 
 him cut a figure half-Roman and half-French, and 
 look like the ghost of Brutus uttering quotations from 
 a lampoon. But whether you agree with him and 
 respect him, or not, you find him an entertaining and 
 brilliant writer. 
 
 His best things are said when he is in his least 
 stilted mood, and gives loose to his free comic vein : 
 as when he says of one man, " he has brought infamy 
 even on the name of Luttrel, and exceeded his father's 
 most sanguine expectations." His best epigrams are 
 very much in Sheridan's manner ; more like those of 
 Richard Brinsley than of any one I remember at this 
 moment. When he rises to high flights of rhetoric, 
 he preserves his good taste, and successfully hits your 
 sense of the lofty and the exalted. But at no time 
 has he depth of feeling, much warmth of heart, or 
 humor, or tenderness, or generally, the genial quali- 
 ties of men like Burke or Johnson. He is essentially 
 an opposition writer, and probably enjoyed the lash- 
 ing of rogues and fools to a degree which made him 
 tolerant of their existence. His form is as perfect 
 almost as Pope's, and both have been much imitated ; 
 but Junius's style, being the expression of a peculiar 
 disposition highly cultivated, cannot be well imitated. 
 His followers have aped the Roman " great manner," 
 
CHATTERTON. 193 
 
 as the supernumeraries might manage to ape Caesar 
 in Shakspeare's play. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, poor young Chatterton* 
 has imitated him as well as any body ; and that feat 
 must be ranked; among the astonishing evidences of 
 natural talent he gave during his brief and wonderful 
 career. He came up from Bristol in his eighteenth 
 year, after having spent his early youth in the most 
 pure and sentimental meditation on the old days, — a 
 blessed haven to retire to, out of an atmosphere of 
 aldermen, blackguard schoolfellows, patronizing pew- 
 terers, and a lawyer's office ! He loved to lie on the 
 grass, and gaze on the old church, and hear in fancy 
 the vesper-bell ringing ; or to mnse upon old church- 
 processions ; or to warm his imagination at the fire of 
 antique heraldic gold and gules. He had shaped to 
 himself, out of the dim past, one ecclesiastic figure, 
 which he loved to endow with the qualities of his 
 own heart and genius ; and he saw in " Rowley " 
 embodied all that was good and high-aspiring in him- 
 self; embodied too in the old days, where he liked to 
 wander into, — out of the lawyer's office. In an 
 unlucky horn* he started up to London ; plunged into 
 the vile atmosphere of anti-Bute, anti-king politics ; 
 joined in the destructive element, fatal to peace and 
 love, the wretched business of fighting, for which he 
 was too young and too good. He left the side of 
 Rowley (who was his good genius, the embodiment 
 of what was positive in his nature, as opposed to his 
 
 * Bom 1752, died 1770. All the " Lives " of Chatterton are in- 
 different enough. The best account of his career is that prefixed to the 
 Cambridge edition of some years since, in two volumes. 
 9 
 
194 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 mere hate of cant and his sense of satire) ; wrote 
 songs for Vauxhall, satires d la Churchill, letters 
 d la Junius ; adopted the talk of coffee-houses, and 
 courted the patronage of Lord Mayors ; and passed 
 some months in all that feverish element. He grasped 
 with his young hands at the great fast-rolling vessel 
 of London public life ; was too weak to hold on ; his 
 grasp yielded, and broke ; and he sank forever, and 
 was lost in the waters. His ghost, with a laurel- 
 crown, looks out at us in history, pale and sad. 
 
 The parties seem to have alternate triumphs in the 
 libelling department, But our time will not permit 
 us to go into the Rolliad, much less into satirical 
 productions which would require deodorising before 
 being submitted for inspection to the human touch. 
 The famous and once highly-popular Peter Pindar 
 demands a slight notice at my hands in the squib- 
 writing department. "Wolcot was an original man; 
 a fair representative of the satirical element in his 
 way ; but rather a buffoon than a satirist. The 
 Doctor was a Devonshire man, a physician, and af- 
 terwards in holy orders ; but the bent of his nature 
 was towards jocosity. His favorite subject appears 
 to have been his sovereign, George the Third, whose 
 person, talk, and conduct he has again and again 
 made merry over : — and I will read you an extract, 
 which fairly represents his manner — a kind of broad 
 fun, something like Swift's drolleries, as a wag of the 
 Dean's household might perhaps have imitated them. 
 The story is one founded on an adventure of his 
 Majesty's when making a journey. The world has 
 
A HODEKN ULYSSES. 195 
 
 undergone alterations since the days when Ulysses 
 made his journey, and had a Homer for his bard ! 
 Ov/r Ulysses, then, enters an old woman's cottage, 
 and his eye catches some dumplings ; whereupon 
 Peter Pindar loq. 
 
 " In tempting row the naked dumplings lay, 
 When lo ! the monarch, in his usual way, 
 Like lightning speaks, — ' What's this, what, what?' 
 Then taking up a dumpling in his hand, 
 His eyes with admiration did expand ; 
 And oft did Majesty the dumpling grapple : — 
 ' 'Tis monstrous, monstrous hard, indeed ! ' he cried : 
 ' What makes it, pray, so hard ? ' The dame replied, 
 Low curtseying, ' Please your Majesty, the apple ! ' 
 ' Very astonishing, indeed ; strange thing, ' 
 Turning the dumpling round, rejoined the king. 
 ' 'Tis most extraordinary, then, all this is, 
 It beats Pinetti's conjuring all to pieces. 
 Strange I should never of a dumpling dream ; 
 But, goody, tell me, tell me, w here's the seam ? ' 
 ' Sir, there's no seam, ' quoth she ; ' I never knew 
 That folks did apple-dumplings sew ! ' 
 ' No !' said the staring monarch, with a grin, 
 ' Then how the devil got the apples in 1 ' 
 
 According to Peter, this "Solomon of Great Bri- 
 tain " (as he calls him) started when he was informed ; 
 and, in his delight, turned his household into a bakery 
 for some days. — Peter Pindar's poems sold very 
 widely, and carried a kind of revolutionary laughter 
 at the potentates of the world into hundreds of houses. 
 Gifford thought that he would be doing his Tory 
 
196 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 patrons a service by mauling the radical jester, and 
 published an JEpistle to Peter Pindar. But*Gifford, 
 though lie could manage a kind of savage contempt 
 and point, was no match for the Doctor in fun : and 
 Wolcot came down on him with a torrent of ludicrous 
 Billingsgate, in different productions, of which one 
 bore the amiable title of a Cut at a Cooler. Gifford, 
 whose youth was spent in crushing poverty and obscu- 
 rity, had once been apprenticed to a shoemaker ; — the 
 satirical for this employment is cobbler ; and if a man 
 will enter into the satirical world, he must be prepared 
 to defend every thing about him, — his youth, his 
 parents, his poor old grandmother, all that is most 
 open to assault and battery. "While the clubs during 
 that century had the persiflage of Sir Hanbury Wil- 
 liams and the Solliad, and other satirical luxuries, 
 Peter Pindar amused the public ; and all classes, high 
 and low, enjoyed the pencil of Gilray. 
 
 The great world-movements have always an effect 
 on satirical literature. While all France was simmer- 
 ing just before the Revolution, the Manage de Fig- 
 aro of Beaumarchais, a brilliant comedy, ran night 
 after night in Paris, though it is pregnant with the 
 most revolutionary sarcasm. " What has he done for 
 his fortune?" asks somebody of a noble. "He took 
 the trouble of being born," is the answer. This kind 
 of wit crackled up and down the world like fire, and 
 everywhere there was dryness and rottenness for it to 
 lay hold of. 
 
 In November 1797 appeared the Anti-Jacobin, of 
 which the object is expressed in the title. It was to 
 maul all revolutionaries, British and Foreign, all sym- 
 
THE ANTI-JACOBIN. 197 
 
 pathizers, and generally all new literature that looked 
 suspicious. Grifford did the bloody business ; Canning 
 and Frere the elegant and cutting satire (as far as the 
 journal ever had either), and the best pleasantry. 
 New Morality is the satire which has the highest aims, 
 and was written by Canning and Frere. I will read 
 to you some lines from the attack on Lepaux : 
 
 " Lepaux, whom atheists worship, at whose nod 
 Bow their meek heads the men without a God. 
 
 Should Bonaparte's fleet (say the satirists) bring him 
 here in triumph, — 
 
 " Rejoiced our clubs shall greet him, and instal 
 The holy hunchback in thy dome, St. Paul ! 
 While countless votaries, thronging in his train, 
 Wave their red caps and hymn this jocund strain : 
 ' Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host, 
 Thou Morning Chronicle and Morning Post, 
 Whether ye make the rights of man your theme, 
 Your country libel, and your God blaspheme, 
 Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw, 
 Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux ! 
 
 Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb and Co., 
 Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ! 
 
 Thelwall, and ye that lecture as you go, 
 
 And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux ! 
 
 All creeping creatures, venomous and low, 
 
 Paine, Williams, Godwin, Holcroft, praise Lepaux ! ' " 
 
198 SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 For men whose object it was to maintain what they 
 considered a high-bred aristocracy and a pure church, 
 this was rather a ferocious, unscrupulous, and unchris- 
 tian way of going to work ! But from the days of 
 Bolingbroke to those of Theodore Hook, the Tory 
 party has been remarkable for the violence of its sa- 
 tire. The Anti-Jacobin's tone alarmed its own party ; 
 and it was not carried on in this line long : but to this 
 hour people speak of its satires in a tone of admira- 
 tion, which to me, at all events, appears much too 
 great for its merits. The Whigs triumphed after a 
 while in the pen of Moore ; but the Tories once more 
 got the satirical whip-hand when Hook's John Bull 
 appeared. I consider Moore (whose career does not 
 fall within this Lecture) far the most brilliant of all 
 squib-writers. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams is 
 Hook's equal in gayety and point, and writes with far 
 more taste and feeling, — more like a gentleman, as 
 people say, which amounts to a good deal. Hook's 
 career, however, demands some further notice, which 
 I shall extend to it in my next and concluding Lecture. 
 
 But there was one writer of the last century, one 
 who wrote satire, but who has done higher things, — 
 who has left a name written upon the earth's sur- 
 face in flowers ; one, in all ways, of the greatest men 
 that the literature of Great Britain boasts, — I mean 
 Robert Burns. Burns wrote satire, as the greatest 
 men do, when that was the natural attitude for him. 
 The great satirists have been thinkers ; men of poetic 
 feeling, high aspirations, warm hearts; not merely 
 men who could write severely of people ! We don't 
 
BURNS. 199 
 
 praise the heavens only because they give us thunder 
 and lightning, though these are noble and beautiful, 
 and purify the atmosphere. 
 
 Everybody knows Burns's history ; how he was a 
 poor cotter's son, and strove for knowledge and 
 light ; and was going to the West Indies ; when his 
 little volume attracted a good man's attention, and 
 the good man encouraged him to come to Edin- 
 burgh. The story runs glibly off from the tongue 
 of the whole British people : how he came up there 
 and made a sensation, and was lionised, and travelled; 
 and how they made him a gauger, and set him scour- 
 ing the country after smuggled brandy ; and how 
 he wrote ; and how he liked a glass of toddy (here 
 they shake their heads and look serious) ; and how 
 he died young, and his fame has been increasing 
 ever since. The story is simple, has been told in 
 dozens of dresses, and set to human music of dif- 
 ferent sorts. When you visit his house in the pic- 
 turesque old town of Dumfries, which stands upon 
 the river JSTith, as it flows away to the sea (which 
 house is now occupied by the master of the adjacent 
 ragged-school), they give you a book to sign, which 
 is full of the names of pilgrims. They point out 
 his residences there : the house (now occupied by 
 a tailor, who calls himself a " renovator of gentle- 
 men's apparel,") where he first established himself, 
 after giving up the farm of Ellisland as a bad job ; 
 the aforesaid queer little house, up a rather steep 
 street, where the ragged-school master is established ; 
 and, finally, a handsome mausoleum in St. Michael's 
 churchyard, — much the most pretentious edifice of 
 the three ! 
 
200 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Burns wrote satirical verses, ballads, squibs, and 
 epigrams, as he wrote every thing else, — from his 
 heart. He loved, and hated, and prayed, and drank, 
 in obedience to the instincts of a most vivid and 
 genuine nature, and more absolutely than any writer 
 poured out himself. He is as real as a summer 
 afternoon : and his very faults were as natural as 
 poppies among the corn ; and because they glare and 
 are staring in color, you must not forget how few 
 and how light they are, compared in bulk and weight 
 with the masses of most beautiful and nutritious 
 grain in the crop. He is redolent of every thing 
 he passed through : the old Scotch household piety ; 
 the breezy coolness and beauty of nature ; the jolly 
 homeliness of Scotch humor ; the closer atmosphere 
 of local politics and market-town punch. He repre- 
 sents old Scotland and new Scotland ; feudalism and 
 presbyterianism ; what was genuine, and what was 
 bad in the life of his age ; — and you can study him 
 as a bit of the history of Great Britain. His satire 
 is a piece of himself ; and whether he produced net- 
 tles or roses, they were both fresh. 
 
 It is to be observed of Burns, that he was born 
 loyal ; and that may be said of many other men who 
 have yet been found fighting against institutions. 
 John Bunyau tells us, that he at first worshipped 
 Priest and Church ; but poor John Bunyan found 
 that they had nothing to satisfy him ; and that for a, 
 tinker, born with piety and genius, nothing presented 
 itself from orthodoxy to help him but epicurean sar- 
 casm and the county jail. The feudal system (abuse 
 it who may) had stamped upon the Scotch people a 
 respect for family and aristocracy, an affectionate 
 
BURNS. 201 
 
 feeling towards their leaders ; their Presbyterian 
 religion had given them a priesthood of their own, 
 and made them the best-educated people in Europe. 
 Burns's youth, notwithstanding his family's poverty 
 was immensely influenced by the traditions, and by 
 love of them : he adored the old ballads and songs ; 
 and what good he could see in the national religion 
 we know from the Cotters Saturday Night. He 
 dedicated his poems to the Caledonian Hunt ; and he 
 was even romantically loyal to the nobles whose 
 families had been out for the Stuarts. 
 
 But — and ours is an age of " buts "—the first, 
 the indispensable condition of loyalty is, that you 
 must have something to be loyal to ! You can't be 
 loyal to village despots and " Holy Willie : " that is 
 not loyalty ; that is flunlceyism, the basest attitude 
 that the human soul can assume. When the Douglas 
 was wounded, says the old ballad — 
 
 "Then he called on his little foot-page, 
 And said, ' Run speedilie, 
 And fetch my ain dear sister's son, 
 Sir Hugh Montgomery.' " 
 
 These old champions were worthy of being followed, 
 where they were worthy to lead. But if our Sir 
 James is a mere game-preserver ; if, instead of 
 "godly Mr. George," we have hypocritical sottish 
 Mr. George, — our attitude to them is properly the 
 satirical one. Burns had his heart sickened, his quick 
 sense as' a humorist shocked,, by the absurd idols 
 set up for worship in his day. Europe was rising 
 against its idols ; and Burns achieved his work with 
 the pen. Indeed, every fault of Europe was summed 
 
202 SATIIiE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 up in the one fact, that Robert Burns was scouring 
 the country far and wide to seize smuggled brandy. 
 Since King James had gone about as a gaberlunzie 
 man, Scotland had not seen royalty in such a strange 
 disguise ! 
 
 I must leave Holy Willie's Prayer to any body's 
 private perusal, who wishes to see irony as exquisite 
 as Swift's, — bitter and brilliant ridicule; and the 
 Address to the unco G-uid also, full of humor and of 
 heart. I think the best Satire he has written, with- 
 out doubt, to be the Holy Fair, which has so much 
 comic painting, besides its cutting wit. Nothing can 
 be better than the sketches of the various preachers. 
 
 " Now a' the congregation o'er 
 Is silent expectation, 
 
 For speels the holy door 
 
 With tidings o' damnation. 
 Should Hornie, as in ancient days, 
 'Mang sons o' God present him, 
 
 The very sight o' 's face 
 
 To 's ain het hame had sent him, 
 Wi' fright that day. 
 
 But hark ! the tent has chang'd its voice, 
 
 There's peace and rest na langer ; 
 For a' the real judges rise, 
 
 They canna sit for anger. 
 opens out his cauld harangues 
 
 On practice and on morals ; 
 And aff the godly pour in thrangs 
 
 To gie the jars an' barrels 
 A lift that day ! 
 
 What signifies his barren shine 
 Of moral pow'rs and reason ; 
 
BUENS. 203 
 
 His English style and gestures fine 
 
 Are a' clean out of season. 
 Like Socrates or Antonine, 
 
 Or some old pagan heathen, 
 The moral man he does define, 
 
 But ne'er a word o' faith in, 
 That's right that day. 
 
 In guid time comes an antidote 
 
 Against sic poison'd nostrum, 
 For frae the water-fit 
 
 Ascends the holy rostrum : 
 See, up he's got the word o' God, 
 
 An' meek and mim has viewed it, 
 While common sense has ta'en the road, 
 
 An' afF, an' up the Cowgate, 
 Fast, fast, that day." 
 
 These Satires excited immense rage ; and, indeed, 
 his satiric freedom was the real reason that animated 
 people to talk of his misconduct. One must have 
 seen what a Scotch " Tartuffe " is, hefore one can 
 enjoy his admirable ridicule. 
 
 He was a man who took up, heartily, whatever 
 he took up ; and if he was ill-treated, followed up 
 the individual, and castigated him ; which was natu- 
 ral, and good and beneficial to the public. Here is a 
 specimen of his epigrams ; — ■ 
 
 On hearing that there was Falsehood in the Rev. Dr. B.'s 
 very looks. 
 " That there is falsehood in his looks, 
 I must and will deny ; 
 They say their master is a knave, 
 And sure they do not lie ! " 
 
LECTUKE VL 
 
 BYB0N, MOOEE, &C. PBESENT ASPECT OF 
 
 8ATIKICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 When Lord Byron first began to write, the classical 
 satirist of the day was William Gifford,* our friend 
 who did the butchering business in the Anti-Jacobin. 
 He had published, in 1794 and '95, the Baviad and 
 Jfceviad; and he was now extolled by the party who 
 had taken him up, as the censor of the age. It is 
 pleasant to know that the satirist has generally ranked 
 in this country as an official of some dignity ; though 
 there is a constant tendency in officiality to degene- 
 rate into beadledom. One learns something of that 
 age, and of the difference between our times and it, 
 by observing the Giffordian phenomenon ; by reflect- 
 iug that Gifford was a great authority ; was listened 
 to when he mauled Shelley and Keats ; and was 
 deferred to respectfully by the author of Childe 
 Harold and Don Juan. 
 
 The Baviad and Mceviad succeeded to a degree, 
 which to me, when I look at them, appears extraordi- 
 nary. They were levelled at the Delia Cruscans ; a 
 clique of sentimentalists who twaddled in the rose- 
 
 * Born 1757, died 1826. 
 
GIFFORD. 205 
 
 pink style in those days, of whom Mrs. Piozzi was the 
 most distinguished. " See, " says Gifford, — 
 
 " Thrale's grey woman with a satchel roam, 
 And bring in pomp laborious nothings home." 
 
 In the Mceviad he attacks Boswell in this style : — 
 
 " And Boswell, aping with preposterous pride 
 Johnson's worst frailties, rolls from side to side ; 
 His heavy head from hour to hour erects, 
 Affects the fool, and is what he affects."* 
 
 This, however, is only a moderate specimen. One 
 "Weston he calls : 
 
 " Weston ! who shrunk from truth's imperious light, 
 Swells like a filthy toad with secret spite ; " 
 
 and once adds a note about some individual who actu- 
 ally appears to have liked "Weston, and describes him 
 as a " poor driveller, who is stupid enough to be Wes- 
 ton's admirer, and malignant enough to be his friend." 
 Gifford was hearty in his abuse, as in his general 
 energy, and flung his whole soul into Billingsgate 
 with the same zeal which he had displayed when he 
 studied algebra in the shoemaker's shop, working out 
 "my problems with a blunted awl on pieces of 
 leather."! Hunt^: attacked him ; Hazlitt attacked 
 
 * But the point here is from the pungent Martial. 
 
 t See his autobiography prefixed to his Juvenal ; and Poetry of the 
 Anti-Jocobin, in Westminster Review, Oct. 1852. 
 
 X In Ultra-Crepidarius, published in 1822, an elegant satire. " Let 
 the young satirist, " says he, in his Autobiography (vol. ii. p. 85), " take 
 warning, and consider how much self-love he is going to wound by the 
 iudulgence of his own." 
 
206 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 him ; but I think the worst treatment he met with 
 was from old Peter Pindar, whom he incautiously- 
 assailed in 1800, and from whom he instantly got a 
 douche of savage buffoonery, which splashed him from 
 head to foot. Those were energetic fighting-days — 
 days when, if people hated each other, they said so in 
 public. They gave no quarter, and expected none. 
 " Grosvenor's cobbler this fellow is, " said boisterous 
 old Peter Pindar. " To do him justice, he writes very 
 well for a cobbler. I had some thoughts of a formal 
 execution of the felon ; but on reflection I resolved to 
 hang him in a note." " Ultra-Crepidarius ! " shouted 
 Leigh Hunt. Gifford, however, told the whole world 
 that he had been a cobbler, and gloried in the same. 
 The bitterness lasted for years. Leigh Hunt was once 
 pointed out to Gifford in a room, and saw the little 
 bowed keen man scowling at him. " Why slumbers 
 Gifford ? " asked the Anti- Jacobin, as if he were a 
 giant. " Why slumbers Gifford ? " repeated Byron, in 
 his English Bards. Byron himself, however, soon 
 gave a sufficient reason why all men should be disin- 
 clined to try the satiric weapon after him. Byron 
 achieved in satire the highest fame of his age ; and 
 Gifford subsided into the editorship of the Quarterly 
 Review, and died in 1826. 
 
 There are (as far as my experience and observation 
 go) three stages of feeling about Byron, through 
 which the youth of this age pass. When we are first 
 turned out loose into the world and its libraries, with 
 a moderate knowledge of hio, hcec, hoc, and a still 
 more moderate one of fas, irarfa, •n-av, and have to find 
 out what we are to love, and what we are to believe, 
 
BYRON. 207 
 
 we are pretty sure to stumble early ou the poem's of 
 George Gordon, Lord Byron. That event is a revela- 
 tion, a first-love, a glory and a beauty not to be 
 described. We adore Byron in those days ; and not 
 because he is a fine writer (for we have shed bitter 
 tears over fine writers long before), but because his is 
 a modern heart, and he reveals modern feeling ; and 
 he promises one a key to the secrets of life, and a 
 basis of belief. We leave him after a while ; but in 
 all the mental stages we pass through in these restless 
 and inquiring times, we never, perhaps, feel such pas- 
 sionate admiration as we did for Byron. In the sec- 
 ond stage, having failed to find permanent satisfaction, 
 we leave him altogether, and are too apt to underrate 
 him : but finally we come round again, look at him 
 more calmly and coolly, admire his great genius, and 
 view with love and pity his dubious, but beautiful and 
 aspiring career and character. These cannot be 
 understood,, unless his age, his position, his adventures, 
 temperament, and all else about him, be duly weighed 
 and allowed ,for. My present business is with his 
 satirical achievements, as the expression of one phase 
 of his nature, and one attitude of his life. 
 
 Byron's historic position is as an actor in the literary 
 revolution, which brought back heart into our books. 
 For some while before him, people had forgotten, 
 apparently, that literature had ever been a part of 
 life. Life was one thing, and literature another ; and 
 the man who wrote elaborately encased himself in 
 artifice, and glared at you through a helmet, like one 
 of the fire-brigade in full equipment. When he 
 entered into the writing-department, he bid good-bye 
 
208 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 to his wife and family ; put out the household fire ; 
 and was no longer a natural human fellow, with loves, 
 and hopes, and prejudices, — but had departed from 
 the genial realms of day, and become a ghost. Ma- 
 son's Elfrida, Home's Douglas, the verses of Hayley, 
 are instances of what I mean. If they were going to 
 re-publish a book of Bacon's, they modernized the 
 style, and spoiled it. Percy " apologised " for publish- 
 ing his beautiful collection of " ballads ; " many of 
 the cultivated believed in Ireland's Yortigem • and 
 there were twenty readers of Blair to one of Jeremy 
 Taylor. Beattie, again, was in his day a lion, and 
 libelled the memory of Churchill, — a man in all ways 
 his superior. When the revival began, Byron's first 
 contribution to it was the English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers ; and this was so fresh, and lively, and 
 genuine, and so different from the pompous malignity 
 of Gifford, that every body was startled. Here was 
 genuine laughter to be had out of Satire once more ; 
 the Edinburgh Review clique, whose easy audacity 
 and contemptuousness were elements in their influence, 
 were treated to a taste of their own severity. It is a 
 pleasant circumstance to reflect on, too, that these 
 Edinburgh wags, who wanted to flatter the " Liberals " 
 by lashing a lord, were whipped into respectfulness 
 by a young fellow whose mother was a Gordon, and a 
 descendant of "the Stuarts.* 
 
 The English Bards is a pleasant and brilliant, 
 
 * The Stuart blood has been fortunate in the female line. Crom- 
 well's mother was of that family ; so was Charles James Fox's ; and 
 Byron derived, directly, from the marriage of a Gordon with a daughter 
 of James the First of Scotland, 
 
BYRON. 209 
 
 rather than a great, satire. One of the liveliest pas- 
 sages is on Jeffrey's duel with Moore : 
 
 " When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, 
 And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by, 
 O day disastrous ! On her firm-set rock 
 Dunedin's Castle felt a secret shock ; 
 
 Tweed ruffled half his waves to form a tear, 
 The other half pursued its calm career ; 
 
 Nay, last, not least, on that eventful morn, 
 
 The sixteenth story where himself was born, 
 
 His patrimonial garret, fell to ground, 
 
 And pale Edina shuddered at the sound : 
 
 Strewed were the streets around with milk-white reams, 
 
 Plowed all the Canongate with inky streams ; 
 
 This of his candor seem'd the sable dew, 
 
 That of his valor showed the bloodless hue ; 
 
 And all with justice deemed the two combined 
 
 The mingled emblems of his mighty mind. 
 
 But Caledonia's goddess hovered o'er 
 
 The field, and saved him from the wrath of Moore ; 
 
 Prom either pistol snatched the vengeful lead, 
 
 And straight restored it to her favorite's head ; 
 
 That head with greater than magnetic power, 
 
 Caught it, as Danae caught the golden shower, 
 
 And though the thickening dross will scarce refine, 
 
 Augments the ore, and is itself a mine ! " 
 
 Byron studied the established satirist much about 
 this time. With all his originality and daring, he 
 was very loyal to orthodox reputations. He was slow 
 to believe in himself also. When he first succeeded 
 
210 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 in satire, he thought satire his forte ; and preferred 
 his Hints from Horace to his Childe Harold. The 
 triumphant success of it, and of the Corsair and 
 Giaour, and others of that class, induced him to 
 believe that the dark and the melancholy were his 
 real elements ; and he doubted of Beppo. When 
 Beppo set all the world laughing and admiring, 
 Byron saw that he was a great wit and comic 
 painter ; and he gave all his nature fair play at last 
 in Juan, his greatest work, and, in particular, one of 
 the finest and subtlest satires in literature. 
 
 It is characteristic of Byron, that in all he wrote 
 we have a picture of Byron the man. There was a 
 conventional side to Byron, of course ; and we have 
 had pleasantry enough about the misanthropy in 
 his books, and the turned-down collar of himself and 
 his disciples, while there has been no want of more 
 serious observation on his " Satanic " characteristics. 
 Mr. Carlyle (whose occasional remarks on him are 
 the most valuable elucidations of his character among 
 English criticisms) has said, that Don Juan is his 
 most sincere work. That I believe. But let us duly 
 estimate the sincerity of his others. For instance : 
 the frequent repetition of the Corsair type was, 
 perhaps, the result of its being popular (and Byron 
 could not write without recognition from without) ; 
 but, then, its first fore-shadowing in Harold was 
 genuine. The melancholy misanthropic ideal, crying 
 " all is vanity," wandering among the world's ruins, 
 and moralising over death, — that was a true expression 
 of the spiritual part of Byron ; that was the curse 
 which his age had inflicted upon his sensitive, and 
 
BYRON. 211 
 
 passionate, and high-aspiring, and naturally lofty soul ! 
 He was not alone in this melancholy. The same 
 influences which affected him in this way, affected 
 Shelley, affected Keats, the tender and the beauty- 
 loving. He speaks of 
 
 " The weariness, the fever, and the fret : 
 
 Where youth turns pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
 "Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
 Nor new love pine for them, beyond to-morrow." 
 
 Byron came of a family of men-of-action ; of a high 
 type of that brilliant and active race, the Norman. 
 They had been renowned even among cavaliers for 
 their daring ; and ages before, they had been Cru- 
 saders. His grandfather had been distinguished as 
 an admiral. Yet this Norman gentleman, who is 
 also a poet, — in fact, the flower of his race, and sent 
 up by them, to show the world generally what they 
 could do in the way of men, even in these days, when 
 it is too common to talk of them as effete, — where 
 does he find himself? Young Byron finds Europe 
 at sixes and sevens ; and as for his brother " Cava- 
 liers " and " Crusaders," they are all busy, dandying 
 and dining at White's, and supping at the Cocoa 
 Tree, or Watier's ; sparring, perhaps, for exercise 
 in the morning, at Jackson's ; and winding up at a 
 " silver hell." The more elegant admire, as a hero, 
 Brummell; and, in fact, some look on me, Lord 
 Byron, with " my books and my poetry," as a 
 " bore ! " For it is on record, that the arch-dandies 
 thought Byron a " bore ! " 
 
212 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Such being the state of things, no wonder that 
 there are two aspects of Byron discernible to the 
 eye. There is one Byron, who drinks, and smokes, 
 and intrigues, and shoots with a pistol, and fights, 
 and gets in debt, and talks " Satanic " sarcasm, and 
 is " affected ; " and has been known to drink fifteen 
 bottles of soda-water in a night. There is another 
 Byron, whose heart is full of natural piety, and the 
 memory of a first love ; who loves to 
 
 " . . . . mingle with the universe, and feel 
 What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal ;" 
 
 ( Childe Harold.) 
 
 who bewails over the materialism of the world, and 
 treats it with scorn ; who is sensitive and tender, and 
 full of kindness to the poor and the unhappy. The 
 first of these apparently diverse apparitions is the 
 temporary and local Byron — the Byron of an unfortu- 
 nate age ; the last is the perennial and eternal 
 Byron, who lives in the memory of the English 
 people. Or, rather, let us say more plainly, that the 
 good predominated in every way in the natural feel- 
 ings of this man; and that he maybe likened, if a 
 homely comparison be permitted, to a beautiful statne 
 which has been painted over by a blockhead in the 
 style of modern dress. Tou must wash that off 
 before you can think of the figure in its natural 
 beauty. If one could conceive Byron with the 
 temporary and conditional removed from him, one 
 would have a truly admirable vision. 
 
 It is to be remarked, that all the while that he was 
 indulging in the excesses of his age, he never believed 
 
BYRON. 213 
 
 in that course of life. He had to drug his heart and 
 conscience, somehow, before he gave himself up to it. 
 He was always open to remorse ; and when we talk 
 of his soda-water, let lis remember that be took re- 
 pentance along with it. There is a strong distinction 
 between the dissipation of a man whose heart is true, 
 and that of our friend the " pig " of the " garden." 
 He doesn't glory in being a pig : on the contrary, he 
 means to leave the " garden " after this one debauch : 
 at all events, he does not make a philosophy of it, 
 and assert that, after all, the "garden" is the only 
 place for a man. Yet even the dissipation of Byron 
 was but a phase : when we remember what he 
 thought, did, read, and wrote, it can only have been 
 a small phase in his life. And we know, from his 
 last actions and his last poem, that he was develop- 
 ing into the high and pure man, of whom what he 
 had written was the prediction. Don Juan was the 
 state of transition from Byron the Denier to Byron the 
 Positive, the Doer. In all his first works, from Childe 
 Harold to Manfred and Cain, he was at war with 
 the world and with himself; and these dark figures, 
 with their various costumes, and their one note, were 
 expressions of that fact. Misanthropy can be no per- 
 manent status for a man ; accordingly, as he got older, 
 and more tranquil and composed, he came to a pause 
 in that career ; and in Juan we find the results of the 
 pause between the Corsair-view of life and the higher 
 stage (the last to which he attained), the ambition to 
 serve mankind practically in the case of struggling 
 Greece, — an enterprise, one object of which was to 
 redeem himself in the opinion of his countrymen. 
 
214 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 Jucm, therefore, is the healthiest and most cheerful 
 of his productions ; and in spite of certain levities 
 here and there, which I regret as much as any man 
 (and which may serve asa theme to Stiggins in his 
 leisure hour), it is a high and valuable work. Its 
 predominant tone is humorous and satirical ; it is 
 full of sharp good sense ; and it is, in truth and fact, 
 a work with a good object. It pictures life genially 
 and soundly ; excites your love of the beautiful and 
 the lofty ; demolishes cant in many a stirring line ; 
 and, above all, the utter sense of weariness and dis- 
 gust it gives you for the mere life of pleasure, and 
 for the false tone of English society, is most beneficial 
 and healthy. I think it disgraceful, the way in 
 which this book is often treated. I do not consider 
 it a dangerous book to any body who is fit to read it. 
 A fool here and there may make the mistake of sup- 
 posing that it is intended to stimulate him into being 
 a Cockney-Rochester ; but that cannot be helped. 
 The form is humorous, and the adventures romantic ; 
 but the result is the thing to be considered. The 
 whole poem, as a picture of life, leaves you with a 
 sense of melancholy and of satiric scorn, — both, how- 
 ever, much more natural and healthy than those 
 excited by his other works. Meanwhile, your best 
 feelings have been awakened by many most tender 
 and most noble strains of writing, which have taken 
 your heart by storm. And for the rest ? The rest is 
 pleasantry and gentlemanly buffoonery, and fantastic 
 affectation, where the element of humor and intellect 
 has kept the doubtful matter from being mischievous, 
 as pure water keeps herbs fresh. Let us bear in mind, 
 
BYRON. 215 
 
 that the great humorists, free as they may be now 
 and then, are not the corrupting men. If I wanted 
 to corrupt a youth (which God forbid), I would not 
 give him Juvenal, or Trisfram Shandy, or Don Juan ; 
 the intellectual exhibition would delight him, and 
 check the mischief to his feelings : no, I would hand 
 him a Jesuit text-book of moral questions ! 
 
 The chief Satire of Byron, then, is to be found in 
 Don Juan, and especially in the latter cantos, where 
 he satirises war and courts, and English society; 
 which last part he introduces in the following 
 stanzas : — 
 
 " The portion of this world which I at present 
 Have taken to fill up the following sermon, 
 
 Is one of which there's no description recent ; 
 The reason why is easy to determine : 
 
 Although it seems both prominent and pleasant, 
 There is a sameness in its gems and ermine, 
 
 A dull and family likeness through all ages, 
 
 Of no great promise for poetic pages. 
 
 With much to excite, there's nothing to exalt, 
 Nothing that speaks to all men and all times ; 
 
 A sort of varnish over every fault, 
 
 A kind of commonplace even in their crimes ; 
 
 Factitious passions ; wit without much salt ; 
 A want of that true nature which suhlimes 
 
 Whate'er it shows with truth ; a smooth monotony 
 
 Of character, in those, at least, who have got any. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, like soldiers off parade, 
 
 They break their ranks, and gladly leave the drill ; 
 
216 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 But then the roll-call draws them back afraid, 
 And they must be or seem what they were : still 
 
 Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade ; 
 
 But when of the first sight you have had your fill, 
 
 It palls — at least it did so upon me, 
 
 This paradise of pleasure and ennui. 
 
 When we have made our love, and gained our gaming, 
 Drest, voted, shone, and maybe something more ; 
 
 With dandies dined ; heard senators declaiming ; 
 Seen beauties brought to market by the score, 
 
 Sad rakes to sadder husband chastely taming, — 
 There's nothing left but to be bored, or bore ! " 
 
 We owe that word " bore," I believe, to the last cen- 
 tury; for in the correspondence in Jesse's Life of 
 Sehoyn (where you can form a good notion of what 
 English society was) you find it used as if it were new. 
 Byron was born into that kind of life with a poetic 
 heart ; and really I think Conrad and Lara were bet- 
 ter company than the people there, of whom Thacke- 
 ray's Major Pendennis is a type. "Lone Caloyer" 
 is not my ideal of manhood ; and the Giaour and 
 the young gentleman in the Bride of Abydos, whose 
 
 " Brow no high-crown'd turban bore, 
 But in its stead a shawl of red, 
 Wreathed lightly round his temples, wore," 
 
 no longer are any thing to me but curiosities. We 
 have found out the gazelle ; and even Stamboul has 
 been blown on by cockneyism : but really the Corsair 
 and all his crew are human and lively compared with 
 the gentlemen of the regency, with their complaints 
 
BYEON. 217 
 
 of being " bored." One would rather be a pirate, or 
 even a decent human " policeman X.," than one of 
 these wax-work sooterskins ! 
 
 The Vision of Judgment is one of Byron's finest 
 satires; but one does not look with pleasure on his 
 wars against the poets of the " Lakes." To begin 
 with, — he had a far higher opinion of them, and was 
 much more influenced by their writings, than is 
 generally supposed. Then, his cause and theirs were 
 in many respects the same ; as he would have seen in 
 time, for his impressionability was one of his strong- 
 est characteristics ; and if ever a man was open to 
 influences, it was he. They were bringing back 
 freshness and life into English poetry, as he was, — 
 each according to his gifts and character. Byron's 
 most permanent influence has been in the same direc- 
 tion. But, as he not only represented his heart and 
 aspiration in his writings, but also his prejudices, 
 moods, tempers, and whims, he wrc ,e a good deal that 
 was no fair representation of the whole of him. He 
 wrote as a man-of-the- world, as well as a poet ; he had 
 heard the " chimes at midnight," as well as the night- 
 ingale. Indeed, it is his universality which most dis- 
 tinguishes him from the poets of his time ; he had an 
 eye equally for mountains and for saloons ; and 
 besides being a romantic poet, was a handsome, lively, 
 witty, shrewd English gentleman, with a vigorous 
 constitution and sturdy prejudices. He poured out 
 himself in his writings ; and was, in fact, in his Don 
 Juan, the chief agent in the anti-Byronic reaction, 
 which, after clearing away the school of morose 
 melancholy and Werterian passion, prepared the way 
 10 
 
218 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 for Pelham and a new comic impulse on one hand, 
 and for new developments of poetry on the other: 
 with which we have no business here. I remark this, 
 lest Byron should suffer, because he was so outspoken 
 and free. Many writers pass for purer, because they 
 are so careful in giving to the world only the cream, 
 the essence, some prepared portion of themselves, 
 representing the very highest in them. There are 
 some who keep their wine for sacramental uses, and 
 meet you only on solemn and high occasions ; others 
 who are fond of pouring out whatever they have, and 
 communicating their intellect and ' imagination as 
 carelessly as the objects of common life. After 
 making all deductions, and allowing for all differ- 
 ences, he still remains beautiful, and to be honored 
 among the great men of his day. 
 
 Tom Moore, again, was loved and made much of ; 
 but he is a far smaller man. In my opinion, his 
 laurel is too big for him. Let us deny no man his 
 merit. Moore's talents and gifts are to be recognised ; 
 and there is no difficulty in doing that, — they lie on 
 the top ; and " he who runs " may admire. He is a 
 brilliant man ; a melodious, ornamental, glittering 
 genius ; — a genius like an eastern dancing-girl, with 
 bells at the ancles, and bells at the waist, ringing 
 with lively music, and bright with holiday-color in 
 the sunshine. All very graceful and pretty, no doubt. 
 But the fancy, rather than the heart, is touched by 
 the spectacle ; and sometimes seriously-disposed per- 
 sons had better keep in-doors when the performance 
 is going to begin. 
 
MOORE. 219 
 
 When Moore tried the standard heroic Satire, he 
 failed. The young Irishman in the Fudge Family,' 
 who sends off a sheet of " patriotism," sometimes, is a 
 very dull fellow, compared with Miss Biddy Fudge ; 
 he is felt to be a vaporer, and as noisy and empty as 
 demagogues generally. On the other hand, how bril- 
 liant and pungent are the playful squibs ! Moore's 
 "lampoons" are the most delicious and airy things 
 in satire. They are full of lively ridicule and pointed 
 illustration, and must have produced a sort of ludi- 
 crous torment, as of thistles in one's bed. He quizzes 
 people; or, to use a vulgar word, he "chaffs" them, 
 rather than lashes them. He never wrote any thing 
 so severe as Byron's Sketch, or Windsor .Poetics, 
 or Irish Avatar. The best Satire, as I have often 
 said, touches the heart. Moore's amuses you — sends 
 you away tickled and delighted : he wings his Satire 
 with the pleasantest wit. "Wit, and that species of 
 fancy which is akin to wit, was Moore's greatest and 
 most striking gift. You see it in his love-songs, and 
 melancholy songs, and in his descriptions, equally. 
 He never wrote a love-song to compare with Shel- 
 ley's. Nature is not his quality. Lalla Roohh is 
 a tissue of brilliant construction, — as fine as glass- 
 blowing ; but the heart of the eastern life is not 
 there at all ; only the ornament, the gaiety, the exte- 
 rior of it ; what you would see of it in a ballet, in 
 fact. How tawdry is all that beauty compared with 
 Wordsworth or Keats ! I doubt if it ranks above 
 virtu. 
 
 The character of Moore was consonant to his genius. 
 He was a good-hearted, or rather a gmcMiearted, and 
 
220 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 affectionate little man, ready with smiles and tears ; 
 easily excited, and easily passing away. Poetry to 
 him was a kind of flower that bloomed handsomely 
 on a dinner-table, or made up elegantly into a bou- 
 quet ; but, in the first instance, did not divert him 
 from the soup, or still less from what Jenkins would 
 call the " noble host;" and in the last, was felt to be 
 in its element at the Opera. It was undoubtedly 
 genuine feeling that made him " cry " during a song at 
 Lady A.'s, or appear affected with emotion at Lady 
 B.'s ; but the elaborate attention to conventional pur- 
 suits which marked his relation to that sphere was 
 quite as strong as the emotion he displayed there ; nay, 
 the two must have re-acted on each other. "When the 
 emotion became " fashionable, " fashion must have 
 colored the emotion. 
 
 It seems to have been a kind of minstrel or trouba- 
 dour position that Moore affected in his poetic capa- 
 city. A man of the lower class, who becomes remark- 
 able for success in the great world, sometimes sets 
 forth plausibly that that is the only sphere where his 
 fine taste is duly gratified; that the manners there, 
 like the old music of the spheres, are infinitely more 
 harmonious and pleasing than those of his barbarian 
 companions, and that his respectable old grandmother 
 (for example) is comparatively coarse ! This, how- 
 ever, is a more honorable motive than the wish to 
 make your songs, if you call yourself a poet, sell 
 better, by dint of singing them as a private guest 
 there. This is the modern minstrel position. The 
 old minstrel one was infinitely more natural and 
 respectable. He never pretended to be the baron's 
 
MOORE. 221 
 
 equal; besides which, he really admired the baron, 
 who was an actual potentate and ruler, and ready to 
 hoist his banner when required. The same remark 
 applies to the fool ; and the same disadvantageous 
 comparison to the position of the jester of to-day. 
 
 Moore was so much under the influence of his high 
 social relations, that he had his most serious convic- 
 tions affected by it. He lost his natural good feeling 
 so much as to write off to Byron, cautioning him 
 against associating with Shelley and the Hunts. He 
 is found expressing his surprise at the middle classes 
 producing such great men now-a-days ; a kind of re- 
 mark that might be pardoned if good-naturedly said 
 by a Courtenay, a Montmorency, or a Bourbon; 
 which would be T absurd in the mouths of half the 
 peerage ; and is preposterous from the lips of Tom 
 Moore. 
 
 Occasionally Moore's Satire rises in tone and feeling 
 into a higher region than that of the Fudge Family 
 and the Twopenny-Post Bag, and pretends to indigna- 
 tion, without being dull. He has fine and spirited 
 stanzas on the death of Sheridan, which occurred 
 under melancholy-enough circumstances. 
 
 " Yes, grief will have way ; but the fast-falling tear 
 Shall be mingled with deep execrations on those 
 Who could bask in that spirit's meridian career, 
 And yet leave it thus lonely and dark at its close. 
 
 Yes ; it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow, 
 And spirits so mean in the great and high-born, 
 
 And to think what a long line of titles can follow 
 The relics of him who died friendless and lorn. 
 
222 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 How proud they can press to the funeral-array 
 
 Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow; 
 
 How bailiffs shall seize his last blanket to-day, 
 
 Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to morrow ! 
 
 And thou too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream, 
 Incoherent and gross, even grosser had passed, 
 
 Were it not for the cordial and soul-giving beam 
 
 That his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness cast ; 
 
 No ! not for the wealth of the land that supplies thee 
 With millions to heap upon foppery's shrine ; 
 
 No ! not for the riches of all who despise thee, 
 
 Though that would make Europe's whole opulence mine ; 
 
 Would I suffer, what even in the heart that thou hast, 
 All mean as it is, must have consciously burned, 
 
 When the pittance that shame had wrung from thee at last, 
 And which found all his wants at an end, was returned ! " 
 
 This is good sharp satire. Generally, Moore is play- 
 ful ; and he has elsewhere heen more good-naturedly 
 severe on George the Fourth, to whom, however, ho 
 had dedicated his Anacreon, and of whose kindness 
 he had been proud. The Regent, it seems, had for his 
 dinner-table certain little golden donkeys, the panni- 
 ers of which held the salt. These Moore speaks of 
 with much humor, as 
 
 " The little asses, 
 Which in that rich and classic dome 
 Appear so perfectly at home ! " 
 
 The Fudge Family in Paris has real comic gayety ; 
 
MOORE. 223 
 
 the pictures of old Fudge, a dull servant of the min- 
 ister, and of his son Bob, 
 
 " A youth of parts, 
 Who longs to be a small place-holder ! " 
 
 are admirable. But Biddy Fudge, the daughter, is 
 the most amusing of the person®. She sets off with 
 her hero (who afterwards proves to be a shopman), as 
 she writes, — 
 
 " To see Montmorency, that place which you know 
 Is so famous for cherries and Jean Jacques Rousseau ! " 
 
 The colonel (as she believes him) is quite acquainted 
 with all the stories about him : 
 
 " ' 'Twas there,' said he, — not that his words I can state ; 
 'Twas a gibberish that Cupid alone could translate — 
 ' But there,' said he (pointing where, small and remote, 
 The dear Hermitage rose), 'that his Julie he wrote 
 Upon paper gilt-edged, without blot or erasure, 
 Then sanded it over with silver and azure. 
 And oh, what will genius and fancy not do, 
 Tied the leaves up together with nonpareilk blue 1 ' 
 What a trait of Rousseau ! what a crowd of emotions, 
 By sand and blue ribbons are conjured up here ! 
 Alas ! that a man of such exquisite notions 
 Should send his poor brats to the Foundling, my dear ! " 
 
 This questionable colonel had been described by Biddy, 
 in a previous letter, as 
 
 " A fine sallow, sublime sort of Werter-faced man, 
 With moustaches that gave (what we read of so oft) 
 The dear corsair expression, — half-savage, half-soft ; 
 
224 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 As hysenas in love may be fancied to look, or 
 
 A something between Abelard and old Blueher ! " 
 
 Here Master Tom was running into danger ; the 
 Corsair joke trenched on the dignity of Byron, who 
 blazed up for a minute into classic wrath, and medi- 
 tated a Satire on his friend. But the fit passed off 
 without that result, — rather, I confess, to my private 
 disappointment. Once Byron said to him, " I could 
 bear any thing but being quizzed." " Oh," says 
 Moore, " nobody could quizz you ! " " You could, 
 you dog ! " Byron answered, shaking his fist at him, 
 with a grin. This little passage gives us a glimpse at 
 the natures of both men ; — Byron's exquisite sensi- 
 tiveness (for he felt that the form in which he had 
 cast his passionate feeling had a weak side), and 
 Moore's easy worldly character, over which ridicule, 
 and friendliness, and respect for " a lord," played 
 easily in succession. 
 
 In passing to our own period, we must not forget 
 just to mention the Devil's 'Walk of Coleridge and 
 Southey ; and Coleridge's Fire, Famine, and Slaugh- 
 ter ; and the Rejected Addresses, — as contributions to 
 satirical literature. Coleridge and Southey had both 
 fine satirical wit at command when it was needed. 
 The book of the Smiths has some excellent parodies ; 
 — the success of which description of comic writing 
 will always depend on the degree in which the man 
 who parodies can really feel the original. There are 
 excellent parodies in the Dunoiad ; and Pope had no 
 lack of feeling for the sublime. Our own day sup- 
 
hook. 225 
 
 plies examples which you will all recollect ;* neverthe- 
 less parody takes a secondary rank. Of these two 
 Smiths, James had the most comic talent ; and his 
 Memoirs afford examples of a genuine comic vein. 
 He had as much wit, I doubt not, as Theodore Hook ; 
 but Hook has been talked about twenty times as much. 
 I think that a man of real merit has a better chance of 
 getting public recognition now than ever ; but I stur- 
 dily maintain that popularity is no sufficient test of it. 
 Hook's writings and career are very good com- 
 mentaries on a text of Pascal's, a terrible little 
 Pensee of that great man's : — " Diseur de bons-mots, 
 ■ — mauvais caractere,"f says he. Of course he means 
 the diseur who is nothing else, or, at all events, the 
 man who is essentially that. Hook took up in his 
 novels, I know, a conventional standard of right and 
 wrong ; and rewards the good, and punishes the bad 
 man, after a fashion. But this " moral " has much 
 the effect of a " tag." If a man is a clown, and his 
 main influence on me is to make me laugh, it is to 
 little purpose that he finishes his tumbling by saying, 
 " Fear God, and love your neighbor." My immediate 
 reply is, that his business is not with the law and the 
 prophets ; and that if he wishes to meddle with the 
 office of preacher, he had better go home and wash 
 the paint off his face, and remain for a while in sack- 
 cloth and ashes. Horace leaves you wiser ; Juvenal, 
 
 * For instance, the parodies in Bon Gaultier's Ballads, and Punch's 
 Prize Novelists, — both capital works. Parody is generally made little 
 of, because, while a first-rate comic writer seldom condescends to it, 
 almost every man of any comic power can do it tolerably. 
 
 t Pens6es, premiere partie, art. ix. 22. 
 10* 
 
226 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 indignant and aspiring ; Swift, angry, but better ; 
 Lindsay, amused and in good nature ; Burns, tingling 
 with rage, but full of hope ; Erasmus, improved and 
 delighted. The great Satirists have all a healthy 
 effect. But your Theodore Hook, what is the 
 spiritual effect of his Satire ? 
 
 He began his satirical career with the Queen's trial, 
 and with songs and ballads of the squib description 
 (but full of ill-nature,) against Caroline of Brunswick. 
 He made great fun of those who attended her court, 
 representing them as " gemmen from Wapping," and 
 ladies from " Blowbladder Bow." This is the kind of 
 pleasantry which fills his novels, and which made his 
 fame. He was the most eminent man of that school, 
 the leading principle of which is, or was, that no good 
 can come out of Bloomsbury ; that good wine, and 
 good cookery^, and good manners, are confined to 
 certain regions of the West (where the Satirist, of 
 course, is to be found), and to the inhabitants of 
 which comic narratives of the way fish is served, and 
 wine handed round, in more unfortunate neighbor- 
 hoods, are to be perpetually supplied by that func- 
 tionary. According to this school, nobody in those 
 quarters of the town, of which the degraded Blooms- 
 bury is the representative, has a right to give dinners 
 or balls, or to marry his daughters, or to keep a 
 carriage. I should not quarrel with Hook or any 
 other man for ridiculing the absurd apery of aristo- 
 cracy which does characterize some of the middle 
 class; and which has even a dangerous effect, by 
 isolating them in sympathy from the masses from 
 which they spring. This is fair game. But he 
 
hood. 227 
 
 ridiculed far more widely, and with different senti- 
 ments ; he satirised in a truly vulgar spirit. He was 
 not sentimentally loyal to the great; he did not 
 respect them on the true ground on which aristocra 
 cies should be respected, i. e. for the historic interest 
 which belongs to, at all events, a section of their 
 body; — he admired fine houses, and fine manners, 
 and splendid dinners; and sold himself (for to that 
 it amounted) for the enjoyment of gold plate and 
 white Hermitage, and the " dear Theodore " of 
 condescending and good-natured potentates. They 
 set him down to the piano, even before he had had 
 his dinner sometimes, according to one biographer.* 
 This was too bad ! He was proud, however, of the 
 equivocal distinction he attained, and was inclined to 
 swagger, I understand, among his equals. The plush 
 had eaten into his very soul. Ultimately he ruined his 
 heart, his circumstances, and (what was a still greater 
 loss) his stomach ; and so died. The biographer 
 above mentioned observes, that his funeral was ill 
 attended by his great friends. But we need not 
 wonder at that. A funeral is a well-known " bore ; " 
 and, besides, the most brilliant wag cannot be 
 amusing on the occasion of his own interment. 
 
 I need not go at any length into the writings of a 
 man so well known as Hood ; but among the satirical 
 works of that beautiful writer, the Epistle to Hae 
 is to be particularised. He takes up cant, looks at it, 
 laughs at it and over it, till you almost pardon its 
 ugliness, for the sake of the burning and brilliant 
 
 * See " Theodore Hook," reprinted from the Quarterly Review. An 
 admirably written essay it is, too. 
 
228 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 light he throws round it ; he shows that ugliness by 
 contrasting it with the wise and beautiful form of 
 his own mind ; then drops it, and carries his tender 
 heart where it will be better appreciated. The 
 gentle-minded giant! he rides out, like Sir Galahad — 
 
 " His strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because his heart is pure." 
 
 There was a real spirit of chivalry in Hood. With 
 all his sense of fun and ridicule, and his abundant 
 playfulness, he never loses his exquisite feeling for 
 the beautiful. He carries a lady's glove in his battle- 
 helmet, and fights with the consciousness of tender 
 eyes watching him. And while high-minded and 
 high-aspiring, Hood does not fritter away his nature 
 in ornament or mere gracefulness ; but remains a 
 homely, brotherly, unaffected man ! 
 
 In our own day we have plenty of Satire in our 
 literature. But, for the most part, Satire does not 
 bloom independently as a plant ; it enters into the 
 composition of literary productions, and gives a tone 
 to them. We have not the satiric laurel ; but then 
 it flavors puddings and blaiic-mange, and is to be 
 tasted in various liqueurs. We have novelists, and 
 essayists, and journalists, who are satirical ; but where 
 is our Satirist ? 
 
 There is our grand heroic metre — the metre of 
 Dryden and Pope — is it dead ? is it used up % A 
 Gifford would not succeed again ; — pompous high- 
 flown libelling (something between Juvenal and a 
 
IS SATIRE DEAD? 229 
 
 fish-woman) would not be tolerated now by literary- 
 men or the public. But does that settle the question? 
 Shall we never have a glorious and spirited heroic 
 couplet ? Do we hate no more ? Have we no fools 
 and rogues in the land ? 
 
 The general notion is, that the heroic satire is 
 dead. Nay, we are told sometimes, that the day of 
 Satire is past; that literature is disgraced by such 
 fighting ; and that we must all be friendly, and 
 peaceable, and respectable. For my own part, I am 
 slow to believe these theorizers. The roses which 
 pleased Horace come fresh as ever into life before 
 my window. Is the spirit of Horace less eternal than 
 these transitory roses ? The cry is always of death 
 now. Eloquence is dead ; and our senate wants it no 
 more, we are told ; and we shall have no Burkes and 
 Ciceros, — nothing but argumentative bagmen hence- 
 forth. But let the heart and the passions come into 
 play in some noble stir, and we shall see ! 'Tis the 
 same with poetry, and all the arts, and satire : the 
 man and the time come together, and they rise 
 together to the life everlasting. Our prophets repre- 
 sent the mood of the poet in one of the poems in In 
 Memoriam : 
 
 " I dreamed it would be spring no more, 
 That nature's ancient power was lost ; 
 The streets were black with smoke and frost; 
 They chatter'd trifles at the door." 
 
 It is only a dream, this of theirs. The spirit of 
 Satire is alive, and working now in various forms. 
 I believe that in its peculiar and genuine form of 
 
230 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 the Satire Proper there is still plenty for it to do. 
 And, as an agency, fighting is highly useful still in 
 this world ; indeed, it would be far healthier for all 
 of us, to fight out our beliefs (if needful in the satiric 
 form), rather than to veil malignity under the pre- 
 tence of decorum, and gratify evil passions in vulgar 
 and secret ways. Our ancestors knew this ; they 
 fought the Devil, for instance, and were not so far 
 gone in moderation as to say, that it was as well to 
 hVeon good terms with him. You can't live on good 
 terms with him, however he disguises himself ; and in 
 any case, it is more fatal to do that, than to kick him 
 down stairs. When old Luther heard him (as he 
 believed) flinging the fire-irons about to disturb him, 
 he addressed him in an extremely coarse and unpolite 
 manner, — really in an unrepeatable exclamation. If 
 there are abundant objects of Satire existing in Eng- 
 land, why not let us have men, whose gift lies in that 
 way, banded together to desolate them with indignant 
 wit? 
 
 I must be content with briefly indicating the 
 writers in whose works the satiric spirit now works. 
 There is Fonblanque, a satiric reasoner ; Thackeray, 
 a satiric painter ; Dickens, whose satire is embodied 
 in a huge element of comic and grotesque fun, and 
 human enjoyment of life; Landor the classic, who 
 darts beautiful lightning, when not more amiably 
 employed ; Disraeli, the bitter and the dignified, who 
 browsed in his youth on Byron and Junius, who 
 affects Apollo when he sneers, and Pegasus when 
 he kicks ; Aytoun, whose jolly contempt has a good- 
 fellowish air about it, and whose rod seems odorous 
 
MODERN MASTERS OF SATIRE. 231 
 
 of whisky-toddy. Of Jerrold, I may emphatically 
 note, that he has real satiric genius, — spontaneous, 
 picturesque, — with the beauty and the deadliness of 
 nightshade. 
 
 Now, you know, it is a delicate matter to be 
 measuring one's contemporaries in this way, particu- 
 larly if (as somebody is sure to say) you can't reach 
 quite high enough. But if it is difficult to speak of 
 those whom you admire, it is a still more delicate 
 matter to characterize schools existing in one's own 
 time, which one cannot characterize favorably. 
 
 It has been my constant object to consider Satire 
 and Satirists as an elevated subject. The nonsense 
 about the blackness and morbidity of the satirist I 
 have treated with contempt. The great Satirists of 
 whom I have spoken, I have shown to be for the 
 most part kindly, and good, and warm-hearted men. 
 The opposite view of the matter is cant. I have 
 seen a ms. of Blake the painter, in which, speaking of 
 somebody's praise of somebody else, he says : 
 
 " Christ used the Pharisees in a rougher way.'' 
 
 In the highest history which this world possesses we 
 find no mawkish philanthropy in the treatment of 
 knaves. The Proverbs of Solomon, likewise, are full 
 of scorn of fools and other hateful personages. Some 
 of the best and greatest men who have ever lived 
 have been satirical, — from Tacitus to Pascal, from 
 Pascal to Dr. Johnson and Thomas Carlyle. The 
 absolutely needful basis is, a heart that can recognize 
 good, an intellect to see evil, a disposition to love 
 
232 SATIRE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 and admire ; for if we do not see that a man is able 
 to love and reverence, what value shall we put upon 
 his hate and his scorn ? The Proteus Satire is 
 beautiful in many of its forms : it is not beautiful 
 when it appears in the form of an ape. Unfortu- 
 nately, we have lived to see a school of satirists of 
 this description. 
 
 The simious artist is distinguished by a deficiency 
 of natural reverence mainly. His heart is hard rather ; 
 his feelings blunt and dull. He is blind to every thing 
 else but the satirical aspect of things ; and if he is 
 brilliant, it is as a cat's back is when rubbed — in the 
 dark ! He has generally no sentiment of respect for 
 form, and will spare nothing. He is born suspicious ; 
 and if he hears the world admiring any thing, forth- 
 with he concludes that it must be "humbug." He 
 has no regard to the heaps of honor gathered round 
 this object by time, and the affection of wise men. 
 He cries, " Down with it ! " As his kinsman, when 
 looking at some vase, or curious massive specimen of 
 gold, sees only his own image in it, our satirist sees the 
 ridiculous only in every object, and forgets that the 
 more clearly he sees it, the more he testifies to its 
 brightness. Or, as his kinsmau breaks a cocoa-nut 
 only to get at the milk, he would destroy every thing 
 only to nourish his mean nature. He prides himself 
 on his commonest qualities, — as the negroes who 
 rebelled called themselves Marquises of Lemonade. 
 He would tear the blossoms off a rose-branch to make 
 it a stick to beat his betters with. He employs his 
 gifts in ignoble objects, — as you see in sweetmeat- 
 shops sugar shaped into dogs and pigs. He taints his 
 
THE " JOKER." 233 
 
 mind with egotism; as if a man should spoil the 
 sight of a telescope by clouding it with his breath. 
 He overrates the value of his qiiickness and activity, 
 and forgets that (like his kinsman) he owes his trium- 
 phant power of swinging in high places to the fact of 
 his prehensile tail. 
 
 Of course, he has no enthusiasm. "What he loves 
 in literature is not literature itself. Jacob's-ladder is 
 to him a serviceable thing to cai'ry a hod on. If you 
 profess any other belief, you are a " humbug " to him ; 
 and he spatters you with mud to prove that you are 
 naturally dirty. For a good hearty assault on a book 
 he has not read, I will back the simious satirist against 
 the world ; or for abuse of the Classics ; or for a good 
 hearty misrepresentation of the spirit and intention of 
 the writings of Carlyle. But as a general rule, an 
 ancient writer of our own or any other country is the 
 subject on which his Satire is the most lively. Instead 
 of a silver coin of wit and wisdom, he prefers the 
 copper change for it afforded by himself and his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 The "joker" is a kinsman of this satirist, and of a 
 branch of the same great family. He, however, is a 
 milder and better fellow ; his chief mistake is mistak- 
 ing the position of wit, which is a light on the road to 
 sense, and not a firework to tickle fools. He expends 
 his whole nature in jokes, and is to the present rich, 
 idle, good-natured public, what the "fool" was to the 
 great old barons of Europe. 
 
 When Eodolf de Swigville came home from the 
 chase, and spread his huge limbs under the table, up 
 came "ye foole," and flashed out some jest, which set 
 
218 SATIEE AND SATIRISTS. 
 
 our sturdy friend in a "roar." When he was not 
 wanted, or when Rodolf was hearing the tale of Sir 
 Elinoure read to him by Father Anselm, and was com- 
 posing himself to sleep amidst visions of feudal 
 grandeur, " ye foole " went out in the court-yard, and 
 watched the stately peacock ; or played with the pet 
 hound ; or dangled at the heels of Lady Marjory, and 
 made half-witted jokes about her good looks; or fell 
 foul of the servants, who were doubtless jealous of 
 him, and deafened them with his noisy laughter. 
 There was many a sincere friendship between the 
 baron and his poor jester, in whom he recognized a 
 stray ray of heaven's light, most curiously colored. 
 Men had their fools painted with them ; lived with 
 them on a kind of familiar footing. The fool became, 
 after years had passed, a kind of part and parcel of 
 the family, and had a drop from their daily cup. Was 
 it that daily life was more serious and earnest than it 
 is now, and that so its recreations were naturally 
 more extraordinary ? 
 
 The public now is the baron, and has its jester, 
 who comes tumbling up to the side of its good-natured 
 ears with his jibe. He makes merry with it over the 
 day's events, and the changes of governments and 
 fashions, and awakens laughter in its lazy eyes. But 
 this outward sheen of pleasantry, which has nothing 
 to say to the heart, and very little to the intellect, 
 introduces a giggling murmur into the day's conver- 
 sation, and peoples our streets and our thoroughfares 
 with a legion of buffoons. All this may be fun 
 (though that is doubtful) ; but it is not literature ! 
 The men-of-letters of England are not responsible for 
 
VALEDICTORY. 235 
 
 this ! It has the same relation to comedy that Trip, 
 in the School for Scandal, has to Charles Surface, and 
 is little better than an application to public affairs, in 
 literary form, of the merriment of street-shows and 
 the playfulness of dancing-dogs. 
 
 I suppose that most men who address the public 
 aspire to some slight influence on opinion, — the propa- 
 gation of something, whether humorously urged or 
 not, which is to contribute its drop to the dissemina- 
 tion of truth among mankind ! I have shown how 
 the true Satirist contributes his share to that, and how 
 he may hope that his laughter will not die away along 
 with the cachin nation of merry-andrews, but will add 
 its modest quota to the wisdom and happiness of 
 mankind. 
 
 Such has long been my belief with regard to this 
 subject: — and with many thanks to you for listening 
 to my expositions of it, I now leave them to your 
 kindly consideration. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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