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The most vigorous English satire of this entire period was that which
we owe to the scurrilous pen of Skelton and the provocative personality
of Wolsey. With his work may be mentioned the rude and unpolished, yet
vigorous, piece bearing the rhyming title,

"Rede me and be nott wrothe,
For I saye no thing but trothe",

written by two English Observantine Franciscan friars, William Roy and
Jerome Barlowe;[6] a satire which stung the great cardinal so sharply
that he commissioned Hermann Rynck to buy up every available copy.
Alexander Barclay's imitation, in his _Ship of Fools_, of Sebastian
Brandt's _Narrenschiff_, was only remarkable for the novel satirical
device of the plan.

Bishop Latimer in his sermons is a vigorous satirist, particularly in
that discourse upon "The Ploughers" (1547). His fearlessness is very
conspicuous, and his attacks on the bishops who proved untrue to their
trust and allowed their dioceses to go to wreck and ruin, are outspoken
and trenchant:

"They that be lords will ill go to plough. It is no meet office for
them. It is not seeming for their state. Thus came up lording
loiterers; Thus crept in unprechinge prelates, and so have they
long continued. For how many unlearned prelates have we now at this
day? And no marvel; For if the ploughmen that now be, were made
lordes, they would clean give over ploughing, they would leave of
theyr labour and fall to lording outright and let the plough
stand. For ever since the Prelates were made lords and nobles, the
plough standeth, there is no work done, the people starve. They
hawke, they hunte, they carde, they dyce, they pastime in their
prelacies with galaunt gentlemen, with their dauncing minions, and
with their freshe companions, so that ploughing is set aside."[7]

But after Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_ was published, which professed to
hold a mirror or "steel glass" up to the vices of the age, we reach
that wonderful outburst of satiric, epigrammatic, and humorous
composition which was one of the characteristics, and certainly not the
least important, of the Elizabethan epoch. Lodge's _Fig for Momus_
(1593) contains certain satires which rank with Gascoigne's work as the
earliest compositions of that type belonging to the period. That they
were of no mean reputation in their own day is evident from the
testimony of Meres,[8] who says, "As Horace, Lucilius, Juvenal,
Persius, and Lucullus are the best for satire among the Latins, so with
us, in the same faculty, these are chiefe, Piers Plowman, Lodge, Hall
of Emanuel College, Cambridge, the author of _Pygmalion's Image and
Certain Satires_[9] and the author of _Skialethea_". This contemporary
opinion regarding the fact that _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ was
esteemed a satire of outstanding merit in those days, is a curious
commentary on Hall's boastful couplet describing himself as the
earliest English satirist.

To name all the writers who, in this fruitful epoch of our literature,
devoted themselves to this kind of composition would be impossible.
From 1598 until the death of James I. upwards of one hundred separate
satirists can be named, both in verse and prose. Of these Bishop Hall
is one of the greatest, and I have chosen him as the leading
representative of the period. To the study of Horace and Juvenal he had
devoted many years of his early manhood, and his imitation of these two
great Romans is close and consistent. Therefore, for vigour, grave
dignity, and incisiveness of thought, united to graphic pictures of his
age, Hall is undeniably the most important name in the history of the
Elizabethan satire, strictly so called. His exposures of the follies of
his age were largely couched in the form, so much affected by Horace,
of a familiar commentary on certain occurrences, addressed apparently
to an anonymous correspondent.

Contemporary with Hall was Thomas Nash, whose _Pierce Penilesse's
Supplication to the Devil_ was one of the most extraordinary onslaughts
on the social vices of the metropolis that the period produced. Written
in close imitation of Juvenal's earlier satires, he frequently
approaches the standard of his master in graphic power of description,
in scathing invective, and ironical mockery. In _Have with you to
Saffron Walden_ he lashed Gabriel Harvey for his unworthy conduct
towards the memory of Robert Greene. Both satires are written in prose,
as indeed are nearly all his works, inasmuch as Nash was more of a
pamphleteer than anything else. Other contemporaries of Hall were
Thomas Dekker, whose fame as a dramatist has eclipsed his reputation
as a satirist, but whose _Bachelor's Banquet--pleasantly discoursing
the variable humours of Women, their quickness of wits and unsearchable
deceits_, is a sarcastic impeachment of the gentler sex, while his
_Gull's Hornbook_ must be ranked with Nash's work as one of the most
unsparing castigations of social life in London. The latter is a volume
of fictitious maxims for the use of youths desirous of being considered
"pretty fellows". Other contemporaries were John Donne, John Marston,
Jonson, George Chapman, and Nicholas Breton--all names of men who were
conspicuous inheritors of the true Elizabethan spirit, and who united
virility of thought to robustness and trenchancy of sarcasm.

Marston and Breton were amongst the best of the group, though they are
not represented in these pages owing to the unsuitability of their
writings for extract. Here is a picture from one of the satires of
Marston which is instinct with satiric power. It is a portrait of a
love-sick swain, and runs as follows:--

"For when my ears received a fearful sound
That he was sick, I went, and there I found,
Him laid of love and newly brought to bed
Of monstrous folly, and a franticke head:
His chamber hanged about with elegies,
With sad complaints of his love's miseries,
His windows strow'd with sonnets and the glasse
Drawn full of love-knots. I approach'd the asse,
And straight he weepes, and sighes some Sonnet out
To his fair love! and then he goes about,
For to perfume her rare perfection,
With some sweet smelling pink epitheton.
Then with a melting looke he writhes his head,
And straight in passion, riseth in his bed,
And having kist his hand, strok'd up his haire,
Made a French _conge_, cryes 'O cruall Faire!'
To th' antique bed-post."[10]

Marston manifests more vigour and nervous force in his satires than
Hall, but exhibits less elegance and ease in versification. In Charles
Fitz-geoffrey's _Affaniae_, a set of Latin epigrams, printed at Oxford
in 1601, Marston is complimented as the "Second English Satirist", or
rather as dividing the palm of priority and excellence in English
satire with Hall. The individual characteristics of the various leading
Elizabethan satirists,--the vitriolic bitterness of Nash, the
sententious profundity of Donne, the happy-go-lucky "slogging" of
genial Dekker, the sledge-hammer blows of Jonson, the turgid
malevolence of Chapman, and the stiletto-like thrusts of George
Buchanan are worthy of closer and more detailed study than can be
devoted to them in a sketch such as this. I regret that Nicolas
Breton's _Pasquil's Madcappe_ proved too long for quotation in its
entirety,[11] but the man who could pen such lines as these was, of a
truth, a satirist of a high order:--

But what availes unto the world to talke?
Wealth is a witch that hath a wicked charme,
That in the minds of wicked men doth walke,
Unto the heart and Soule's eternal harme,
Which is not kept by the Almighty arme:
O,'tis the strongest instrument of ill
That ere was known to work the devill's will.

An honest man is held a good poore soule,
And kindnesse counted but a weake conceite,
And love writte up but in the woodcocke's soule,
While thriving _Wat_ doth but on Wealth await:
He is a fore horse that goes ever streight:
And he but held a foole for all his Wit,
That guides his braines but with a golden bit.

A virgin is a vertuous kind of creature,
But doth not coin command Virginitie?
And beautie hath a strange bewitching feature,
But gold reads so much world's divinitie,
As with the Heavens hath no affinitie:
So that where Beauty doth with vertue dwell,
If it want money, yet it will not sell.

Of the satiric forms peculiar to the Elizabethan epoch there is no
great variety. The _Characters_ of Theophrastus supplied a model to
some of the writers. The close adherence also which the majority of
them manifest to the broadly marked types of "Horatian" and
"Juvenalian" satire, both in matter and manner, is not a little
remarkable. The genius for selecting from the classics those forms both
of composition and metre best suited to become vehicles for satire, and
adapting them thereto, did not begin to manifest itself in so
pronounced a manner until after the Restoration. The Elizabethan
mind--using the phrase of course in its broad sense as inclusive of the
Jacobean and the early Caroline epochs--was more engrossed with the
matter than the manner of satire. Perhaps the finest satire which
distinguished this wonderful era was the _Argenis_ of John Barclay, a
politico-satiric romance, or, in other words, the adaptation of the
"Milesian tale" of Petronius to state affairs.

During the Parliamentary War, satire was the only species of
composition which did not suffer more or less eclipse, but its
character underwent change. It became to a large extent a medium for
sectarian bitterness. It lost its catholicity, and degenerated in great
measure into the instrument of partisan antagonism, and a means of
impaling the folly or fanaticism, real or imagined, of special
individuals among the Cavaliers and Roundheads.[12] Of such a character
was the bulk of the satires produced at that time. In a few instances,
however, a higher note was struck, as, for example, when "dignified
political satire", in the hands of Andrew Marvell, was utilized to
fight the battle of freedom of conscience in the matter of the
observances of external religion. _The Rehearsal Transposed, Mr.
Smirke, or the Divine in Mode, and his Political Satires_ are
masterpieces of lofty indignation mingled with grave and ironical
banter. Among many others Edmund Waller showed himself an apt disciple
of Horace, and produced charming social satires marked by delicate wit
and raillery in the true Horatian mode; while the Duke of Buckingham,
in the _Rehearsal_, utilized the dramatic parody to travesty the plays
of Dryden. Abraham Cowley, in the _Mistress_, also imitated Horace, and
in his play _Cutter of Coleman Street_ satirized the Puritans'
affectation of superior sanctity and their affected style of
conversation. Then came John Oldham and John Cleiveland, who both
accepted Juvenal as their model. Cleiveland's antipathy towards
Cromwell and the Scots was on a par with that of John Wilkes towards
the latter, and was just as unreasonable, while the language he
employed in his diatribes against both was so extravagant as to lose
its sarcastic point in mere vulgar abuse. In like manner Oldham's
_Satires on the Jesuits_ afford as disgraceful a specimen of sectarian
bigotry as the language contains. Only their pungency and wit render
them readable. He displays Juvenal's violence of invective without his
other redeeming qualities. All these, however, were entirely eclipsed
in reputation by a writer who made the mock-epic the medium through
which the bitterest onslaught on the anti-royalist party and its
principles was delivered by one who, as a "king's man", was almost as
extreme a bigot as those he satirized. The _Hudibras_ of Samuel Butler,
in its mingling of broad, almost extravagant, humour and sneering
mockery has no parallel in our literature. Butler's characters are
rather mere "humours" or _qualities_ than real personages. There is no
attempt made to observe the modesty of nature. _Hudibras_, therefore,
is an example not so much of satire, though satire is present in rich
measure also, as of burlesque. The poem is genuinely satirical only in
those parts where the author steps in as the chorus, so to speak, and
offers pithy moralizings on what is taking place in the action of the
story. There is visible throughout the poem, however, a lack of
restraint that causes him to overdo his part. Were _Hudibras_ shorter,
the satire would be more effective. Though in parts often as terse in
style as Pope's best work, still the poem is too long, and it undoes
the force of its attack on the Puritans by its exaggeration.

All these writers, even Butler himself, simply prepared the way for the
man who is justly regarded as England's greatest satirist. The epoch of
John Dryden has been fittingly styled the "Golden Age of English
Satire".[13] To warrant this description, however, it must be held to
include the writers of the reign of Queen Anne. The Elizabethan period
was perhaps richer, numerically speaking, in representatives of certain
types of satirical composition, but the true perfection, the
efflorescence of the long-growing plant, was reached in that era which
extended from the publication of Dryden's _Absalom and Achitophel_
(Part I.) in 1681 to the issue of Pope's _Dunciad_ in its final form in
1742. During these sixty years appeared the choicest of English
satires, to wit, all Dryden's finest pieces, the _Medal_,
_MacFlecknoe_, and _Absalom and Achitophel_, Swift's _Tale of a Tub_,
and his _Miscellanies_--among which his best metrical satires appeared;
all Defoe's work, too, as well as Steele's in the _Tatler_, and
Addison's in the _Spectator_, Arbuthnot's _History of John Bull_,
Churchill's _Rosciad_, and finally all Pope's poems, including the
famous "Prologue" as well as the "Epilogue" to the _Satires_. It is
curious to note how the satirical succession (if the phrase be
permitted) is maintained uninterruptedly from Bishop Hall down to the
death of Pope--nay, we may even say down to the age of Byron, to whose
epoch one may trace something like a continuous tradition. Hall did
not die until Dryden was twenty-seven years of age. Pope delighted to
record that, when a boy of twelve years of age, he had met "Glorious
John", though the succession could be passed on otherwise through
Congreve, one of the most polished of English satirical writers, whom
Dryden complimented as "one whom every muse and grace adorn", while to
him also Pope dedicated his translation of the _Iliad_.[14] Bolingbroke,
furthermore, was the friend and patron of Pope, while the witty St.
John, in turn, was bound by ties of friendship to Mallet, who passed on
the succession to Goldsmith, Sheridan, Ellis, Canning, Moore, and
Byron. Thereafter satire begins to fall upon evil days, and the
tradition cannot be so clearly traced.

But satire, during this "succession", did not remain absolutely the
same. She changed her garb with her epoch. Thus the robust bludgeoning
of Dryden and Shadwell, of Defoe, Steele, D'Urfey, and Tom Brown, gave
place to the sardonic ridicule of Swift, the polished raillery of
Arbuthnot, and the double-distilled essence of acidulous sarcasm
present in the _Satires_ of Pope. There is as marked a difference
between the Drydenic and the Swiftian types of satire, between that of
Cleiveland and that of Pope, as between the diverse schools known as
the "Horatian" and the "Juvenalian". The cause of this, over and above
the effect produced by prolonged study of these two classical models,
was the overwhelming influence exercised on his age by the great French
critic and satirist, Boileau. Difficult indeed it is for us at the
present day to understand the European homage paid to Boileau. As
Hannay says, "He was a dignified classic figure supposed to be the
model of fine taste",[15] His word was law in the realm of criticism,
and for many years he was known, not alone in France, but throughout a
large portion of Europe, as "The Lawgiver of Parnassus". Prof. Dowden,
referring to his critical authority, remarks:--

"The genius of Boileau was in a high degree intellectual, animated
by ideas. As a moralist he is not searching or profound; he saw too
little of the inner world of the heart, and knew too imperfectly
its agitations. When, however, he deals with literature--and a just
judgment in letters may almost be called an element in morals--all
his penetration and power become apparent. To clear the ground for
the new school of nature, truth, and reason was Boileau's first
task. It was a task which called for courage and skill ... he
struck at the follies and affectations of the world of letters, and
he struck with force. It was a needful duty, and one most
effectively performed.... Boileau's influence as a critic of
literature can hardly be overrated; it has much in common with the
influence of Pope on English literature, beneficial as regards his
own time, somewhat restrictive and even tyrannical upon later
generations."[16]

Owing to the predominance of French literary modes in England, this was
the man whose influence, until nearly the close of last century, was
paramount in England even when it was most bitterly disclaimed.
Boileau's _Satires_ were published during 1660-70, and he himself died
in 1711; but, though dead, he still ruled for many a decade to come.
This then was the literary censor to whom English satire of the
post-Drydenic epochs owed so much. Neither Swift nor Pope was ashamed
to confess his literary indebtedness to the great Frenchman; nay,
Dryden himself has confessed his obligations to Boileau, and in his
_Discourse on Satire_ has quoted his authority as absolute. Before
pointing out the differences between the Drydenic and post-Drydenic
satire let us note very briefly the special characteristics of the
former. Apart from the "matter" of his satire, Dryden laid this
department of letters under a mighty obligation through the splendid
service he rendered by the first successful application of the heroic
couplet to satire. Of itself this was a great boon; but his good deeds
as regards the "matter" of satiric composition have entirely obscured
the benefit he conferred on its manner or technical form. Dryden's four
great satires, _Absalom and Achitophel_, _The Medal_, _MacFlecknoe_,
and the _Hind and the Panther_, each exemplify a distinct and important
type of satire. The first named is the classical instance of the use of
"historic parallels" as applied to the impeachment of the vices or
abuses of any age. With matchless skill the story of Absalom is
employed not merely to typify, but actually to represent, the designs
of Monmouth and his Achitophel--Shaftesbury. _The Medal_ reverts to the
type of the classic satire of the Juvenalian order. It is slightly more
rhetorical in style, and is partly devoted to a bitter invective
against Shaftesbury, partly to an argument as to the unfitness of
republican institutions for England, partly to a satiric address to
the Whigs. The third of the great series, _MacFlecknoe_, is Dryden's
masterpiece of satiric irony; a purely personal attack upon his rival,
Shadwell, "Crowned King of Dulness, and in all the realms of nonsense
absolute". Finally, the _Hind and the Panther_ represents a new
development of the "satiric fable". Dryden gave to British satire the
impulse towards that final form of development which it received from
the great satirists of the next century. There is little that appears
in Swift, Addison, Arbuthnot, Pope, or even Byron, for which the way
was not prepared by the genius of "Glorious John".

Of the famous group which adorned the reign of Queen Anne, Steele lives
above all in his Isaac Bickerstaff Essays, the vehicle of admirably
pithy and trenchant prose satire upon current political abuses. But,
unfortunately for his own fame, his lot was to be associated with the
greatest master of this form of composition that has appeared in
literature, and the celebrity of the greater writer dimmed that of the
lesser. Addison in his papers in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_ has
brought what may be styled the Essay of Satiric Portraiture--in after
days to be developed along other lines by Praed, Charles Lamb, Leigh
Hunt, and R.L. Stevenson--to an unsurpassed standard of excellence.
Such character studies as those of Sir Roger de Coverley, his household
and friends, Will Honeycomb, Sir Andrew Freeport, Ned Softly, and
others, possess an endless charm for us in the sobriety and moderation
of the colours, the truth to nature, the delicate raillery, and the
polished sarcasm of their satiric animadversions. Addison has studied
his Horace to advantage, and to the great Roman's attributes has added
other virtues distinctly English.

Arbuthnot, the celebrated physician of Queen Anne, takes rank among the
best of English satirists by virtue of his famous work _The History of
John Bull_. The special mode or type employed was the "allegorical
political tale", of which the plot was the historic sequence of events
in connection with the war with Louis XIV. of France. The object of the
fictitious narrative was to throw ridicule on the Duke of Marlborough,
and to excite among the people a feeling of disgust at the protracted
hostilities. The nations involved are represented as tradesmen
implicated in a lawsuit, the origin of the dispute being traced to
their narrow and selfish views. The national characteristics of each
individual are skilfully hit off, and the various events of the war,
with the accompanying political intrigues, are symbolized by the stages
in the progress of the suit, the tricks of the lawyers, and the devices
of the principal attorney, Humphrey Hocus (Marlborough), to prolong the
struggle. His _Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus_--a satire on the abuses
of human learning,--in which the type of the fictitious biography is
adopted, is exceedingly clever.

Finally, we reach the pair of satirists who, next to Dryden, must be
regarded as the writers whose influence has been greatest in
determining the character of British satire. Pope is the disciple of
Dryden, and the best qualities of the Drydenic satire, in both form and
matter, are reproduced in his works accompanied by special attributes
of his own. Owing to the extravagant admiration professed by Byron for
the author of the _Rape of the Lock_, and his repeated assurances of
his literary indebtedness to him, we are apt to overlook the fact that
the noble lord was under obligations to Dryden of a character quite as
weighty as those he was so ready to acknowledge to Pope. But the
latter, like Shakespeare, so improved all he borrowed that he has in
some instances actually received credit for inventing what he only took
from his great master. Pope was more of a refiner and polisher of
telling satiric forms which Dryden had in the first instance employed,
than an original inventor.

To mention all the types of satire affected by this marvellously acute
and variously cultured poet would be a task of some difficulty. There
are few amongst the principal forms which he has not essayed. In spirit
he is more pungent and sarcastic, more acidulous and malicious, than
the large-hearted and generous-souled Dryden. Into his satire,
therefore, enters a greater amount of the element of personal dislike
and contempt than in the case of the other. While satire is present
more or less in nearly all Pope's verse, there are certain compositions
where it may be said to be the outstanding quality. These are his
_Satires_, among which should of course be included "The Prologue" and
"The Epilogue" to them, as well as the _Moral Essays_, and finally the
_Dunciad_. These comprise the best of his professed satires. His
_Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated_ are just what they claim to
be--an adaptation to English scenes, sympathies, sentiments, and
surroundings of the Roman poet's characteristic style. Though Pope has
quite as many points of affinity with Juvenal as with Horace, the
adaptation and transference of the local atmosphere from Tiber to
Thames is managed with extraordinary skill. The historic parallels,
too, of the personages in the respective poems are made to accord and
harmonize with the spirit of the time. The _Satires_ are written from
the point of view of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig
minister. They display the concentrated essence of bitterness towards
the ministerial policy. As Minto tersely puts it, we see gathered up in
them the worst that was thought and said about the government and court
party when men's minds were heated almost to the point of civil war.[17]
In the "Prologue" and the "Epilogue" are contained some of the most
finished satiric portraits drawn by Pope in any of his works. For
caustic bitterness, sustained but polished irony, and merciless
sarcastic malice, the characters of Atticus (Addison), Bufo, and Sporus
have never been surpassed in the literature of political or social
criticism.[18]

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