ENGLISH SATIRE FROM DRYDEN TO BYRON
Enough has been said to hint that Byron’s qualities as a satirist in
verse are often best to be explained by a reference to the methods and
influence of those who went before him. So far as his connection with
English satire is concerned, Byron was indebted in part to a widespread
and somewhat conventional satiric tradition established by Pope and
in part also to the special characteristics of certain individual
satirists like Gifford. Unfortunately the field of English satire has
been investigated carefully only to the close of the Elizabethan era;
it is, therefore, imperative to present, as a working basis, a brief
outline of the course of satiric verse during the century or more
prior to Byron’s own age. Such a summary being of value here chiefly
as affording material for comparison, detailed treatment need be given
only to the more conspicuous figures, particularly to those to whom it
is possible Byron was under obligation.
The years between the accession of Charles II and the death of Pope saw
a remarkable advance in the quantity and quality of published satiric
work, in both prose and verse. For this development several causes may
be assigned. As the romantic enthusiasm of the Renaissance died away or
exhausted itself in fantastic extravagance and license, the new age, in
reaction, became gradually more reasonable and practical. Its general
tendencies were academic, introspective, and critical: literature began
to analyze itself and to frame laws for its own guidance; society found
amusement in laughing at its own follies and frivolities; moralists
were occupied in censuring misbehaviour and in codifying maxims for
the government of conduct. This critical spirit, whenever it became
destructive, naturally sought expression in satire. Party feeling,
too, grew violent in dealing with the complex problems raised by the
bloodless revolution of 1689 and its aftermath; moreover, most of the
prominent writers of the day, gathered as they were in London, allied
themselves with either Whigs or Tories and engaged vigorously in the
factional warfare. In the urban and gregarious life of the age of Anne,
the thinkers who sharpened their wits against one another in clubs
and coffee-houses esteemed logic and good sense higher than romantic
fancy. Their talk and writing dealt mainly with practical affairs, with
particular features of political and social life. It is not at all
surprising that this critical and practical period should have found
its most satisfactory expression in satire--a literary type which is
well fitted to treat of definite and concrete questions.
Before 1700 interest in English satire centres inevitably around
the name of Dryden. Among his contemporaries were, of course, other
satirists, some of them distinguished by originality and genius. The
true political satire, used so effectively against the Parliamentarians
by Cleveland (1613–1658), had been revived in the work of Denham
(1615–1669) and Marvell (1621–1678). Formal satire in the manner of
Juvenal and Boileau had been attempted by Oldham (1653–1683) in his
_Satires against the Jesuits_ (1678–9). Moreover, several new forms had
been introduced: Butler (1612–1680) in _Hudibras_ (1663) had created
an original variety of burlesque, with unusual rhymes, grotesque
similes, and quaint ideas; Cotton (1630–1687) in his _Scarronides_
(1664) had transplanted the travesty from the French of Scarron; and
Garth (1661–1719) had composed in the _Dispensary_ (1699) our earliest
classical mock-heroic. Marvell, Rochester, Sedley, Dorset, and others
had written songs and ballads of a satiric character, most of them
coarse and scurrilous. But the work of these men, like that of their
predecessors in satire, Lodge, Donne, Hall, Marston, Guilpin, Wither,
and Brome, is, as a whole, crude and inartistic, rough in metre and
commonplace in style. Dryden, who took up satire at the age of fifty,
after a long and thorough discipline in literary craftsmanship, avoided
these faults, and polished and improved the verse-satire, preserving
its vigor while lending it refinement and dignity.
Dryden’s satire is distinguished by clearness, good taste, and
self-control. The author was seldom in a rage, nor was he ever guilty
of indiscriminate railing. Seeking to make his victims ridiculous and
absurd rather than hateful, he drew them, not as monsters or unnatural
villains, but as foolish or weak human beings.[3] It is significant,
too, that he did not often mention his adversaries by their real names,
but referred to them, for the most part, by pseudonyms, a device
through which individual satire tends constantly to become typical
and universal. Although he asserted that “the true end of satire is
the amendment of vices by correction,” he rarely, except in poems
which were designedly theological, permitted a moral purpose to become
obtrusive.
Deliberately putting aside the octosyllabic metre of Butler as too
undignified for satire, Dryden chose what he called the “English
heroic,” or iambic pentameter couplet, as best suited to heroic poetry,
of which he considered satire to be properly a species. This measure,
already employed by Hall, Donne, and others as a medium for satire,
is, as Dryden perceived, admirably suited for concise and pointed
expression. Having used it successfully in his plays, he was already
familiar with its possibilities and skilful in its management, and in
his hands it became harmonious, varied, and incisive, a very different
measure from the couplet as handled by even so near a contemporary as
Oldham.
Excellent as Dryden’s satires are, they cannot be said to have had an
influence proportionate to their merit. Defoe’s _True-born Englishman_
(1701), probably the most popular satire between _Absalom and
Achitophel_ and the _Dunciad_, did undoubtedly owe much to Dryden’s
work; and it is also true that _MacFlecknoe_ suggested the plot of the
_Dunciad_. During the eighteenth century, however, Dryden’s satires
were not extensively imitated, chiefly because they were superseded as
models by the work of Pope. Of the satirists after Pope, only Churchill
seems to have preferred Dryden, and even he followed the principles of
Pope in practice. Thus historically Dryden is of less importance in the
history of satire than his successor and rival.
In the period between the death of Dryden and the death of Pope,
satirists labored assiduously for correctness. The importance of this
step can hardly be overestimated, for satire, more perhaps than any
other literary type, is dependent on style for its permanency. Its
subject matter is usually concerned with transitory events and specific
individuals, and when the interest in these subsides, nothing but
an excellent form can ensure the durability of the satire. Of this
endeavor for artistic perfection in satire, Pope is the completest
representative.
Pope boasted repeatedly that he had “moralized his song”; that is,
that he had employed his satire for definite ethical purposes. In an
invocation to Satire, he put into verse his theory of its proper use:--
“O sacred weapon! left for Truth’s defence,
Sole Dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence!
To all but Heav’n directed hands deny’d,
The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide;
Rev’rent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,
To rouse the Watchmen of the public Weal.”[4]
The lofty tone of this address ought not, however, to obscure the fact
that Pope was primarily a personal satirist, actuated too often merely
by the desire to satisfy his private quarrels. His claim to being an
agent for the cause of public virtue is sometimes justified in his
work, but not infrequently it is but a thin pretence for veiling his
underlying malice and vindictiveness. What Pope really wanted, most of
all, in his satires, was to damage the reputation of his foes; and, it
must be added, he generally achieved his aim.
Pope was both less scrupulous and more personal than Dryden. He
appropriated Dryden’s method of presenting portraits of well-known
persons under type-names; but unlike Dryden, who had preserved a
semblance of fairness, Pope was too often merely vituperative and
savage. He seldom attained that high variety of satire which plans “to
attack a man so that he feels the attack and half acknowledges its
justice.”[5] Unlike Dryden, too, he rarely mastered the difficult art
of turning the individual objects of his scorn into representatives
of a broader class. His personal sketches do not, except in a few
instances like the celebrated _Atticus_, live as pictures of types.
Pope, moreover, was not always discreet enough to mask his opponents
under pseudonyms. Sometimes, following a device introduced into English
satire by Hall, he used an initial letter, with dashes or asterisks to
fill out the name. More often he printed the name in full.[6] He had
no scruples about making attacks on women, a practice not countenanced
by Dryden.[7] In his satire on personal enemies he was insolent and
offensive: however, he seldom gave vent to his rage, but kept cool,
revised and polished every epithet, and retorted in a calm, searching
dissection of character. In his methods he was unprincipled, never
hesitating to make the vilest charges if they served his purposes.
In matters of form and technique Pope’s art is unquestioned. He refined
and condensed the couplet until it cut like a rapier. The beauty of
his satire thus lies rather in small details than in general effect,
in clear-cut and penetrating phrasing rather than in breadth of
conception. With all this his work is marked by an air of urbanity,
ease, and grace, which connects him with Horace rather than with
Juvenal. His wit is constant and his irony subtle. He understood
perfectly the value of compression and of symmetry.
Finally he left behind him a heritage and a tradition. With all his
malice, his occasional pettiness and habitual deceit, he so transformed
the verse-satire that no imitator, following his design, has been able
to surpass it. The methods and the forms which he used became, for good
or for evil, those of most satire in the eighteenth century. From the
_Dunciad_ down to the days of Byron it was Pope’s influence chiefly
that determined the course of English satire in verse.
Byron was fond of associating himself with Pope. He paid homage to
him as a master, sustained, in theory at least, his principles of
versification, defended his character, and offered him the tribute of
quotation and imitation. Over and over again he repeated his belief
in “the Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.”[8] Only
in satire, however, did Pope’s influence become noticeable in Byron’s
poetry; but in satire this influence was important.
Pope’s chief contemporary in formal satire in verse was Young, whose
_Love of Fame, The Universal Passion_ was finished in 1727, before
the publication of the _Dunciad_. The seven satires which this work
contains comprise portrayals of type characters under Latin names,
diversified by allusions to living personages, the intention being to
ridicule evils in contemporary social life. The _Epistles to Pope_
(1730), by the same author, are more serious, especially in their
arraignment of Grub Street. Young’s comparatively lifeless work made
seemingly no strong appeal to Byron. The latter never mentions him as a
satirist, although he does quote with approval some favorite passages
from his work.
Lighter in tone and less rigidly formal in structure was the poetry
of a group of writers headed by Prior and Gay, both of whom were at
their best in a kind of familiar verse, lively, bantering, and worldly
in spirit. Prior managed with some skill the octosyllabic couplet of
Butler; Gay was successful in parody and the satiric fable.[9] The
connection of Prior and Gay with Byron is not a close one, although
the latter quoted from them both in his _Letters_, and composed some
impromptu parodies of songs from Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_.[10]
With Swift Byron had, perhaps, more affinity. Swift’s cleverness
in discovering extraordinary rhymes undoubtedly influenced the
versification of _Don Juan_,[11] and his morbid hatred of human nature
and sordid views of life sometimes colored Byron’s satiric mood.[12]
Much lower in the literary scale are the countless ballads and lampoons
of the period which maintain the rough and ready aggressiveness of
Marvell, in a style slovenly, broken, and journalistic. Events like
the trial of Sacheverell and the South Sea Bubble brought out scores
of ephemeral satires which it would be idle to notice here. Of these
scurvy pamphleteers, three gained considerable notoriety: Tom Brown
(1663–1704), Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723), and Ned Ward (1667–1731).
Defoe, in several long satires, especially in the formidable folio
_Jure Divino_, shows the results of a study of Dryden, although his
lines are rugged and his style is colloquial. The work of no one of
these men had any visible influence on Byron, but their production
illustrates the wide-spread popularity at this time of satire, even in
its transitory and unliterary phases.
The latter half of the eighteenth century, comparatively poor though
it is in poetry of an imaginative sort, is rich in satiric literature
of every variety. Nearly every able writer of verse--even including
Gray--tried his hand at satire, and the resulting product is enormous.
The heroic couplet as employed by Pope was recognized as the proper
measure for formal satire, and the influence of Pope appeared in the
diverse forms used: the mock-heroic, the personal epistle, the critical
verse-essay, and the moral or preceptive poem. At the same time no
small proportion of less formal satire took the manner of Gay and
Swift, in the octosyllabic couplet. The ballad and other less dignified
measures still continued popular for ephemeral satire. Finally there
was a body of work, including Cowper’s _Task_, the satiric poems of
Burns, and the early _Tales_ of Crabbe, which must be regarded as, in
some respects, exceptional.
Of the satirists of the school of Pope, the greater number seem to
have had Dr. Johnson’s conception of Satire as the son of Wit and
Malice, although, like Pope, they continued to pose as the upholders of
morality even when indulging in the most indiscriminate abuse.[13] They
borrowed the lesser excellencies of their master, but seldom attained
to his brilliance, keeping, as far as they were able, to his form and
method, but lacking the genius to reanimate his style.
The mock-heroic was exceedingly popular during the fifty years
following the death of Pope. The satires of one group, following
_The Rape of the Lock_, contain no personal invective, and are
satiric only in the sense that any parody of a serious _genre_ is
satiric.[14] Another class of mock-heroics, modelled particularly on
the _Dunciad_, make no pretence of refraining from personal satire, and
are often violently scurrilous.[15] A large number of poems imitate
the title of the _Dunciad_ without necessarily having any mock-heroic
characteristics.[16] In the field of personal, and especially of
political, satire, are many poems not corresponding exactly to any of
the above mentioned types.[17] The bitter party feeling aroused by the
rise to power of Lord Bute and by the resulting protests of Wilkes
in the _North Briton_ was the occasion of many broadsides during the
decade between 1760 and 1770.[18]
Several satires of the period, based particularly on Pope’s satiric
epistles, seem to maintain a more elevated tone, although they also are
frequently intemperate in their personalities.[19] An excellent example
is the very severe _Epistle to Curio_ by Akenside, praised for its
literary merits by Macaulay.[20] A small, but rather important class
of satires is made up of criticisms of literature or literary men in
the manner of either the _Essay on Criticism_ or the _Dunciad_.[21]
Still another group deal, like Young’s _Love of Fame_, with the
foibles and fads of society, using type figures and avoiding specific
references.[22] It is necessary, finally, to include under satire
many of the didactic and philosophic poems which seemed to infect
the century.[23] These Ethic Epistles, as they are styled in Bell’s
_Fugitive Pieces_, are often little more than verse sermons. Obviously
many poems of this nature hardly come within the scope of true satire.
Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_ (1770), for instance, has some satirical
elements; yet it is, properly speaking, meditative and descriptive
verse. The same may be said, perhaps, of the so-called satires of
Cowper.
The body of work thus cursorily reviewed shows a wide diversity of
subject-matter combined with a consistent and monotonous uniformity of
style. In most of the material we find the same regular versification,
the same stock epithets, and the same lack of distinctive qualities;
indeed, were the respective writers unknown, it would be a difficult
task to distinguish between the verse of two such satirists as James
Scott and Soame Jenyns. During the fifty years between the death of
Pope and the appearance of Gifford’s _Baviad_ (1794) only four names
stand out above the rest as important in the history of English satire
in verse: Johnson, Churchill, Cowper, and Crabbe.
Of these writers, Johnson contributed but little to the mass of English
satire. His _London_ (1738) and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749)
are imitations of Juvenal, characterized by stateliness, dignity,
melancholy, and sonorous rhetoric, but with only a slight element of
personal attack. The latter poem received high praise from Byron.[24]
Churchill and Byron, who have often been compared because of their
quarrels with the reviewers and their denunciation of a conservative
and reactionary government, were much alike in their arrogant
independence, their fiery intensity, and their passionate liberalism.
Churchill, however, unlike Byron, was always a satirist, and undertook
no other species of poetry. In many respects he resembled Oldham, whose
career, like his, was short and tumultuous, and whose wit, like his,
usually shone “through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.”
All Churchill’s work is marked by vigor, effrontery, and earnestness,
and the ferocity and vindictiveness of much of it give force to Gosse’s
description of the author as “a very Caligula among men of letters.”
However, although he was responsible for two of the most venomous
literary assaults in English--that on Hogarth in the _Epistle to
William Hogarth_ (1763) and that on Lord Sandwich in _The Candidate_
(1764)--he did not stab from behind or resort to underhand methods.
Despite his obvious crudities, he is the most powerful figure in
English satire between Pope and Byron.
Churchill employed two measures: the heroic couplet, in the _Rosciad_
(1761) and several succeeding poems; and the octosyllabic couplet,
in _The Ghost_ (1763) and _The Duellist_ (1764). His versification
is seldom polished, but his lines have, at times, something of the
robustness and impetuous disregard of regularity which lend strength to
Dryden’s couplets. It was to Churchill that Byron attributed in part
what he was pleased to term the “absurd and systematic depreciation of
Pope,”[25] which, in his opinion, had been developing steadily towards
the end of the eighteenth century. Churchill frankly acknowledged his
preference of Dryden over Pope,[26] a partiality which he shared with
Voltaire and Dr. Johnson. The fact is, however, that, despite his
failure to attain smoothness and artistic finish, he owed more to Pope
than he realized or cared to admit.[27]
With Cowper, Byron had temperamentally little in common; yet Cowper
is interesting, if only for the reason that he proves, by contrast
with Churchill, the range in manner of which the classical satire is
capable. He was most successful in a kind of mildly moral reproof,
which has often ease, humor, and apt sententiousness, although it
rarely possesses energy enough to make it effective as satire. Cowper’s
familiar verse, often satirical in tone, is almost wholly admirable,
the best of its kind between Prior and Praed.
The satire of Crabbe is essentially realistic. It portrays things as
they are, dwelling on each sordid detail and sweeping away all the
illusions of romance. In _The Village_ (1783), for instance, Crabbe
describes life as he found it among the lower classes in a Suffolk
coast town--a life barren, humdrum, and dismal: thus the poem is an
antidote, possibly intentional, to the idyllic and sentimental picture
drawn by Goldsmith in _The Deserted Village_. The ethical element is
always present in Crabbe’s work, and thus he preserves the didacticism
of Pope and Cawthorn; but his homely phraseology, his sombre
portraiture, and his pitiless psychological analysis of character
connect him with a novelist like Hardy. Possibly some of the realism of
_Don Juan_ may be traced to the example of Crabbe, for whom Byron had
both respect and affection.[28]
Aside from that exercised by the work and heritage of Pope, the most
definite influence upon Byron’s satiric verse came from the satires of
William Gifford (1756–1826), which had appeared some years before Byron
began to write. Gifford, who early became the young lord’s model and
counsellor, and who later revised and corrected his poetry, continued
to the end to be one of the few literary friends to whom Byron referred
consistently with deference.[29]
Gifford’s reputation was established by the publication of two short
satires, the _Baviad_ (1794) and the _Mæviad_ (1795), printed together
in 1797. The _Baviad_ is an imitation of the first satire of Persius,
in the form of a dialogue between the poet and his friend; the _Mæviad_
paraphrases Horace’s tenth satire of the first book. Both are devoted
primarily to deserved, but often unnecessarily harsh, criticism of
some contemporary fads in literature, particularly of the “effusions”
of the so-called Della Cruscan School.[30] Gifford was a Tory in a
period when the unexpected excesses of the French revolutionists were
causing all Tories, and even the more conservative Whigs, to take a
stand against innovation, eccentricity, and individualism in any form.
Since the Della Cruscans were nearly all liberals,[31] it was natural
that Gifford should be enthusiastic in his project of ridiculing the
“metromania” for which they were responsible. Thus his satires are
protests against license, defending the conventional canons of taste
and reasserting the desirability of law and order in literature.
Undoubtedly Gifford performed a certain service to the cause of letters
by condemning, in a common-sense fashion, the silly sentimentality of
the Della Cruscans.[32] Unfortunately it was almost impossible for
him to compose satire without being scurrilous. Although he may have
possessed the virtue of sincerity with which Courthope credits him,
he invariably picked for his victims men who were too feeble to reply
effectually. Still the satires, appearing so opportunely, made Gifford
both famous and feared. The _Baviad_ and the _Mæviad_ were placed,
without pronounced dissent, beside the _Dunciad_. Mathias said of the
author, in all seriousness: “He is the most correct poetical writer
I have read since the days of Pope.” Even Byron, so immeasurably
Gifford’s superior in most respects, was dominated so far as to term
him “the last of the wholesome satirists”[33] and to refer to him as a
“Bard in virtue strong.”[34]
The plain truth is that Gifford is not always correct, seldom
wholesome, and never great. Something of his style at the worst may be
obtained from a single line,
“Yet not content, like horse-leeches they come,”
of which even the careless Churchill would have been ashamed.
Gifford wanted good-breeding, and he had no geniality; his irascible
nature made him intolerant and unjust. Moreover he lacked a sense of
discrimination and proportion; he used a sledge-hammer constantly,
often when a lighter weapon would have served his purpose. In him the
artistic satire of Pope seems to have degenerated into clumsy and crude
abuse.
Carrying to excess a practice probably begun by Pope, with the advice
of Swift, Gifford had accompanied his satires with copious and
diffuse notes, sometimes affixing a page or more of prose comment to
a single line of verse.[35] Mathias, whose _Pursuits of Literature_
was, according to De Quincey, the most popular book of its day, so
exaggerated this fashion that it is often a question in his work to
decide which is meant for an adjunct to the other--verse or prose
annotation.
Thomas James Mathias (1754–1835), like Gifford, a Tory, with a
bigoted aversion to anything new or strange, and a firm belief in
the infallibility of established institutions, published Dialogue I
of the _Pursuits of Literature_ in May, 1794, Dialogues II and III
in June, 1796, and Dialogue IV in 1797. In his theory of satire he
insisted on three essentials: notes, and full ones; anonymity in the
satirist; and a personal application for the attack. His chosen field
included “faults, vices, or follies, which are destructive of society,
of government, of good manners, or of good literature.” Mathias is
pedantic, ostentatious in airing his information, and indefatigable
in tracking down revolutionary ideas. His chief work is a curiosity,
discursive, disorderly, and incoherent, with a versification that is
lifeless and unmelodious.[36]
With the work of Mathias, this cursory summary of the strictly formal
satire in the eighteenth century comes to a natural resting-place. Only
a year or two after the _Pursuits of Literature_, the _Anti-Jacobin_
began, and in its pages we find a more modern spirit. It is now
necessary, reverting to an earlier period, to trace the progress of
satire along other less formal lines, and to deal with some anomalous
poems, which, although satiric in tone, are difficult to classify
according to any logical system.
The satiric fable had a considerable vogue throughout the century,
and collections appeared at frequent intervals.[37] Nearly all have
allegorical elements and contain little direct satire, their main
object being to point out and ridicule the weaknesses and follies of
human nature. The octosyllabic couplet, the favorite measure for
fables, was also a popular verse form in familiar epistles and humorous
tales, modelled on the work of Prior, Gay, and Swift.[38] Ephemeral
political satire continued to flourish in rough and indecorous
street-ballads, sometimes rising almost into literature in the
productions of men like Charles Hanbury Williams (1708–1759) and Caleb
Whitefoord (1734–1810). With the inception of the _Criticisms on the
Rolliad_, political verse assumes a position of distinct importance in
the history of satire.
The material represented under the title _Criticisms on the Rolliad_
was published in the Whig _Morning Herald_, beginning June 28, 1784,
shortly after the fall of the Fox-North coalition and the appointment
of the younger Pitt to the office of Prime Minister. It presents
extracts from a supposed epic, based on the deeds of the ancestors of
John Rolle, M. P., who had become the pet aversion of the Whigs. The
alleged verse excerpts, all of them short, are amalgamated by clever
prose comment. The editors included a group of young and ambitious Whig
statesmen: Dr. Lawrence, later Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, who
furnished the prose sections; Joseph Richardson (1755–1803); Richard
Tickell, already mentioned as the author of _The Wreath of Fashion_;
and two former cabinet ministers, General Fitzpatrick, the friend of
Fox, and Lord John Townshend. The object of these men was to belittle
and deride the more prominent Tories in both Houses, particularly
Rolle, Pitt, Dundas, and the Tory Bishops, by singling them out, one
by one, for ridicule. Their verse was a flippant and free form of the
heroic couplet. Although their main purpose was political, they dealt
only slightly with party principles, preferring rather to excite
laughter by their personal allusions.
The marked public approbation which attended their experiment led
the editors to continue their project in a series of _Probationary
Odes for the Laureateship_, comprising parodies of twenty-two living
poets. The odes follow the plan of the _Pipe of Tobacco_ (1734) of
Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705–1760), which burlesques the poetry of
Cibber, James Thomson, Swift, Young, and Ambrose Phillips.[39] The
plan of the contributors was further amplified in _Political Eclogues_
and _Political Miscellanies_, which keep to the original policy of
vituperation, at the same time showing a striking deterioration in the
quality of the verse. The first zest had grown languid, and in the last
collection, _Extracts from the Album at Streatham_ (1788), containing
poems purporting to be by several ministers of state, the verse had no
value as literature.
The complete product of these Whig allies is, as a rule, clever
and pointed, but it is too often coarse and scandalous in content.
Although it failed in reinstating the Whigs in office, it occupies an
important position in English political satire. Despite its irregular
versification and its frequently unedifying subject-matter, it contains
some brilliant sketches and many witty lines.[40]
A droll and impudent, but not altogether pleasing figure of this
same period was the Whig satirist, Rev. John Wolcot (1738–1819),
better known by his _nom-de-guerre_ of Peter Pindar, who, making
it his especial function to caricature George III and his court,
earned from Scott the title of “the most unsparing calumniator of his
time.” George, with his bourgeois habits and petty economies, made
a splendid subject, and Pindar drew him with the homely realism of
Hogarth or Gilray, pouring forth a long series of impertinent squibs
until the monarch’s dangerous illness in 1788 gained him the sympathy
of the nation and roused popular feeling against his lampooner.
Pindar also engaged in other quarrels, notably with the trio of Tory
satirists, Gifford, Mathias, and Canning.[41] His genius was that of
the caricaturist, and his vogue, like that of most caricaturists,
was soon over. However, the peculiar flavor of his verses, full as
they are sometimes of rich humor and grotesque descriptions, is still
delightful, and partly explains the merriment which greeted his work at
a time when his allusions were still fresh in people’s minds. It may
be added that Pindar shows few traces of Pope’s influence; he makes no
pretence of a moral purpose, and he seldom employs the heroic couplet.
Professor Courthope suggests that _Don Juan_ owes much in style to the
satires of Pindar. The question of a possible indebtedness will be
taken up more in detail in another chapter; it is sufficient here to
point out that Byron never refers to Wolcot by name, and makes only one
reference to his poetry.[42]
Some of the most powerful social and political satire of the century
was written, in defence of democracy and liberalism, by the vigorous
pen of Robert Burns.[43] His work, however, despite the fact that
it discussed many of the topics which were agitating the English
satirists, was not particularly influential at the time in England.
One peculiar work, significant in the evolution of satire because of
its undoubted influence on a succeeding generation, was the _New Bath
Guide; or Memoirs of the B--r--d Family_ (1766), written by Christopher
Anstey (1724–1805).[44] It consists of a series of letters, most of
them in an easy anapestic measure with curious rhymes, purporting to
be from different members of one family, and satirising life at the
fashionable watering-place made famous only a few years before by Beau
Nash. Anstey’s method of using letters for the purpose of satire was
followed by other authors,[45] but never, until Moore’s _Two-penny
Postbag_ and _Fudge Family_, with complete success. Other satires of
the century also employed the anapestic metre in a clever way.[46]
The Tory _Anti-Jacobin_, a weekly periodical which began on November
20, 1797, and printed its last number on July 9, 1798, appropriately
closes the satire of the century, for it includes examples of most
of the types of satiric verse which had been popular since the death
of Pope. Founded by government journalists, possibly at Pitt’s
instigation, it planned to “oppose papers devoted to the cause of
sedition and irreligion, to the pay and interests of France.” At a
critical period in English affairs, when the long struggle with France
and Napoleon was just beginning and many Whigs were still undecided
as to their allegiance, it was the purpose of the _Anti-Jacobin_, as
representative of militant nationalism, to oppose foreign innovations
and to uphold time-honored institutions. Each number of the paper
contained several sections: an editorial, or leader; departments
assigned to Finances, Lies, Misrepresentations, and Mistakes; and
some pages of verse, with a prose introduction. Gifford, who had been
chosen to superintend the publication, devoted himself entirely to
editorial management, so that the responsibility for the verse devolved
upon George Canning (1770–1827) and several assistants, among whom
were Ellis, now an adherent of the Tories, and John Hookham Frere
(1769–1846).
The _Anti-Jacobin_, then, planned first to revive the traditions of
English patriotism and to rally public opinion to the support of king
and country. As a secondary but essential element of its design, it
aimed, especially in its verse, to expose the falsity and fatuity
of the doctrines of Holcroft, Paine, Godwin, and other radical
philosophers and economists; to ridicule and parody the work of
authors of the revolutionary school, particularly of the English Lake
poets and the followers of the German romanticists; and incidentally
to satirise some of the social and literary follies of the age.[47]
Since the verse was submitted by many contributors, its tone was not
always homogeneous, and it varied from playful jocularity to stern
didacticism. On the whole, however, it had a definite ethical purpose,
and avowedly championed sound morality and conservative principles.
The poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_ includes illustrations of many varied
satiric forms. _New Morality_ is a set, formal satire in conventional
couplets and balanced lines, superior in technique to the best work
of Gifford and Mathias, and not unworthy of comparison with many of
the satires of Pope. _Acme and Septimius, or the Happy Union_ is a
short informal verse tale, reminiscent in manner of the unedifying
personalities in the _Rolliad_. There are satiric imitations of
Horace and Catullus. There are parodies of many sorts: the _Needy
Knife Grinder_, an artistic parody of Southey’s sapphics; the _Loves
of the Triangles_, a burlesque of Darwin’s _Loves of the Plants_;
the _Progress of Man_, ridiculing the tedious didacticism of Payne
Knight; and _Chevy Chace_, a parody of the romantic ballad. Hudibrastic
couplets are used in _A Consolatory Address to his Gunboats, by
Citizen Muskein_; anapests, in the _Translation of a Letter_, in the
style of Anstey; and doggerel, in the _Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon
André_. The material of the satire comprehends events in politics, in
literature, in philosophy, and, to some extent, in society. Thus, in
small compass, the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_ offers a fruitful field
for study.
In more than one respect, too, it furnished suggestions for the
nineteenth century. _Ballynahinch_ and the _Translation of a Letter_
may have had some influence on the manner and versification of Moore
and Byron. Certain of the _Odes_, notably the imitation of Horace,
III, 25, have the delicate touch which was to mark the lighter satire
of the Smiths and Praed, and, later, of Calverley, Barham, and Locker.
In its rare combination of refined raillery with subtle irony and
underlying seriousness, the satire of the _Anti-Jacobin_ anticipates
the brilliance of _Punch_ in the days when Thackeray was a contributor
to its pages. The dexterous and artistic humor of Canning and his
confederates did not drive out the cut-and-slash method of Gifford, but
it did succeed in teaching the lesson that mockery and wit are fully as
effectual as vituperation in remedying a public evil.
At the time of the subsidence of the _Anti-Jacobin_ in 1798,[48] the
boy Byron, just made a lord by the death of his great-uncle on May
19, 1798, was in his eleventh year. From this date on, therefore, it
is necessary to take account not only of the satiric literature which
may have influenced his work, but also of the events in politics and
society which were occurring around him and which determined in many
ways the course of his career as a satirist. From his environment and
his associations came often his provocation and his material.
No single verse-satire of note was produced during the ten years
just preceding _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_. It seemed,
indeed, for a time, as if satire, fallen into feeble hands, would
lose any claim to be considered as a branch of permanent literature.
The increasing power of the daily newspapers and their abuse of the
freedom of the press stimulated the composition of short satiric
ballads and epigrams, designed to be effective for the moment, but
most of them hastily conceived, carelessly executed, and speedily
forgotten. The laws against libel, not consistently enforced until
after the second conviction of Finnerty in 1811 and the imprisonment
of the Hunt brothers in 1812, were habitually disregarded or evaded,
and the utmost license of speech seems to have been tolerated, even
when directed at the royal family. The ethical standard which Pope
had set for satire and which had been kept in _New Morality_ was now
forgotten in the strife of faction and the play of personal spite. Pope
had laid emphasis on style and technique, and even Mathias and Gifford
had made some attempt to follow him; but the new school of satirists
cared little for art. No doubt this degradation of satire may be
partly attributed to the fact that the really capable writers of the
time--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Southey--were engaged in poetry
of another sort; but the result was that satire became the property of
journalists and poetasters until Byron and Moore recovered for it some
of its former dignity.
It must not be inferred that there was a dearth of material for
destructive criticism. Few decades of English history have offered
a more tempting opportunity to a satirist.[49] The Napoleonic Wars,
renewed in May, 1803, after the brief Peace of Amiens (1802), were not,
in spite of an occasional naval victory, resulting advantageously for
England; the disgraceful Convention of Cintra (1808) and the Walcheren
fiasco of 1809 had detracted from British prestige; and the Peninsular
Campaign of 1808 seemed at the time to be a disastrous failure. The
wearisome conflict had accentuated class differences, since, as Byron
afterwards pointed out in _The Age of Bronze_, the landed interests
only increased their wealth as the struggle continued. Many reforms
were being agitated: Catholic Emancipation, opposed resolutely by
George III and not made a reality until Canning became supreme; the
abolition of negro slavery, championed persistently by Wilberforce; and
many improvements in the suffrage laws, planned by Sir Francis Burdett
and a small group of liberal statesmen. The older leaders, Pitt and
Fox, died in the same year (1806), leaving weaker and less trusted men
to fill their places; while political issues became confused until
the establishment of the Regency in 1811 opened the way for the long
Tory administration of Lord Liverpool. Some incidents of an unusually
scandalous character aroused a general spirit of dissatisfaction. The
impeachment of Melville in 1806 for alleged peculation of funds in the
naval office; the investigation in 1806 into the character of the giddy
Princess Caroline, instigated by the Prince of Wales, who had married
her in 1795 and deserted her within a year; the resignation of the
Duke of York from the command of the army, following a dramatic exposé
of his relations with Mrs. Clarke and her disposal of commissions for
bribes; the duel between Castlereagh and Canning (1809)--all these were
unsavory topics of the hour. The open profligacy of the heir to the
throne drew upon him ridicule and contempt, and the frequent recurrence
of the King’s malady left Englishmen in doubt as to the duration of his
reign. In such an age the ephemeral satires of the newspapers joined
with the cartoons of Gilray and Cruikshank in assailing evils and
expressing public indignation. It is, then, remarkable that no writer
of real genius should have been led to commemorate these events in
satire.
The formal satires of the decade are, for the most part, lifeless,
lacking in wit and art. The most readable of them is, perhaps, _Epics
of the Ton_ (1807), by Lady Anne Hamilton (1766–1846), divided into a
Male Book and a Female Book. It is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
in which some twenty women and seventeen men, all prominent personages,
are sketched by one familiar with most of the current scandal in
court and private life. Although it is written in the heroic couplet,
the versification is singularly crude and careless. Structurally the
work has little discernible unity, being merely a series of satiric
characterizations without connecting links, and each section might have
been printed as a separate lampoon. The introductory passage, however,
contains a running survey of contemporary poetry which was not without
influence on Byron. Lady Hamilton, clever retailer of gossip though she
was, belongs to the decadent school of Pope.
In 1808 Tom Moore published anonymously _Corruption_ and _Intolerance_,
following them in the next year with _The Skeptic, a Philosophical
Satire_. All three are satires in the manner and form of Pope; but in
spite of their fervid patriotism, they are dull and heavy, and Moore,
quick to recognize his failure, discreetly turned to a lighter variety
of satire for which his powers were better fitted. Of other political
satires of the same period, the best were excited by the notorious
ministry of “All the Talents,” formed by the Whigs after the death
of their leader, Fox, in 1806. In _All the Talents!_ (1807), Eaton
Stannard Barrett (1786–1820), under the name of Polypus, undertook
to undermine the ministry by assailing its members, following the
methods of the _Rolliad_ and using the diffuse notes which Mathias had
popularized. A Whig reply appeared shortly after in _All the Blocks!_
(1807) by the indefatigable W. H. Ireland (1777–1835), which attacked
the newly formed Tory ministry of Portland.
Among the nondescript formal satires of the time should be mentioned
Ireland’s _Stultifera Navis_ (1807), a spiritless, impersonal, and
general satire, which revives the form of Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_
(1494), introduced into English in Barclay’s _Ship of Fools_ (1508).
A later satire of Ireland’s, _Chalcographimania_ (1814), in feeble
octosyllabics, satirises collectors and bibliophiles. _The Children
of Apollo_ (1794), an anonymous satire of an earlier period, seems to
have afforded Byron more than a suggestion for his _English Bards_;
but he was influenced still more by the _Simpliciad_ (1808), published
anonymously, but actually written by Richard Mant (1776–1848), which is
dedicated to the three revolutionary poets, Wordsworth, Southey, and
Coleridge, and contains some unmerciful ridicule of their more absurd
poems. Mant’s work, the frank criticism of “a man of classical culture
and of some poetic impulse,”[50] merits attention as being an almost
contemporary outburst of the same general character as _English Bards_.
The ballad form reappeared in many satires arising from the troubled
condition of politics[51]; but the usual tone of this work is
scurrilous and commonplace, and dozens of such broadsides were composed
and forgotten in a day. That any one of them had any definite influence
on Byron, or on the course of satire in general, is highly improbable.
What is important is that the literary atmosphere for a few years
before 1809, although it produced no great satires, was surcharged
with the satiric spirit, and that Byron, in his youth, must have been
accustomed to the abusive personalities then common in the daily press.
Conditions in his day encouraged rather than repressed destructive
criticism.
This summary of English satiric verse between Dryden and Byron ends
naturally with the year 1809, when the latter poet first revealed his
true genius as a satirist. Something has been suggested of the wide
scope and varied character of satire from the death of Pope until the
end of the eighteenth century; the example of Pope has been traced
through its influence on satire to the time when it degenerated in the
work of Mathias and the minor rhymsters of the first decade of the new
century; and the lighter classes of satire have been followed until the
date when they became artistic in the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_.
With many of these English predecessors Byron had something in common;
from a few he drew inspiration and material. Although it will be
possible to point out only a few cases in which he was indebted to
them directly for his manner and phraseology, it was their work which
determined very largely the course which he pursued as a satirist in
verse.
With the appearance of _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, English
satire regained something of the standing which it had once had in the
days of Pope and Swift. Men of the highest genius were soon to employ
satire as a weapon. Moore, the Smiths, Praed, Hood, and Hook were to
carry raillery and mockery almost to the point of perfection; Shelley
was to unite satire with idealism and a lofty philosophy; and Byron
himself, the last master in the school of Pope, was to introduce a
new variety of satire, borrowed from the Italians, and to gain for
himself the distinction of being perhaps the greatest of our English
verse-satirists.