English Satires | Page 2

Mad--Quite Mad 264
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (LORD BEACONSFIELD) LXV. Popanilla on Man 270
ROBERT BROWNING LXVI. Cristina 277 LXVII. The Lost Leader 280
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY LXVIII. Piscator and Piscatrix 281 LXIX. On a Hundred Years Hence 283
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH LXX. Spectator Ab Extra 292
C.S. CALVERLEY LXXI. "Hic Vir, Hic Est" 296

INTRODUCTION.
Satire and the satirist have been in evidence in well-nigh all ages of the world's history. The chief instruments of the satirist's equipment are irony, sarcasm, invective, wit, and humour. The satiric denunciation of a writer burning with indignation at some social wrong or abuse, is capable of reaching the very highest level of literature. The writings of a satirist of this type, and to some extent of every satirist who touches on the social aspects of life, present a picture more or less vivid, though not of course complete and impartial, of the age to which he belongs, of the men, their manners, fashions, tastes, and prevalent opinions. Thus they have a historical as well as a literary and an ethical value. And Thackeray, in speaking of the office of the humorist or satirist, for to him they were one, says, "He professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness, your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture, your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost."[1]
Satire has, in consequence, always ranked as one of the cardinal divisions of literature. Its position as such, however, is due rather to the fact of it having been so regarded among the Romans, than from its own intrinsic importance among us to-day. Until the closing decades of the eighteenth century--so long, in fact, as the classics were esteemed of paramount authority as models--satire proper was accorded a definite place in letters, and was distinctively cultivated by men of genius as a branch of literature. But with the rise of the true national spirit in the various literatures of Europe, and notably in that of England, satire has gradually given place to other types of composition. Slowly but surely it has been edged out of its prominent position as a separate department, and has been relegated to the position of a quality of style, important, beyond doubt, yet no longer to be considered as a prime division of letters.[2]
Rome rather than Greece must be esteemed the home of ancient satire. Quintilian, indeed, claims it altogether for his countrymen in the words, Satira tota nostra est; while Horace styles it _Gr?cis intactum carmen_. But this claim must be accepted with many reservations. It does not imply that we do not discover the existence of satire, together with favourable examples of it, long anterior to the oldest extant works in either Grecian or Latin literature. The use of what are called "personalities" in everyday speech was the probable origin of satire. Conversely, also, satire, in the majority of those earlier types current at various periods in the history of literature, has shown an inclination to be personal in its character. De Quincey, accordingly, has argued that the more personal it became in its allusions, the more it fulfilled its specific function. But such a view is based on the supposition that satire has no other mission than to lash the vices of our neighbours, without recalling the fact that the satirist has a reformative as well as a punitive duty to discharge. The further we revert into the "deep backward and abysm of time" towards the early history of the world, the more pronounced and overt is this indulgence in broad personal invective and sarcastic strictures.
The earliest cultivators of the art were probably the men with a grievance, or, as Dr. Garnett says, "the carpers and fault-finders of the clan". Their first attempts were, as has been conjectured, merely personal lampoons against those they disliked or differed from, and were perhaps of a type cognate with the Homeric Margites. Homer's character of Thersites is mayhap a lifelike portrait of some contemporary satirist who made himself dreaded by his personalities. But even in Thersites we see the germs of transition from merely personal invective to satire directed against a class; and Greek satire, though on the whole more personal than Roman, achieved brilliant results. It is enough to name Archilochus, whom Mahaffy terms the Swift of Greek Literature, Simonides of Amorgos (circ. 660 B.C.), the author of the famous Satire on Women, and Hipponax of Ephesus, reputed the inventor of the Scazon or halting iambic.
But the lasting significance of Greek satire is mainly derived from its surpassing distinction in two domains--in the comico-satiric drama of Aristophanes, and in the Beast Fables of '?sop'. In later Greek literature it lost its robustness and became trivial and effeminate