His Twopenny Post-Bag (1813) is probably best known now because Lockhart quotes the satire on Rokeby, which represents Scott as "coming by long quarto stages to town," and meaning to "do" the gentlemen's seats by the way. There are other good strokes in it, and in particular some effective ridicule of religious bigotry. The same theme is dealt with in Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823)—a better work. Good sense as well as wit is shown in the satire on the connexion between Church and State, which is the theme of the fifth fable; and also in the sixth, The Little Grand Lama, which teaches that just as the small monarch needs a whipping, so monarchs of a larger growth are all the better for some constitutional restraint. Moore was in earnest about the Holy Alliance, and the fable in which he foreshadows its dissolution-a dream of the monarchs dancing in an ice-palace on the Neva—is a very clever play. on the slippery and melting foundations of their policy. The Fudge Family in Paris (1818) also conceals beneath a veil of burlesque serious political views and aims. There is keen satire on the transfer by treaty of the allegiance of millions from one sovereign to another, on the doings of the Holy Alliance, and on the amusements of sovereigns. The peace was recent, and Moore seems to have found it as little satisfactory as that under which Europe groans to-day. Phil Fudge's book will prove "That Europe-thanks to royal swords And bay'nets, and the Duke commanding- Wherever Castlereagh is mentioned there is an underlying bitterness. The ridicule of his mixed metaphors shows that Sir Boyle Roche is not without rivals among his countrymen:— "Kingship, tumbled from its seat, Upward and downward, as the stream Before leaving Moore it may be worth mentioning that he attempted satire in the heroic couplet in Corruption, Intolerance and The Sceptic, but with very little success. CHAPTER XII THE NEW SATIRE: BURNS AND BYRON AFTER the lapse of several generations it is easy to see that towards the close of the eighteenth century English literature stood in need of new measures, both for the purposes of the lyric and for satire. But the northern division of the island was in a different position from the southern. In Scotland no new invention or introduction was needed, but only the power to use what had long been familiar and had recently been revived. Burns found his instrument ready to his hand, and his success as a satirist was certainly in some measure due to the metres he used-partly to their inherent qualities, and partly to their history. Scottish vernacular verse was revived by a group of writers who sprang up in Edinburgh about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Through the whole of the previous century belles lettres had been practically dead in Scotland. James Watson's Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems was a symptom of revival. The first part appeared in 1706, and it was followed by a second in 1709 and a third in 1711. Thus, just when the union of the Parliaments brought, in Lord Belhaven's well-known phrase, "the end of an auld sang" in politics, the "auld sang" of another sort is reborn; for the Choice Collection included ancient pieces as well as modern, and the ancient pieces were a good deal more noteworthy than the modern. Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) was stirred up to write, and after a few years he in turn published two compilations-The Tea-Table Miscellany (1724-27) and The Evergreen (1724). It is the very depth of the preceding sleep that makes this reawakening important. English poetry had begun to suffer from convention; but there could hardly be convention in a country where for more than a century poetry had not existed. Birds had not been translated into "the plumy people," nor fish into "the finny tribe." Traditions were broken, and everything was to be made anew. If Allan Ramsay, and even writers of less ability, were leaders in the return to nature, it was not because of superiority of genius. On the contrary, there were no more abject slaves to convention than they were in the pieces they wrote in English. In the vernacular they escaped conventionality because there was no convention. Thus all the measures which Ramsay and his coadjutors found in the older poets were, so to speak, free to be used according to their intrinsic qualities. They carried with them no serious load of tradition such as, after Pope, made the English heroic couplet the vehicle of reason in rhyme, and stamped with burlesque any use of the lyrical measures for purposes of satire. There was, it is true, a "standart Habby" behind the most notable of these revived Scottish measures; but, though its influence was considerable, it was not fettering. This measure of "standart Habby," the stave of six lines with two rhymes, came originally from the Troubadours and was well known in medieval England, but had been forgotten. For purposes of humour and satire it is the favourite of both Ramsay and his more highly-gifted successor, Robert Fergusson (1750-74). But in truth both poets are humorists rather than satirists. Ramsay's Elegy on John Cowper, the kirk-treasurer's man, is directed against the kirk session's jurisdiction of morals, and may be regarded as a tentative and cautious prelude to Burns's great satires. In The last Speech of a Wretched Miser the picture is too much that of the miser as others see him. Ramsay could not rise to the height of showing the miser as he saw himself and out of his own mouth condemning him, as Burns did with Holy Willie. In his other pieces in the same measure Ramsay is just the humorous observer; and in his occasional imitations of Pope in the heroic couplet he is contemptible. Fergusson too is rather a keen-eyed, dispassionate, amused spectator than a critic and satirist. The Rising of the Session and The Sitting of the Session are themes which invite to satire, but the poet is not satirical. Still less is he so in The Farmer's Ingle and Leith Races. Yet at times he has a satirical note. Hame Content proclaims itself a satire. Its purpose is to dissuade from excessive greed of money and to inculcate contentment with the beauties of home, instead of wandering abroad in restless search for that which is no better. In Braid Claith the thesis is that fine clothing opens the way to fame and to love. The lady will not look at the lover unless he wears fine garments:— "Braid Claith lends fouk an unco heese, For little skaith; In short, you may be what you please This is respectable, but it would be absurd to call it great. There have been scores of village poetasters since who have put more pungent satire into this measure than either Ramsay or Fergusson. It was Robert Burns (1759-96) who showed the way to do it. He handled the two measures (this stave of six lines and another of nine) in which the majority of his satires are written with such skill and power as to make him one of the very foremost of British satirists, and he wove in with the satire such pure poetic beauty as no satirist had ever mingled with it before, and as only Byron combined with it afterwards. It is this mingling of poetic beauty with satiric keenness which is the special feature of the new satire. An excellent illustration may be found in The Holy Fair. The opening stanza depicts a scene of quiet natural beauty: There is not the faintest hint of satire, and clearly the piece might go on to the end in the spirit in which it has begun. It might, but the poet has determined otherwise, and there is nothing in the nature or traditions of his measure to hinder him from changing the note. Here is the description of the congregation to which his crony Fun and Superstition and Hypocrisy, her companions for the nonce, introduce him:— "Here some are thinkin' on their sins, An' some upo' their claes; On this hand sits a chosen swatch, In a subsequent stanza we get a picture of hell drawn with that fidelity to the teaching of the pulpit to which Burns's satires owe half their effect; and in the end, thanks to the poet, we understand, partly at least, that amazing assembly of the pious, filled "with faith and hope, and love and drink.” The six-line stave was equally flexible, and Burns used it too now in the serious vein and now in the comic. In it he wrote that touching Bard's Epitaph which remains to this day perhaps the justest analysis of his own character; and in it also he wrote Death and Doctor Hornbook and Holy Willie's Prayer. Satire cannot rise to its highest point unless it has a great theme. Juvenal's was the corruption of Imperial Rome, Dryden's that of Restoration England. Burns was an actor on a narrower stage, but the theme he chose was of fundamental importance there. The Scottish Reformation had aimed at establishing a theocracy, and had succeeded in concentrating great censorial power in the hands of a very democratic ecclesiastical organisation. The way of transgressors was hard; Burns was a transgressor, and in his satires on the Kirk he was moved by the very human desire to hit back. He had to fight for his friends as well as himself. Gavin Hamilton, to whom he dedicates his first volume of poems, had been attacked by the champions of orthodoxy, and the case has left its mark on The Twa Herds and on Holy Willie's Prayer. It is on Hamilton's basket and store, kail and potatoes, that Holy Willie prays for a curse, and it is because of the acquittal of Hamilton that he invokes a curse on the Presbytery of Ayr. In Burns's time, though the old orthodoxy was still dominant, it was beginning to be challenged. The moderates were in a minority, but they included the most intellectual men in the kirk. Robertson the historian was one of them, and Carlyle of Inveresk another. The New Light therefore could not be wholly hid, but the power of the Auld Light is shown by the fact that Home, the author of Douglas, was induced by the ferment caused by his offence of writing a play to abandon his profession. This was a few years before the birth of Burns. In the |