the earliest of poets. No amount of study of the first stumblings of satire will teach what satire really is: that is to be learnt from a consideration of the acknowledged masters-such masters as Aristophanes, Horace and Juvenal, Voltaire and Cervantes, and in English, Dryden, Pope and Swift, Burns and Byron. The oak reflects light upon the acorn, but from the acorn alone we could never divine the oak. The word satire, then, has more than one meaning. As there is a Comic Spirit, so there is a Satiric Spirit; and as there is a form of the drama we call Comedy, so there is a form of verse we call Satire. But as the Comic Spirit may manifest itself in the novel or the poem no less than in the comedy, so the Satiric Spirit may appear in prose as well as in verse, and both in verse and in prose it assumes manifold shapes. There are satirical novels and tales, essays and allegories. There are satirical lyrics and even satirical odes; and Paradise Lost itself contains fragments of satire. What may be called the classical satire of England is derived from the satire of the Latin poets; and as the Latin satirists adopted the hexameter, so their English imitators used the English equivalent, the heroic couplet. When Hall wrote the often-quoted lines, "I first adventure: follow me who list, And be the second English satirist," he must have had it in his mind that this was the only form of satire worthy of recognition; for except on that supposition his claim was not even plausible. In dealing with English satire it is clearly impossible to take so narrow a view as this. We must regard the Satiric Spirit in all its breadth. Even if we were tempted to limit ourselves to verse, it would be necessary to include many forms of verse. Swift was one of the greatest of satirists; but when he wrote satire in verse he chose the octosyllabic line. Don Juan is one of the greatest of satires; but its structure is stanzaic. The idea, however, of dealing only with satire in verse must be rejected the moment it is seriously examined. Swift's greatest satires are in prose. Indeed, a little reflection shows that the Satiric Spirit is prosaic rather than poetical. There must, it is clear, be certain qualities of verse which are valuable to the satirist, or Latin, French, and English satirists would not have resorted to it so frequently. Verse tends to neatness and concision; and the more concisely and neatly he can make his points, the better for the satirist. It would hardly be possible to draw the character of Atticus as perfectly in prose as Pope drew it in verse. Neatness and concision are valuable to the poet too, but they are only a small part of the soul of poetry; and it is significant that the great age of the classical satire in English is just the age in which the men of the romantic revival could scarcely find poetry at all. And for the advantage he gains the satirist in verse certainly pays a price. Quicquid agunt homines one of the greatest of them has declared to be his theme; but not everything that men do can be naturally expressed in verse. Swift would have been shorn of his power if he had been forced to write his Gulliver in verse, and Thackeray could never have uttered his criticism of the world in a metrical Vanity Fair or Barry Lyndon. The range of the Satiric Spirit, therefore, is extraordinarily wide. It is found in every form of literature, and in English it does not begin with Joseph Hall. We must seek it through all literature, and from the beginnings of literature. But not earlier, and not outside the bounds of literature. The first thing from which we must distinguish satire is mere scolding. Billingsgate is not, though the language of the London cabman frequently is, or was, satire. Billingsgate is simply abusive, but the cabman expressed himself with a skill which was in essence literary, though he might never have read a book. Where this skill begins to be shown in a critical and negative way we have the beginnings of satire. The Satiric Spirit is akin to "der Geist der stets verneint." Not that every negation is satirical: there is plenty of negation in the Decalogue, as well as in Mephistopheles. Yet, omnipresent as the Satiric Spirit is, satire is in truth a "channel" of English literature, and not something co-extensive with it. We do not think of Milton as a satirist because he described the Limbo of Fools, nor for certain passages in Samson Agonistes, nor even for what may be culled from his prose. There are very effective satirical passages in the dramas of Shakespeare, yet so completely is satire lost in the larger mass of his thought that to treat him as a satirist would be merely to distort him. Precision is unattainable; the edges of the "channel" blend imperceptibly with its containing banks. All are agreed that one swallow does not make a summer, but no one has ever yet defined how many swallows do make a summer. So too it is impossible to say how much of the Satiric Spirit it needs to make a satirist or a satire. But it is clear in the first place that regard must be paid to proportion. Where the satiric element is subordinate, it will usually be best simply to omit; and for this reason only a few dramas and novels will be dealt with. In the second place, while it is impossible to limit the view to formal satire alone, it seems reasonable to give special prominence to such satire. Finally, on the principle laid down above, the early rude attempts at satire before the rise of satire will be passed over lightly; for they bear to the work of an artist such as Pope a relation similar to that which the scrawlings of the cave-men bear to the paintings of Turner. |