a controversy in which there was little real humour displayed on either side-and his literary quarrel with Gabriel Harvey, begun in defence of Greene, made him famous. His controversial severity led him to great lengths of caricature and violence, but he is now and again extremely happy, as, for instance, in his criticism of Harvey's craze for English hexameters. 'Have with you to Saffron Walden,' the last and best known of his attacks on Harvey, is full of scornful ridicule wrapped in a whirl of wit, and is written in his most characteristic 'yerking, firking, jerking veine.' There are many good things, too, in the 'Anatomie of Absurditie,' a shapeless collection of shrewd observations.

2

We must be content with the bare mention of 1596-1601. other writers in the native school. The Kinde friendly snippinge' and the moral disquisitions of Breton,1 the truths shadowed forth by strong-phrased Gilpin, and the fantastic verses of silver-tongued Sylvester, do not indeed call for any lengthy notice; but Thomas Lodge, though he cannot compare with Greene and Nashe for vigour, originality, and wit, demands some attention.

1556-1625.

3

He was one of the least boisterous, but by no means the least interesting, of the University wits who came up to London at the end of the sixteenth century. He tried his hand at every sort of com

Hundred Years,' and for that of the quarrel with Gabriel Harvey see Nashe's Works, ed. Grosart (Huth Library), pp. liii-lviii.

1 Nicholas Breton's 'No Whippinge, nor Trippinge, but a kinde friendly Snippinge,' is the last of a trilogy arising out of an attack on Ben Jonson: 'The Whippinge of the Satyre by W. I[ngram?]', and 'The Whipper of the Satyre-his Penance in a White Sheet,' etc., the reply of some friend of Marston's with more zeal than wit.

24 'Skialetheia.'

3 Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered about their Eares that Idlely Idolize so Base and Barbarous a Weed.'

INTRODUCTION

19

position, and succeeded in rivalling, if not in surpassing, 'Lilly the famous for facility' in his own line of euphuistic romance. As a satirist he is, it may be, somewhat tame and lacking in force, but his writings have a certain distinction which recommends them. For when Hall boasted in the 'Virgidemiarum' 1597. 'Follow me who list,

And be the second English satirist,'

he did an injustice to Lodge, who had anticipated him in his own particular line of heroic satire; for the rare British Museum copy of 'A Fig for Momus' bears the date of 1595. Would God our realme could light upon a Lucilius!' Lodge had exclaimed in his reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse."1 We now find him coming forward with a modest attempt to supply that deficiency in the realm.

...

In the preface To the Gentlemen Readers whatsoever '-a preface, be it noted, of supreme interest in the history of English satire-the title of the volume 'Fig for Momus' is explained. The explanation is, 'In despight of the detractor who, worthily deserving the name of Momus, shall . . . at my hands have a figge to choake him.' 'The satyres,' he goes on to say, 'included in this volume are by pleasures, rather placed here to prepare and trie the ear then to feede it because, if they passe well, the whole centon of them, alreadie in my hands, shall sodainly be published." It does not seem that he met with

1 The 'School of Abuse' was a foolish invective against the stage. It was afterwards honoured by calling forth Sir Philip Sidney's beautiful reply, 'The Defence of Poesie.'

2 'In them, under the name of certaine Romaines, where I reprehend vice I purposely wrong no man, but observe the laws of that kind of poeme. If any repine thereat, I am sure he is guilty, because he bewrayeth himselfe.' He shows that he is not of the compromising sort: If any man reprove let him looke to it; I will lip him. As I am ready to satisfy the reasonable, so I have a gird in store for a railer.'

2-2

1593.

the needed encouragement. There is no trace of that centon. As to the five satires contained in the 'Fig for Momus,' the preface quoted leaves little to be added. The importance of them lies in their form rather than in their matter or intrinsic merit. Lodge takes Juvenal for his model, and in the fifth satire follows the tenth satire of Juvenal closely. But his denunciations are of too general a character to have much interest, and his style is too much steeped in euphuism to redeem that defect.1

Of his other works in this line, Truth's complaint over England' is a fairly vigorous satirical poem, the exact meaning of which is concealed under an allegory, a course dictated alike by prudence and fashion, but which, it must be admitted, somewhat spoils the satire.

Catharos-a Nettle for Nice Noses' is a rabid and pedantic prose-dialogue of no merit. It abounds in this sort of stuff, put in the mouth of Diogenes: 'My friend, sayth the shoemaker, your shooe is good on the last, but whoso puts it on shall find small peniworth in the lasting.' The Alarum against Usurers' is a tedious moral story of no merit.

Lodge, as we have hinted, dabbled in almost every style of literature, and was too anxious to have his oar in every paper boat' to achieve very great success; but we must give him the credit he deserves for being the introducer into English of the satire in heroics, which passed from him, through Hall and Donne, to Dryden, Pope, Churchill, and Byron.

The MSS. of two of Donne's satires are, indeed, dated 1593, earlier, that is, than the publication of Lodge's 'Momus.' Donne is the chief of that meta

1 It is worth noting that in the same volume Lodge published some Epistles to various friends in heroic verse-also the first of their kind in English.

physical school which delighted in 'the irregular and eccentric violence of wit."1

His satire is fresh, but too often, like the elegies, extremely coarse. The see-saw style of reading does not suit his lines, which have a deep and subtle music of their own." This, however, is often spoilt by the metrical roughness deliberately affected by classical satirists of this period.3 The Romans allowed licences in this branch of literature; their object was to preserve the free, open-air character of the satiric muse. But the satires of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal are only harsh when compared, not with the crude vigour of Ennius, but with the correctness of Virgil's Epic and the curiosa felicitas of Horace's 'Odes."4 Donne and his fellows, on the other hand, are uncouth, even in comparison with the imperfect precisians of their own day. This slavish copying of Roman models-especially of Persius, the most crabbed of them all-is responsible also for the deliberate obscurity of allusion and the air of imitation which mar the poetical satirists of the Elizabethan period. But the gain is greater than the loss; for without these classical models English satiric poetry would not so readily have found the proper form in which to express itself, or a canon by which to test its material.

Donne, however, is not so wilfully obscure as Hall. In his matter he is pungent, but never angry. He knows how to proportion his criticism. Vices he treats not too gently, but he deals lightly with vanities. Sometimes he laughs out joyously, some

1 Johnson, 'Life of Cowley.'

2 Cf. Craik's 'History of English Literature.'
3 E.g., 'As prone to ill, and of good as forget-
Full, as proud, lustfull, and as much in debt.’

Sat. iv. 13.

4 Petronius, Satyr. 118: 'Horatii curiosa felicitas.'

1608.

22 SELECTIONS FROM BRITISH SATIRISTS

times you catch a sob of unutterable sorrow and remorse;1 but you will not find in him that extravagant exaggeration and only half-sincere denunciation of contemporary vice and folly which Marston and Hall borrowed from Juvenal.2 The cry Omne in præcipiti vitium stetit-The world is worse than ever it was disfigures many English satirists, and not least the learned and voluminous Bishop Hall.

6

'4

Like Donne, Hall thought it necessary for a satire to be hard of conceit and harsh of style ';5 but, for all that, he lets us see that he is a master of style, and the fabric of the couplets in Virgidemiarum' approaches much nearer to the standard of Pope. Unlike Donne, he can raise a laugh without the aid of quibbles and conceits. But, though his felicitous phrases, racy humour, and intrepid invective are pleasing for a while, the author's too obvious delight in laying bare the frailty of mankind soon nauseates the reader. Saturnine is the epithet to be applied to his wit. The real value of his work lies in the realistic portraiture of men and manners. 'Mundus Alter et Idem' he ventures not unsuccessfully into the domain of satirical fiction. There he proves himself more akin to the author of 'Gulliver' than to the author of 'Rasselas.' Unfortunately, it is written in Latin-the language of More's 'Utopia,' and of Erasmus' 'Encomium Moriæ.' Hall, in his Vertus and Vices,' also set the example of writing character studies, after the manner of Theophrastus -an example quickly followed by Dr. Earle, and later by Sir Thomas Overbury. These 'characters'

1 See his sermons passim.

In

2 Their contemporary Regnier could have taught them to avoid this fault in moral preaching.

3 Juvenal, i. 149.

4 Rede Me and be nott Wroth.'
6 Postscript to 'Virgidemiarum.'