CHAPTER 5. SATIRE Pope: The Dunciad; Satires and Epistles; his Essays in part satirical-Swift-Samuel POPE AS A SATIRIST.—The essence of satire is the power to mix jest and earnest. Its writers fall into two classes. Of the one are those who, like Horace, have themselves often in view and whose style but rarely savours of rhetoric or poetry. The other class, of which Juvenal is the type, deals less directly with the personality of the writer, bases its style upon poetry, and finds in rhetoric the enforcement of its themes. It is not chance that made Pope imitate Horace and Johnson imitate Juvenal. Pope's adaptation of Horace enabled him to defend himself and assail his enemies. A difference of temperament causes in him a venom from which his original as a sociable man of the world had wholly cleared himself, but the literary vehicle could easily be turned to carry venom, and the more so when the enjambements gave way to the stinging crispness of the couplet. The style of Juvenal follows the epic flow of Virgil. The semblance of dignity thus acquired fits with a more sombre, if less spiteful, view of life. The sinner is less prominent than the sin. Suffering, whether deserved or undeserved, is presented as the result of errors in heart or head lying so deep in human nature that those who display them are not fully conscious of their wrongdoing. It is want of thought and feeling that leaves the industrious scholar and man of letters to suffer from Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. Works. The Dunciad is a ferocious attack upon numerous small personages who had provoked Pope's anger. In its first form the hero was Lewis Theobald, the first great textual critic of Shakespeare. Afterwards Colley Cibber, a skilful actor and capable dramatist, took Theobald's place. Throughout the work is little more than a skilful lampoon. The remaining satires are mostly imitations of Horace. The prologue is an apology for satire, with incidental attacks upon Addison, Halifax, Hervey, and others. A philosophy of life is the staple of the four first satires, crossed with many personal attacks and much skilful but malicious drawing of character. The fifth turned Horace's encomium on Augustus into a satire on George II., and develops, after Horace, into a defence of literature. Characteristics. Pope is a master of literary craft. Confining himself almost entirely to the heroic couplet, he gave it a condensation and finish unknown to his predecessors. His epigrammatic lines are unrivalled in their picture of contemporary social life from the satirist's point of view. For his venom there is some excuse; his life, as he says, was a long disease." Moreover, he was attached to a small political circle whose opposition to Walpole-the "fixed star," as even the Tory Johnson admitted him to be-degenerated into the merest faction. Pope had neither the political insight to see the merits of Walpole's administration nor to realize that the men whose friendships he valued were destitute of public virtue. Skilful as he was in hitting the weak points of his enemies, his portraits would have been more effective satire if he had made virtue a foil to vice. Dryden's assault on Shaftesbury the politician gained splendour by his encomium of Shaftesbury the judge, but only in the case of Addison does Pope remember this touch of art. SWIFT AS A SATIRIST.-Swift was one of the greatest masters of prose satire, and the note of irony, sometimes grave, sometimes bitter, is predominant in almost everything he wrote. In professing to plead an opponent's cause he shatters it. We see this quality in his pamphlets and articles, in the Drapier's Letters (1724), in the Modest Proposal (1729), in which he proposed to relieve the misery of the Irish by using their children for food. Most of all we see it in Gulliver's Travels (see p. 338). His style is perfectly adapted for this purpose in its austere simplicity and bold masculine vigour. To no other English writer, perhaps, was the English tongue so much a weapon of deadly precision, JOHNSON'S SATIRES.-Johnson's London has hardly enough sincerity to take first rank. He denounces the town, but despite its neglect of him he loved it well. He follows Juvenal's third satire, but his parallels are sometimes unreal. I cannot bear a French metropolis (98), he cries, but the French adventurer by no means pervaded London as the Greekling had pervaded Rome. A nobleman whose London house was burnt found no "pension'd band" to Refund the plunder of the beggar'd land (197). Nevertheless some of the parallels are excellent, the verse is always vigorous, and the bitterness natural to a man conscious of great powers and like to die of hunger. In the next four years Johnson learnt much, and in The Vanity of Human Wishes there is no trace of immaturity. The satire supplies an almost unique example of a copy surpassing the original. Juvenal's powerful rhetoric has in it a characteristic. note of baseness which is at least modified in the English version. And in the fine conclusion Johnson shows a Christian serenity after which he strove, but did not always attain-very different from the stoicism of the Roman. CHARLES CHURCHILL (1731-64).-Churchill matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge, from Westminster, in 1748, but probably did not reside, having about that time made a Fleet marriage below his rank. He then took orders, and was for some time a curate. The publication of The Rosciad brought him fame, and he gave himself up to authorship, became a friend of Wilkes, and wrote in the North Briton. His first work ran through nine editions in four years, but the others were less successful. He died at Boulogne, whither he had gone to meet Wilkes. Works.-The Rosciad (1761); The Apology (1761); Night (1762); The Ghost (1762 and 1763); The Prophecy of Famine (1763); An Epistle to W. Hogarth (1763); The Conference (1763); The Duellist (1763); The Author (1763); Gotham (1764); The Candidate (1764); The Times (1764); Independence (1764); The Farewell (1764). Character. A strain of recklessness shortened the lives of Churchill and his great friends Robert Lloyd and Bonnell Thornton. Against this defect must be set a capacity for friendship and a strong vein of generosity. Cowper calls him surly, and his early poverty made him bitter. Nevertheless he could enjoy life though he could not husband it. He died so young that we cannot say how these qualities would have developed in maturer years. He did not think deeply on life, had no scheme for it, and satirized a world of which he had but a superficial knowledge. Style. The Rosciad, by which Churchill made his name, remains his best work. It attacks the mannerisms and weaknesses of contemporary players, reserving praise for some actresses and for Garrick. Churchill wrote largely in Wilkes's newspaper, and in The Prophecy of Famine, The Duellist, and The Candidate wrote with ferocious satire of Bute and his countrymen and of Sandwich, Warburton, and Mansfield, Wilkes's leading enemies. The Epistle to William Hogarth, an answer to the artist's portrait of Wilkes, is more effective, because, while denouncing Hogarth's heartlessness, it admits his skill as a draughtsman. Johnson contemned Churchill's works, and the knowledge of this contempt made Churchill take advantage of Johnson's connection with the Cock Lane ghost to attack him in The Ghost under the name of " Pomposo." Gotham, the one work that is not satirical, was inspired by Bolingbroke's Patriot King, and is unintelligibly at variance with the Whiggism which elsewhere characterizes the author. In fact, Churchill had not really thought upon politics, and had neither knowledge nor judgment to perceive his inconsistency. The remaining works are general satires or defences of the satirist's craft. Like most of the poems, they have many echoes of Dryden and Pope, but fall almost as short of the vigour of the one as of the polish of the other. SIR PHILIP FRANCIS (1740-1808).-The authorship of the Letters of Junius was never expressly claimed, but external evidence points to Francis and internal evidence is almost conclusive. If Francis and Junius were two men, the one was morally and intellectually the double of the other. Life. After being captain of St. Paul's School, Francis entered the Civil Service at the age of sixteen, and in 1762 became first secretary in the War Office. He was at the same time active in anonymous journalism. In old age he said that he scarcely remembered when he did not write." In 1768 he first used the signature of "Junius," the allusion being to Brutus the tyrannicide. His letters under this and other signatures appeared in the Public Advertiser from January 1769 to January 1772. Next year he was appointed a member of the new Indian Council. Arriving at Calcutta in October 1774, he actively opposed Warren Hastings, the governor-general. After making a fortune, he returned to England in 1780, and, being elected to the House of Commons in 1784, supported the impeachment of Hastings. His later career is remarkable only for his attempts to save Burke from his frenzied view of the French Revolution. Works. Apart from the letters under different signatures claimed by Junius, many letters in the newspapers have been on more or less cogent grounds assigned to Francis. Some letters of considerable importance are published in Burke's correspondence. Character. Francis was a man of great industry and considerable courage. His rancour was excessive, but, though sometimes springing from personal motives, it was more often the result of his political beliefs. His arrogance was innate, and he cultivated scorn as a fine art. His ambition was great and was never satisfied. His interests lay wholly in politics. He has been called a doctrinaire Whig, but he was rather a strict adherent of principles as superior to precedents. "No precedents," he wrote, "will support either natural injustice or violation of positive right." He was fiercely opposed to the attempt of George III. to turn a reign into a rule, and saw clearly the "state of abandoned servility and prostitution to which the undue influence of the crown has reduced the other branches of the legislature.” Hence he attacks Grafton, Bedford, and others no less for their neglect of principle than for their political incapacity. Style. Writing as Philo-Junius, the author says that "it does not appear that Junius values himself upon any superior skill in composition." This was of course an affectation, since the polished, if occasionally pompous, periods are the result of much care and long practice. For an easier and more familiar style he had some contempt. "I wish," wrote Francis to Burke in 1790, “you would let me teach you to write English," and he added that "polish is natural in peroration." After dealing with the facts, Junius showed power in summing up. You are at liberty to choose between the hypocrite and the coward. Your best friends are in doubt which way they shall incline. Your country unites the characters and gives you credit for them both." But the powers to which Junius was opposed were too strong to be overcome by railing, and Lord North's Ministry maintained all the evils against which the letters were directed. 1 To the Duke of Grafton, February 14, 1770. SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST Texts.-POPE, A.: see p. 298.-CHURCHILL, C.: Poetical Works, ed. J. L. Hannay and W. Tooke (2 vols., Bell, 1892).-Letters of Junius, ed. J. M'Diarmid (2 vols., 1822); Junius, ed. J. Wade (2 vols., 1850, o.p.). Studies.-FORSTER, J.: Charles Churchill (in Historical and Biographical Essays, Vol. II., 1858).— TAYLOR, J.: Discovery of the Author of the Letters of Junius (1813); Identity of Junius established (1816; new ed. 1818; supplement, 1817).—CHABOT, J.: The Handwriting of Junius Investigated (1871, 0.p.).— FRANCIS, H. R.: Junius Revealed (1894, o.p.). (2,352) 12 |