This is largely undeservedly brilliant reputation for satire. due to Dryden's fulsome praise of his patron, in dedicating to him the Essay on Satire, in which he assigned the Earl a place beside Juvenal and Donne. Of Dorset's achievements in this direction there have been preserved but a few specimens, two or three attacks on contemporary authors being the chief, together with A Satire on a Lady of Ireland." The chief significance of efforts like these, the work of clever but over-praised noblemen, lies in the mere fact of their existence. When we look thus hastily at this later period, two or three different impulses seem to be uniting to form the new order of satire. On the one hand, there was a mass of political satire, rising directly from the hot strife of men and parties, full of personalities, and marked by the fondness for ingenuity and wit which was characteristic of the early seventeenth century. The extreme sort of this satire was the burlesque, represented at its best in Hudibras. On the other hand, there was a great development of character satire, finding expression in numbers of amusing satirical essays descriptive of human types. These seem to have had their rise in some of the character-sketches of Ben Jonson, such as were included in the list of dramatis personæ preceding Every Man out of his Humour: The most noteworthy collections that followed were the Characters of Virtues and Vices, by our old friend Joseph Hall (1608), the Characters of Sir Thomas Overbury (1614), and the Micro-cosmographie; or, a Peece 1 In 1615 appeared John Stephens's Satirical Essayes, Characters, and others, the second edition of which, in 1631, was called New Essayes and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, etc. Such titles, as well as the fact that men like Hall and Butler wrote in this form, indicate its close connection with verse satire. For further notes on these "characters," see Dr. Bliss's edition of Earle's Micro-cosmographie, 1811, Arber's Reprint of the same work, and Morley's Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century, in the "Carisbrooke Library." of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters of John Earle (1628). Butler, the author of Hudibras, also wrote a large number of "characters," which were published posthumously. The whole list of such writings for the century would be very large. Now these two elements, the witty treatment of contemporary events, and the analytic treatment of human character, while we have not found them altogether lacking in Elizabethan satire, and while the Elizabethans no doubt paved the way for their later development, were just what the formal, classical satirists chiefly missed. They were, in fact, the strong elements of mediæval satire revived, the elements of the satire of the Reformation and the early satire of Fools. If the new classicists of the seventeenth century, under the leadership of Boileau, could embrace these elements and at the same time imitate the dignity, the conciseness, the critical and reflective temper of the Latin satirists, the result would outrank-as literature-any satire that had preceded. This was just what happened. In Absalom and Achitophel were united a witty criticism of contemporary events, a keen analysis of character, and classical dignity and compactness of style. By this time, too, the limitations to the success of satire as a literary form, which had been felt in the Elizabethan Age, had largely disappeared. The drama was no longer a representation of real life, but itself a convention. The spirit of the age was primarily critical, and no longer demanded the imitation of its own spontaneity. Above all, the incapabilities of satire for poetic idealization were no longer felt to be grievous, for poetry had become the vehicle of subject-matter which in other periods has been chiefly reserved for prose. This was the time when the greatest poet of England could show his strength in satire. It was the Age of Dryden. APPENDIX. I. The following is a list of the principal editions of satires and R. Alscher: Sir Thomas Wyatt und seine Stellung in der Entwickelungsge- London. 1795. R. Anderson: British Poets. A. Barclay: The Ship of Fools, edited by T. H. Jamieson. Firenze. 1857. K. Böddeker: Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253. Edinburgh. 1874. Berlin. 1878. S. Brandt: Das Narrenschiff, edited by F. Zarncke. Leipzig. 1854. R. Brathwaite : Nature's Embassy, reprinted at Boston, England, 1877. A Barnabee's Journal, edited by Haslewood, re-edited by Hazlitt. 1876. N. Breton Works, edited by A. B. Grosart. 1879. No Whipping, etc., edited by C. Edmonds. Isham Reprints, No. 3. 1895. "R. C.": The Time's Whistle, edited by J. M. Cowper. Early English Text E. P. Cheyney: Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century. Publica- J. P. Collier: The Poetical Decameron, or Ten Conversations on English Poets Rarest Books in the English Language. N. Y. 1866. T. Corser Collectanea Anglo-Poetica. 1860, etc. R. Crowley: One and Thirty Epigrams, edited by J. M. Cowper. Early Eng- J. Davies of Hereford: Works, edited by A. B. Grosart. 1878. J. Donne: Poems, edited by A. B. Grosart. 1872. Poems, edited by E. K. Chambers, with Introduction by G. Saintsbury. 1896. J. Dryden Essay on Satire. Scott-Saintsbury edition of Dryden, vol. xiii. D. Erasmus : The Praise of Folly. Turner. London. H. Fitzgeffrey: Certain Elegies, etc. Translation published by Reeves and Edition of 1620 reprinted at the Beldornie Press, 1843. A copy of this reprint is in the Library of Columbia University. L. Friedländer: Juvenal; mit Erklärenden Anmerkungen, etc. Leipzig. 1895. G. Gascoigne The Steel Glass, edited by E. Arber. Arber's Reprints, No. II. P. L. Ginguène: Histoire Littéraire d'Italie. Milan. 1820. : F. Godefroy Histoire de la Littérature Française. Paris. 1859. E. Guilpin Skialetheia. Reprinted in Collier's Miscellaneous Tracts, Temp. Eliz. & Jac. I. No. 4. 1868. E. Hake News out of Paul's Churchyard, edited by C. Edmonds. Isham Reprints, No. 2. H. Hall Society in the Elizabethan Age. London. 1888. J. Hall: Virgidemiarum Six Books. Edited by S. W. Singer, Chiswick. 1824. In volume xii. of Hall's Works, edited by Peter Hall. London. 1837-39. Edited by A. B. Grosart. 1879. In Anderson's British Poets (q. v.), vol. ii. A copy of the edition of 1599 ("1602") is in the library of Harvard University. J. Harington: Nugae Antiquae, edited by T. Park. London. 1804. C. H. Herford: Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge. 1886. H. Hutton: Folly's Anatomy, edited by E. F. Rimbault. Percy Society, vol. vi. 1842. A. Jessopp Life of Donne. London. 1897. B. Jonson Epigrams, etc., in Works, Gifford-Cunningham edition, vols. viii. and ix. 1875. C. Lenient: La Satire en France au Moyen Age. Paris. 1859. La Satire en France ou la Littérature Militante au XVIe Siècle. Paris. 1866. D. Lindsay: Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Three Estates. Early English Text Society. 1869. T. Lodge: Works, Hunterian Club edition. With Introduction by E. Gosse. 1878. F. Lotheissen Geschichte der Französischen Literatur im XVIIn Jahrhundert. Wien. : 1897. J. Lydgate: Minor Poems, edited by J. O. Halliwell. Percy Society, vol. ii. "T. M.”: Micro-cynicon, in Middleton's Works, edited by A. H. Bullen, vol. W. D. Macray (editor): Pilgrimage to Parnassus, etc. Oxford. 1886. J. Marston: Works, edited by A. H. Bullen. 1887. |