English Satires

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY OLIPHANT SMEATON
LONDON THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY 34 SOUTHAMPTON STREET STRAND
TO THE MEMORY OF ALEXANDER BALLOCH GROSART D.D., LL.D., F.S.A. WITH A GRATEFUL SENSE OF ALL IT OWES TO HIS TEACHING THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR
In the compilation of this volume my aim has been to furnish a work that would be representative in character rather than exhaustive. The restrictions of space imposed by the limits of such a series as this have necessitated the omission of many pieces that readers might expect to see included. As far as possible, however, the most typical satires of the successive eras have been selected, so as to throw into relief the special literary characteristics of each, and to manifest the trend of satiric development during the centuries elapsing between Langland and Lowell.
Acknowledgment is due, and is gratefully rendered, to Mrs. C.S. Calverley for permission to print the verses which close this book; and to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for permission to print A.H. Clough's Spectator ab Extra .
To Professor C.H. Herford my warmest thanks are due for his careful revision of the Introduction, and for many valuable hints which have been adopted in the course of the work; also to Mr. W. Keith Leask, M.A.(Oxon.), and the librarians of the Edinburgh University and Advocates' Libraries.
OLIPHANT SMEATON.

Rome rather than Greece must be esteemed the home of ancient satire. Quintilian, indeed, claims it altogether for his countrymen in the words, Satira tota nostra est ; while Horace styles it Græcis intactum carmen . But this claim must be accepted with many reservations. It does not imply that we do not discover the existence of satire, together with favourable examples of it, long anterior to the oldest extant works in either Grecian or Latin literature. The use of what are called personalities in everyday speech was the probable origin of satire. Conversely, also, satire, in the majority of those earlier types current at various periods in the history of literature, has shown an inclination to be personal in its character. De Quincey, accordingly, has argued that the more personal it became in its allusions, the more it fulfilled its specific function. But such a view is based on the supposition that satire has no other mission than to lash the vices of our neighbours, without recalling the fact that the satirist has a reformative as well as a punitive duty to discharge. The further we revert into the deep backward and abysm of time towards the early history of the world, the more pronounced and overt is this indulgence in broad personal invective and sarcastic strictures.