Gifford’s reputation was established by the publication of two short satires, the Baviad (1794) and the Mæviad (1795), printed together in 1797. The Baviad is an imitation of the first satire of Persius, in the form of a dialogue between the poet and his friend; the Mæviad paraphrases Horace’s tenth satire of the first book. Both are devoted primarily to deserved, but often unnecessarily harsh, criticism of some contemporary fads in literature, particularly of the “effusions” of the so-called Della Cruscan School.[30] Gifford was a Tory in a period when the unexpected excesses of the French revolutionists were causing all Tories, and even the more conservative Whigs, to take a stand against innovation, eccentricity, and individualism in any form. Since the Della Cruscans were nearly all liberals,[31] it was natural that Gifford should be enthusiastic in his project of ridiculing the “metromania” for which they were responsible. Thus his satires are protests against license, defending the conventional canons of taste and reasserting the desirability of law and order in literature.
Undoubtedly Gifford performed a certain service to the cause of letters by condemning, in a common-sense fashion, the silly sentimentality of the Della Cruscans.[32] Unfortunately it was almost impossible for him to compose satire without being scurrilous. Although he may have possessed the virtue of sincerity with which Courthope credits him, he invariably picked for his victims men who were too feeble to reply effectually. Still the satires, appearing so opportunely, made Gifford both famous and feared. The Baviad and the Mæviad were placed, without pronounced dissent, beside the Dunciad. Mathias said of the author, in all seriousness: “He is the most correct poetical writer I have read since the days of Pope.” Even Byron, so immeasurably Gifford’s superior in most respects, was dominated so far as to term him “the last of the wholesome satirists”[33] and to refer to him as a “Bard in virtue strong.”[34]
The plain truth is that Gifford is not always correct, seldom wholesome, and never great. Something of his style at the worst may be obtained from a single line,
“Yet not content, like horse-leeches they come,”
of which even the careless Churchill would have been ashamed. Gifford wanted good-breeding, and he had no geniality; his irascible nature made him intolerant and unjust. Moreover he lacked a sense of discrimination and proportion; he used a sledge-hammer constantly, often when a lighter weapon would have served his purpose. In him the artistic satire of Pope seems to have degenerated into clumsy and crude abuse.
Carrying to excess a practice probably begun by Pope, with the advice of Swift, Gifford had accompanied his satires with copious and diffuse notes, sometimes affixing a page or more of prose comment to a single line of verse.[35] Mathias, whose Pursuits of Literature was, according to De Quincey, the most popular book of its day, so exaggerated this fashion that it is often a question in his work to decide which is meant for an adjunct to the other—verse or prose annotation.
Thomas James Mathias (1754–1835), like Gifford, a Tory, with a bigoted aversion to anything new or strange, and a firm belief in the infallibility of established institutions, published Dialogue I of the Pursuits of Literature in May, 1794, Dialogues II and III in June, 1796, and Dialogue IV in 1797. In his theory of satire he insisted on three essentials: notes, and full ones; anonymity in the satirist; and a personal application for the attack. His chosen field included “faults, vices, or follies, which are destructive of society, of government, of good manners, or of good literature.” Mathias is pedantic, ostentatious in airing his information, and indefatigable in tracking down revolutionary ideas. His chief work is a curiosity, discursive, disorderly, and incoherent, with a versification that is lifeless and unmelodious.[36]
With the work of Mathias, this cursory summary of the strictly formal satire in the eighteenth century comes to a natural resting-place. Only a year or two after the Pursuits of Literature, the Anti-Jacobin began, and in its pages we find a more modern spirit. It is now necessary, reverting to an earlier period, to trace the progress of satire along other less formal lines, and to deal with some anomalous poems, which, although satiric in tone, are difficult to classify according to any logical system.
The satiric fable had a considerable vogue throughout the century, and collections appeared at frequent intervals.[37] Nearly all have allegorical elements and contain little direct satire, their main object being to point out and ridicule the weaknesses and follies of human nature. The octosyllabic couplet, the favorite measure for fables, was also a popular verse form in familiar epistles and humorous tales, modelled on the work of Prior, Gay, and Swift.[38] Ephemeral political satire continued to flourish in rough and indecorous street-ballads, sometimes rising almost into literature in the productions of men like Charles Hanbury Williams (1708–1759) and Caleb Whitefoord (1734–1810). With the inception of the Criticisms on the Rolliad, political verse assumes a position of distinct importance in the history of satire.
The material represented under the title Criticisms on the Rolliad was published in the Whig Morning Herald, beginning June 28, 1784, shortly after the fall of the Fox-North coalition and the appointment of the younger Pitt to the office of Prime Minister. It presents extracts from a supposed epic, based on the deeds of the ancestors of John Rolle, M. P., who had become the pet aversion of the Whigs. The alleged verse excerpts, all of them short, are amalgamated by clever prose comment. The editors included a group of young and ambitious Whig statesmen: Dr. Lawrence, later Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, who furnished the prose sections; Joseph Richardson (1755–1803); Richard Tickell, already mentioned as the author of The Wreath of Fashion; and two former cabinet ministers, General Fitzpatrick, the friend of Fox, and Lord John Townshend. The object of these men was to belittle and deride the more prominent Tories in both Houses, particularly Rolle, Pitt, Dundas, and the Tory Bishops, by singling them out, one by one, for ridicule. Their verse was a flippant and free form of the heroic couplet. Although their main purpose was political, they dealt only slightly with party principles, preferring rather to excite laughter by their personal allusions.