The marked public approbation which attended their experiment led the editors to continue their project in a series of Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, comprising parodies of twenty-two living poets. The odes follow the plan of the Pipe of Tobacco (1734) of Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705–1760), which burlesques the poetry of Cibber, James Thomson, Swift, Young, and Ambrose Phillips.[39] The plan of the contributors was further amplified in Political Eclogues and Political Miscellanies, which keep to the original policy of vituperation, at the same time showing a striking deterioration in the quality of the verse. The first zest had grown languid, and in the last collection, Extracts from the Album at Streatham (1788), containing poems purporting to be by several ministers of state, the verse had no value as literature.
The complete product of these Whig allies is, as a rule, clever and pointed, but it is too often coarse and scandalous in content. Although it failed in reinstating the Whigs in office, it occupies an important position in English political satire. Despite its irregular versification and its frequently unedifying subject-matter, it contains some brilliant sketches and many witty lines.[40]
A droll and impudent, but not altogether pleasing figure of this same period was the Whig satirist, Rev. John Wolcot (1738–1819), better known by his nom-de-guerre of Peter Pindar, who, making it his especial function to caricature George III and his court, earned from Scott the title of “the most unsparing calumniator of his time.” George, with his bourgeois habits and petty economies, made a splendid subject, and Pindar drew him with the homely realism of Hogarth or Gilray, pouring forth a long series of impertinent squibs until the monarch’s dangerous illness in 1788 gained him the sympathy of the nation and roused popular feeling against his lampooner. Pindar also engaged in other quarrels, notably with the trio of Tory satirists, Gifford, Mathias, and Canning.[41] His genius was that of the caricaturist, and his vogue, like that of most caricaturists, was soon over. However, the peculiar flavor of his verses, full as they are sometimes of rich humor and grotesque descriptions, is still delightful, and partly explains the merriment which greeted his work at a time when his allusions were still fresh in people’s minds. It may be added that Pindar shows few traces of Pope’s influence; he makes no pretence of a moral purpose, and he seldom employs the heroic couplet.
Professor Courthope suggests that Don Juan owes much in style to the satires of Pindar. The question of a possible indebtedness will be taken up more in detail in another chapter; it is sufficient here to point out that Byron never refers to Wolcot by name, and makes only one reference to his poetry.[42]
Some of the most powerful social and political satire of the century was written, in defence of democracy and liberalism, by the vigorous pen of Robert Burns.[43] His work, however, despite the fact that it discussed many of the topics which were agitating the English satirists, was not particularly influential at the time in England.
One peculiar work, significant in the evolution of satire because of its undoubted influence on a succeeding generation, was the New Bath Guide; or Memoirs of the B—r—d Family (1766), written by Christopher Anstey (1724–1805).[44] It consists of a series of letters, most of them in an easy anapestic measure with curious rhymes, purporting to be from different members of one family, and satirising life at the fashionable watering-place made famous only a few years before by Beau Nash. Anstey’s method of using letters for the purpose of satire was followed by other authors,[45] but never, until Moore’s Two-penny Postbag and Fudge Family, with complete success. Other satires of the century also employed the anapestic metre in a clever way.[46]
The Tory Anti-Jacobin, a weekly periodical which began on November 20, 1797, and printed its last number on July 9, 1798, appropriately closes the satire of the century, for it includes examples of most of the types of satiric verse which had been popular since the death of Pope. Founded by government journalists, possibly at Pitt’s instigation, it planned to “oppose papers devoted to the cause of sedition and irreligion, to the pay and interests of France.” At a critical period in English affairs, when the long struggle with France and Napoleon was just beginning and many Whigs were still undecided as to their allegiance, it was the purpose of the Anti-Jacobin, as representative of militant nationalism, to oppose foreign innovations and to uphold time-honored institutions. Each number of the paper contained several sections: an editorial, or leader; departments assigned to Finances, Lies, Misrepresentations, and Mistakes; and some pages of verse, with a prose introduction. Gifford, who had been chosen to superintend the publication, devoted himself entirely to editorial management, so that the responsibility for the verse devolved upon George Canning (1770–1827) and several assistants, among whom were Ellis, now an adherent of the Tories, and John Hookham Frere (1769–1846).
The Anti-Jacobin, then, planned first to revive the traditions of English patriotism and to rally public opinion to the support of king and country. As a secondary but essential element of its design, it aimed, especially in its verse, to expose the falsity and fatuity of the doctrines of Holcroft, Paine, Godwin, and other radical philosophers and economists; to ridicule and parody the work of authors of the revolutionary school, particularly of the English Lake poets and the followers of the German romanticists; and incidentally to satirise some of the social and literary follies of the age.[47] Since the verse was submitted by many contributors, its tone was not always homogeneous, and it varied from playful jocularity to stern didacticism. On the whole, however, it had a definite ethical purpose, and avowedly championed sound morality and conservative principles.
The poetry of the Anti-Jacobin includes illustrations of many varied satiric forms. New Morality is a set, formal satire in conventional couplets and balanced lines, superior in technique to the best work of Gifford and Mathias, and not unworthy of comparison with many of the satires of Pope. Acme and Septimius, or the Happy Union is a short informal verse tale, reminiscent in manner of the unedifying personalities in the Rolliad. There are satiric imitations of Horace and Catullus. There are parodies of many sorts: the Needy Knife Grinder, an artistic parody of Southey’s sapphics; the Loves of the Triangles, a burlesque of Darwin’s Loves of the Plants; the Progress of Man, ridiculing the tedious didacticism of Payne Knight; and Chevy Chace, a parody of the romantic ballad. Hudibrastic couplets are used in A Consolatory Address to his Gunboats, by Citizen Muskein; anapests, in the Translation of a Letter, in the style of Anstey; and doggerel, in the Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon André. The material of the satire comprehends events in politics, in literature, in philosophy, and, to some extent, in society. Thus, in small compass, the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin offers a fruitful field for study.
In more than one respect, too, it furnished suggestions for the nineteenth century. Ballynahinch and the Translation of a Letter may have had some influence on the manner and versification of Moore and Byron. Certain of the Odes, notably the imitation of Horace, III, 25, have the delicate touch which was to mark the lighter satire of the Smiths and Praed, and, later, of Calverley, Barham, and Locker. In its rare combination of refined raillery with subtle irony and underlying seriousness, the satire of the Anti-Jacobin anticipates the brilliance of Punch in the days when Thackeray was a contributor to its pages. The dexterous and artistic humor of Canning and his confederates did not drive out the cut-and-slash method of Gifford, but it did succeed in teaching the lesson that mockery and wit are fully as effectual as vituperation in remedying a public evil.