Satire in the Victorian novel

by Frances Theresa Russell

But Gifford, akin in spirit to the satirist he translated, goes to the extreme in taking the satiric office seriously:

“To raise a laugh at vice * * * is not the legitimate office of Satire, which is to hold up the vicious as objects of reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may be deterred by their sufferings.”[19]

De Quincey carries the tradition over into the nineteenth century by reminding us that “the satirist has a reformative as well as a punitive duty to discharge.” Meredith[20] agrees that “the satirist is a moral agent, often a social scavenger, working on a storage of bile.” Symonds[21] affirms that “Without an appeal to conscience the satirist has no locus standi.” Browning has Balaustion say to Aristophanes:

“Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow

O’ the humorist who castigates his kind,

Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays

On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,

Then vanishes with unvindictive smile

After a moment’s laying black earth bare,

Splendor of wit that springs a thunderball—