Alas! Leviathan is not so tam’d;
Laugh’d at, he laughs again; and, stricken hard,
Turns to the strike his adamantine scales,
That fear no discipline of human hands.”
Young[27] grants it a fighting chance:
“But it is possible that satire may not do much good; men may rise in their affections to their follies, as they do to their friends, when they are abused by others. It is much to be feared that misconduct will never be chased out of the world by satire; all, therefore, that is to be said for it is, that misconduct will certainly never be chased out of the world by satire, if no satires are written. Nor is that term unapplicable to graver compositions. Ethics, Heathen and Christian, and the scriptures themselves, are, in a great measure, a satire on the weakness and iniquity of men; and some part of that satire is in verse, too. * * * Nay, historians themselves may be considered as satirists and satirists most severe; since such are most human actions, that to relate is to expose them.”
The distrust of the moderns is adequately voiced by Sidgwick:[28]
“Satire is the weapon of the man at odds with the world and at ease with himself. The dissatisfied man—a Juvenal, a Swift, a youthful Thackeray—belabors the world with vociferous indignation, like the wind on the traveller’s back, the beating makes it hug its cloaking sins the tighter. Wrong runs no danger from such chastisement. * * * Satire is harmless as a moral weapon. It is an old-fashioned fowling piece, fit for a man of wit, intelligence, and a certain limited imagination. It runs no risk of having no quarry; the world to it is one vast covert of lawful game. It goes a-travelling with wit, because both are in search of the unworthy.”
Two comments on Aristophanes illustrate the pro and con of satiric accomplishment. Cope, in the Preface to his translation, remarks:
“He felt it his duty to do all he could to counteract the increasing influence of Euripides upon the rising generation, and knowing the power of ridicule, he employs this weapon constantly and mercilessly; but he is careful not to injure his own cause by exaggerated caricature, which might have created sympathy for the object of his censure.”