English Satire

By Full Well Ventures

This article, "English Satire," from the January 1863 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine, provides an in-depth look at the role of satire in classic English literature. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Full Well Ventures
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835388319

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English Satire

© 2020 Full Well Ventures

On the cover: Pieter Bruegel’s 1568 satirical painting, The Blind Leading the Blind

Originally published in the January 1863 issue of The Knickerbocker

KNICKERBOCKER

English Satire

THERE IS nothing so varied in literature as that branch of it known under the title satire. It has been said by Dryden, ‘that it assumes as multifarious forms as Nature itself,’ and this is true. At one time it appears like the lurid lightning, darting with menace in its gleam from the bosom of some angry storm cloud; at another it plays as harmless as that sheet-lightning, one sees so often disporting itself at the close of a sultry summer afternoon, in the glad summer-time. It has its uses in literature, in whatever form it may appear, and is active for good or evil, in proportion as its influence may be felt or unheeded. As to whether satire derives its descent from Greece or Rome, which once gave rise to quite a Battle of the Books, is of little moment to us at present.

Our English satirists borrow largely from the Roman. Donne, the quiet canon of St. Paul’s; Sir Thomas More, with his gentle satire, carried even to the edge of the dreadful block, and jesting with the very headsman, like Raleigh; Skelton, Erasmus, Pope, Swift, Churchill; and even Sydney Smith, in our day, seem to have been thoroughly imbued with the very spirit of the Horatian or else the Juvenalian satire. Who familiar with the works of the Venusian bard does not recognize Horatian humor, and the rare pungency of sly Horatian wit, in the following, from the writings of the great satirist of our day? ‘These over-zealous religious people hate pleasure and amusement — no theatre, no cards, no dancing, no Punchinello, no dancing-dogs, no blind fiddlers. All the amusements of the