In the Byzantine empire, indeed, the link of continuity is unbroken, and such raillery of abuses as is possible under a des potism finds vent in pale copies of Lucian. The first really im portant satire, however, of the middle ages, is a product of western Europe, recurring to the primitive form of fable, upon which, nevertheless, it constitutes a decided advance. Reynard the Fox (see FABLE), a genuine expression of the shrewd and homely Teutonic mind, is a landmark in literature. It gave the beast-epic a development of which the ancients had not dreamed. About the same time, probably, the popular instinct, perhaps deriving a hint from Rabbinical literature, fashioned Morolf, the prototype of Sancho Panza, the incarnation of sublunar mother-wit con trasted with the starry wisdom of Solomon ; and the Till Eulen spiegel is a kindred Teutonic creation, but later and less significant. Piers Ploughman, the next great work of the class, adapts the apocalyptic machinery of monastic and anchoritic vision to the purposes of satire. The clergy were scourged with their own rod by a poet and a Puritan too earnest to be urbane. The Renais sance, restoring the knowledge of classic models, enlarged the armoury of the satirist. Partly, perhaps, because Erasmus was no poet, the Lucianic dialogue was the form in the ascendant of his age. Erasmus not merely employed it against superstition and ig norance with infinite and irresistible pleasantry, but fired by his example a bolder writer, untrammelled by the dignity of an arbiter in the republic of letters. The ridicule of Ulric von Hutten's Epis tolae obscurorum virorune is annihilating, and the art of putting the ridicule into the mouth of the victim, is perhaps the most deadly shaft in the quiver of sarcasm. It was afterwards used with even more pointed wit though with less exuberance of humour by Pascal. Sir Thomas More cannot be accounted a satir ist, but his idea of an imaginary commonwealth embodied the germ of much subsequent satire.
In the succeeding period politics take the place of literature and religion, producing in France the Satyre Menippee, elsewhere the satirical romance as represented by the Argenis of Barclay, which may be defined as the adaptation of the style of Petronius to State affairs. In Spain, where no freedom of criticism existed, the satiric spirit took refuge in the novela picaresca, the prototype of Le Sage and the ancestor of Fielding; Quevedo revived the mediaeval device of the vision as the vehicle of reproof ; and Cervantes's im mortal work might be classed as a satire were it not so much more. About the same time we notice the appearance of direct imitation of the Roman satirists in English literature in the writ ings of Donne, Hall and Marston. The prodigious development of the drama at this time absorbed much talent that would otherwise have been devoted to satire proper. Most of the great dramatists of the 17th century were more or less satirists, Moliere perhaps the most consummate that ever existed; but, with an occasional exception like Les Precieuses ridicules, the range of their works is too wide to admit of their being regarded as satires. The next great example of unadulterated satire is Butler's Hudibras. Dig nified political satire, bordering on invective, was carried to per fection in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. In France Boileau was long held to have attained the ne plus ultra of the Horatian style in satire and of the mock-heroic, but Pope was soon to show that further progress was possible in both. The polish, point and concentration of Pope remain unsurpassed, as do the amenity of Addison and the daring yet severely logical imagination of Swift ; while the History of John Bull places their friend Arbuthnot in the first rank of political satirists.
The i8th century was, indeed, the age of satire. Serious poetry had for the time worn itself out ; the most original geniuses of the age are decidedly prosaic, and Pope, though a true poet, is less of a poet than Dryden. In process of time imaginative power revives, but meanwhile Fielding and Smollett have fitted the novel to be the vehicle of satire and much beside, and the literary stage has for a time been almost wholly engrossed by a colossal satirist, a man who has dared the universal application of Shaftesbury's maxim that ridicule is the test of truth. The world had never before seen a satirist on the scale of Voltaire, nor had satire ever played such a part as a factor in impending change. As a master of sarcastic mockery he is unsurpassed ; his manner is entirely his own ; and he is one of the most intensely national of writers, not withstanding his vast obligations to English humorists, statesmen and philosophers. English humour also played an important part in the literary regeneration of Germany, where Lessing, imbued with Pope but not mastered by him, showed how powerful an auxiliary satire can be to criticism. Another great German writer, Wieland, owes little to the English, but adapts Lucian and Petronius to the 18th century with playful if somewhat mannered grace. Goethe and Schiller, Scott and Wordsworth, are now at hand, and as imagination gains ground satire declines. Byron, who in the i8th century would have been the greatest of satirists, is hurried by the spirit of his age into passion and description, bequeathing, how ever, a splendid proof of the possibility of allying satire with sublimity in his Vision of Judgment. Two great satiric figures re main—one representative of his nation, the other most difficult to class. In all the characteristics of his genius Thackeray is thoroughly English; his satire is a thoroughly British article, a little solid, a little wanting in finish, but honest, weighty and dur able. But Heine hardly belongs to any nation or country, time or place. In him the satiric spirit, long confined to established liter ary forms, seems to obtain unrestrained freedom.
In no age was the spirit of satire so generally diffused as in the Igth century, but many of its eminent writers, while bordering on the domains of satire, escape the definition of satirist. The term cannot be properly applied to Dickens, the keen observer of the oddities of human life; or to George Eliot, the critic of its empti ness when not inspired by a worthy purpose; or to Balzac, the painter of French society; or to Trollope, the mirror of the middle classes of England. If Sartor Resartus could be regarded as a satire, Carlyle would rank among the first of satirists ; but the satire, though very obvious, rather accompanies than inspires the composition. The number of minor satirists of merit, on the other hand, is legion. James Russell Lowell's Biglow Papers represent perhaps the highest moral level yet attained by satire. Mallock, in his New Republic, made the most of personal mimicry, the lowest form of satire; Samuel Butler (Erewhon) holds an in verting mirror to the world's face with imperturbable gravity; the humour of Bernard Shaw has always an essential character of satire—the sharpest social lash. One remarkable feature of the modern age is the union of caricature (q.v.) with literature.
(R. G.; X.)