Satire, who urges him to attack certain of his contemporaries:
"'Not write!' cried Satire, red as fire with rage:
'This instant glorious war with dulness wage;
Flay half the Academic imps alive;
Smoke, smoke, the Drones of that stupendous Hive.'"
Later, made compunctious by the fable of the frogs pelted to death with stones thrown merely in sport, he resolves to reform, but is dissuaded:
"'Poh, poh!' cried Satire with a smile,
'Where is the glorious freedom of our isle,
If not permitted to call names?'
Methought the argument had weight:
'Satire,' quoth I, 'You're very right;'
So once more forth volcanic Peter flames."
"Life," says Hawthorne, "is a mixture of marble and mud." In this particular fragment of life as represented in literature, we have the two in paradoxical combination. Personal satire has the effect sometimes of being an ugly little gargoyle made of marble, and sometimes, of a harmonius form done in muddy clay. The ideal union of matter and manner,—an Apollo in marble,—is not for such an impish sculptor as satire. Only to the true artist, poetry, is allotted the task of shaping beauty into rounded perfection.
