"Her magic quill, that like Ithuriel's spear
Reveals the cloven hoof, or lengthen'd ear;
Drags the vile whisperer from his dark abode,
'Till all the daemon starts up from the toad."
Feeling perhaps that after all his client's status is a trifle dubious, her advocate continues with a caution and a climax:
"Who combats Virtue's foe is Virtue's friend;
Then judge of Satire's merit by her end:
To guilt alone her vengeance stands confin'd,
The object of her love is all mankind."
The sober eighteenth century brings us back to reality with a characteristic comment by the best satirist of the period, who admires his favorite predecessors, "not indeed for that wit and humour alone which they all so eminently possessed, but because they all endeavoured, with the utmost force of their wit and humour, to expose and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly prevailed in their several countries."[1]
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."[2]
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[3]
agrees that "the satirist is a moral agent, often a social
