"Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay?
It may correct a foible, may chastise
The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress,
Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch;
But where are its sublimer trophies found?
What vice has it subdu'd? whose heart reclaim'd
By rigour, or whom laugh'd into reform?
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[1] 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:[2]
"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 vocif-*
