"Satirists have met with much ignorant and invidious depreciation, as though a talent for ridicule was necessarily the index of an unkindly nature. The truth is just the reverse."
Discrimination as to objects of satire has reference not
to their nature, as foolish, vicious, deceitful, but to their
legitimacy as objects. It is a matter of taste and justice
on the part of the satirist.
The first definite reproof of heedlessness on this score is given in the memorial tribute to Pope:[2]
"Dart not on Folly an indignant eye:
Whoe'er discharged artillery on a fly?
Deride not Vice: absurd the thought and vain,
To bind the tyger in so weak a chain.
The Muse's labour then success shall crown,
When Folly feels her smile, and Vice her frown.
Let Satire then her proper object know,
And ere she strikes, be sure she strikes a foe.
Nor fondly deem the real fool confest,
Because blind Ridicule conceives a jest."
Another critic[3] of that time utters a similar caution:
- ↑ Preface to Headlong Hall, in the Aldine edition of Peacock, 40. In his Essay on Comedy, Meredith goes beyond mere absence of hate: "You may estimate your capacity for comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them the less; and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes," 72. It is true that on the next page he differentiates,—"If you detect the ridicule, and your kindliness is chilled by it, you are slipping into the grasp of satire." But he is evidently using satire in the older, narrower sense.
- ↑ John Brown's Essay on Satire.
- ↑ Spectator, 209. L.
