No man e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law,
and
But optics sharp it needs, I ween, To see what is not to be seen.
The burlesque contrasts, the absurd figures of speech, the far-fetched allusions, are learned from Butler; and the verse, with its frequent elisions, its feminine rhymes, and its homely diction, is more nearly that of Hudibras than of any other satire. Churchill is responsible for such serious passages in the speeches as
For ages blest thus Britain rose The terror of encircling foes; Her heroes ruled the bloody plain; Her conq'ring standard aw'd the main,
as also for the use of personifications and of the terrible:
Around all stained with rebel blood, Like Milton's lazar house it stood, Where grim Despair attended nurse, And Death was gov'rnor of the house.
For all its indebtednesses McFingal remains the most entertaining satire in our early literature, and the only surviving poem by any member of the Hartford group.
The two most vigorous and prolific tory satirists were Joseph Stansbury (1750-1809), a merchant of Philadelphia, and the Rev. Jonathan Odell (1737-1818), of New Jersey. Their satires and satirical songs, odes, and ballads are generally alike both in matter and style, but Stansbury is the better poet, and has to his credit several satirical lyrics, quite as good as any of their time on either side of the water. He turns off an ode to the king, a comic ballad recounting an American reverse, or a loyal song, all with equal facility and with little of the invective characteristic of Odell. His Town Meeting, a satirical ballad of over one hundred and fifty lines, is typical, but his lyric, To Cordelia, addressed to his wife from Nova Scotia
