“ Abundance of imaginary great men are put in straw to bring them to a right sense of themselves. And is it not altogether as reasonable, that an insignificant man, who has an immoderate opinion of his merits, and a quite different notion of his own abilities from what the rest of the world entertain, should have the same care taken of him as a beggar who fancies himself a duke or a prince? Or why should a man who starves in the midst of plenty be trusted with himself more than he who fancies he is an emperor in the midst of poverty? ”

“ It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And owned that nine such poets made a Tate. [199]
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. ”

“ Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. ”

“ There is no age without its folly, no epoch without its faults. So long, therefore, as man and his works are imperfect, so long shall there be existent among us abuses, social, political, professional, and ecclesiastical, and so long, too, shall it be the province and the privilege of those who feel themselves called upon to play the difficult part of censor morum, to prick the bubbles of falsehood, vanity, and vice with the shafts of ridicule and raillery. ”

“ But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, Sir, who tell you that you have many friends, whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received and may be returned. The fortune which made you a king forbade you to have a friend. It is a law of nature which cannot be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince who looks for friendship will find a favourite, and in that favourite the ruin of his affairs. ”

“ Do they think that peace will bring along with it the golden age? Will there be never a dying speech of a traitor? Are Cethegus and Catiline turned so tame, that there will be no opportunity to cry about the streets, "A Dangerous Plot"? Will peace bring such plenty that no gentleman will have occasion to go upon the highway, or break into a house? I am sorry that the world should be so much imposed upon by the dreams of a false prophet, as to imagine the Millennium is at hand. O Grub Street! thou fruitful nursery of towering geniuses! ”

“ But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies,
To act as an angel, and mix with the skies!
Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill,
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will;
Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love,
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.
Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature,
And Slander itself must allow him good-nature:
He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper:
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. ”

“ This, Sir, was not the act of a few traitors, but the deliberate treachery of a Scotch parliament representing the nation. A wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself. On one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a generous people who dare openly assert their rights, and who in a just cause are ready to meet their sovereign in the field. ”

“ He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics—a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished, the whole world has kept holiday; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses: trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. ”

“ Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines,
Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines
When satire and censure encircled his throne,
I fear'd for your safety, I fear'd for my own:
But now he is gone, and we want a detector,
Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture;
Macpherson write bombast, and call it a style;
Our Townshend make speeches, and I shall compile;
New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over,
No countryman living their tricks to discover:
Detection her taper shall quench to a spark,
And Scotchman meet Scotchman and cheat in the dark. ”

“ It is not in the nature of human society that any form of government, in such circumstances, can long be preserved. In ours, the general contempt of the people is as fatal as their detestation. Such, I am persuaded, would be the necessary effect of any base concession made by the present House of Commons, and, as a qualifying measure would not be accepted, it remains for you to decide whether you will, at any hazard, support a set of men who have reduced you to this unhappy dilemma, or whether you will gratify the united wishes of the whole people of England by dissolving the Parliament. ”

“ Lucilius was the first Roman writer who made "censorious criticism" the prevailing tone of satire, and his work, the parent of the satire of Horace, of Persius, of Juvenal, and through that of the poetical satire of modern times, was the principal agent in fixing its present polemical and urban associations upon a term originally steeped in the savour of rustic revelry. In the hands of Horace, Roman satire was to be moulded into a new type that was not only to be a thing of beauty, but, as far as one can yet see, to remain a joy for ever. ”

“ So most grow infamous through love of praise.
But whence for praise can such an ardour rise,
When those, who bring that incense, we despise?
For such the vanity of great and small,
Contempt goes round, and all men laugh at all.
Nor can even satire blame them; for 'tis true,
They have most ample cause for what they do
O fruitful Britain! doubtless thou wast meant
A nurse of fools, to stock the continent.
Though Phoebus and the Nine for ever mow,
Rank folly underneath the scythe will grow
The plenteous harvest calls me forward still,
Till I surpass in length my lawyer's bill ”

“ I therefore fly for justice and relief into the hands of that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration; and if it should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediately please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burden, and take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit to call for it. ”

“ It is not improbable that some may object to me that a knave is an unworthy hero for an epic poem—that a hero ought to be all that is great and good. The objection is frivolous. The greatest work of this kind that the world has ever produced has "the Devil" for its hero; and supported as my author is by so great a precedent, I contend that his hero is a very decent hero, and especially as he has the advantage of Milton's, by reforming, at the end, is evidently entitled to a competent share of celebrity. ”

“ We now reach the last of the greater satirists that have adorned our literature, one who is in many respects a worthy peer of Dryden, Swift, and Pope. Lord Byron's fame as a satirist rests on three great works, each of them illustrative of a distinct type of composition. Other satires he has written, nay, the satiric quality is present more or less in nearly all he produced; but The Vision of Judgment, Beppo, and Don Juan are his three masterpieces in this style of literature. They are wonderful compositions in every sense of the word. ”

“ Discard those little, personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man the remainder of his punishment; and, if resentment still prevails, make it what it should have been long since—an act, not of mercy, but of contempt. He will soon fall back into his natural station, a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved. It is only the tempest that lifts him from his place.
Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council. ”

“ I know very well that when your Highness shall come to riper years, and have gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be too curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you; and to think that this insolent, in the account he is preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant as I am ashamed to mention; it moves my zeal and my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom I know by long experience he has professed, and still continues, a peculiar malice. ”

“ What right has any man among you, or any association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the King according to the laws, allow you the licence of traducing the executive power, with which you own he is invested? ”

“ But if the English people should no longer confine their resentment to a submissive representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the creature of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me ask you, Sir, upon what part of your subjects would you rely for assistance?
The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and oppressed. In return they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. ”

“ Let it be imagined, no matter how improbable, that the first prejudice against his character is removed; that the ceremonious difficulties of an audience are surmounted; that he feels himself animated by the purest and most honourable affections to his king and country; and that the great person whom he addresses has spirit enough to bid him speak freely, and understanding enough to listen to him with attention. ”

“ Now, a machine is a work of art; consequently the masterpiece of nature is the masterpiece of art. The object of all mechanism is the attainment of utility; the object of man, who is the most perfect machine, is utility in the highest degree. Can we believe, therefore, that this machine was ever intended for a state which never could have called forth [275] its powers, a state in which no utility could ever have been attained, a state in which there are no wants, consequently no demand, consequently no supply, consequently no competition, consequently no invention, consequently no profits ”

“ And detestation rides th' indignant wall.
But will not Britain hear the last appeal,
Sign her foes' doom, or guard her fav'rites' zeal?
Through Freedom's sons no more remonstrance rings,
Degrading nobles, and controlling kings;
Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats,
And ask no questions but the price of votes;
With weekly libels and septennial ale,
Their wish is full to riot and to rail.
In full-blown dignity, see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand:
To him the church, the realm, their pow'rs consign. ”

“ If satires are no longer in fashion, satire is perennial as an [lii] attribute in literature, and we have every reason to cherish it and welcome it as warmly as of old. The novels of Thackeray, as I have already said, contain some of the most delicately incisive shafts of satire that have been barbed by any writer of the present century. "George Eliot", also, though in a less degree, has shown herself a satirist of much power and pungency, while others of our latter-day novelists manifest themselves as possessed of a faculty of satire both virile and trenchant. ”

“ Nothing would give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics? ”

“ The mistakes of one sex find a retreat in patriotism, those of the other in devotion. Mr. Wilkes brought with him into politics the same liberal sentiments by which his private conduct had been directed, and seemed to think that, as there are few excesses in which an English gentleman may not be permitted to indulge, the same latitude was allowed him in the choice of his political principles, and in the spirit of maintaining them. I mean to state, not entirely to defend, his conduct. In the earnestness of his zeal he suffered some unwarrantable insinuations to escape him. ”

“ I love the king, but I love the people as well as the king; and if I am sorry to see his old age molested, I am much more sorry to see four millions of Catholics baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord Grenville and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. ”

“ For, why did Wolsey, near the steeps of fate,
On weak foundations raise th' enormous weight?
Why but to sink beneath misfortune's blow,
With louder ruin to the gulfs below?
What gave great Villiers to th' assassin's knife,
And fix'd disease on Harley's closing life?
What murder'd Wentworth, and what exil'd Hyde,
By kings protected, and to kings ally'd?
What but their wish indulg'd in courts to shine,
And pow'r too great to keep, or to resign?
When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame ”

“ Taking it for granted, as I do very sincerely, that you have personally no design against the constitution, nor any view inconsistent with the good of your subjects, I think you cannot hesitate long upon the choice which it equally concerns your interests and your honour to adopt. On one side you hazard the affection of all your English subjects, you relinquish every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger the establishment of your family for ever. ”

“ Langland's satire is not so fiery nor so rhetorically intense as that of his prototype, but it is less profoundly despairing. He satirizes evil rather by exposing it and contrasting it with good, than by vehemently denouncing it. The colours of the pictures are sombre, and the gloom is almost overwhelming, but still it is illumined from time to time with the hope of coming amendment, when the great reformer Piers the Plowman, by which is typified Christ, [5] should appear, who was to remedy all abuses and restore the world to a right condition. ”