There is visible throughout the poem, however, a lack of
restraint that causes him to overdo his part. Were _Hudibras_ shorter,
the satire would be more effective. Though in parts often as terse in
style as Pope's best work, still the poem is too long, and it undoes
the force of its attack on the Puritans by its exaggeration.
All these writers, even Butler himself, simply prepared the way for the
man who is justly regarded as England's greatest satirist. The epoch of
John Dryden has been fittingly styled the "Golden Age of English
Satire".[13] To warrant this description, however, it must be held to
include the writers of the reign of Queen Anne. The Elizabethan period
was perhaps richer, numerically speaking, in representatives of certain
types of satirical composition, but the true perfection, the
efflorescence of the long-growing plant, was reached in that era which
extended from the publication of Dryden's _Absalom and Achitophel_
(Part I.) in 1681 to the issue of Pope's _Dunciad_ in its final form in
1742. During these sixty years appeared the choicest of English
satires, to wit, all Dryden's finest pieces, the _Medal_,
_MacFlecknoe_, and _Absalom and Achitophel_, Swift's _Tale of a Tub_,
and his _Miscellanies_--among which his best metrical satires appeared;
all Defoe's work, too, as well as Steele's in the _Tatler_, and
Addison's in the _Spectator_, Arbuthnot's _History of John Bull_,
Churchill's _Rosciad_, and finally all Pope's poems, including the
famous "Prologue" as well as the "Epilogue" to the _Satires_.
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