His _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a satire, upon sober,
moderate principles, against the vice of the upper classes, as typified
in the character of Mr. Thornhill, while the sketch of Beau Tibbs in
_The Citizen of the World_ is a racy picture of the out-at-elbows,
would-be man of fashion, who seeks to pose as a social leader and
arbiter of taste when he had better have been following a trade.
The next revival of the popularity of satire takes place towards the
commencement of the third last decade of the eighteenth century, when,
using the vehicle of the epistolary mode, an anonymous writer, whose
identity is still in dispute, attacked the monarch, the government,
and the judicature of the country, in a series of letters in which
scathing invective, merciless ridicule, and lofty scorn were united to
vigour and polish of style, as well as undeniable literary taste.
After the appearance of the _Letters of Junius_, which, perhaps, have
owed the permanence of their popularity as much to the interest
attaching to the mystery of their authorship as to their intrinsic
merits, political satire may be said to have once more slumbered
awhile. The impression produced by the studied malice of the _Letters_,
and the epigrammatic suggestiveness which appeared to leave as much
unsaid as was said, was enormous, yet, strangely enough, they were
unable to check the growing influence of the school of satire whereof
Goldsmith was the chief founder, and from which the fashionable _jeux
d'esprit_, the sparkling _persiflage_ of the society _flaneurs_ of the
nineteenth century are the legitimate descendants.
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