Is it not given to Este's unmeaning dash,
To Topham's fustian, Reynold's flippant trash,
To Andrews' doggerel where three wits combine,
To Morton's catchword, Greathead's idiot line,
And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant and Merry's Moorfields Whine?"[22]
The early years of the present century still felt the influence of the
sardonic ridicule which prevailed during the closing years of the
previous one, and the satirists who appeared during the first decades
of the former belonged to the robust or energetic order. Their names
and their works are well-nigh forgotten.
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. The
sparkling wit, the ready raillery, the cutting irony, the biting
sarcasm, and the sardonic cynicism which characterize almost every line
of them are united to a brilliancy of imagination, a swiftness as well
as a felicity of thought, and an epigrammatic terseness of phrase which
even Byron himself has equalled nowhere else in his works.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53