Douglas Jerrold's comedies and sketches are full of titbits of
gay and brilliant banter and biting irony. If _Sartor Resartus_ could
be regarded as a satire, as Dr. Garnett says, Carlyle would be the
first of satirists, with his thundering invective, grand rhetoric,
indignant scorn, grim humour, and satiric gloom in denouncing the shams
of human society and of human nature. An admirable American school of
satire was founded by Washington Irving, of which Judge Haliburton (Sam
Slick), Paulding, Holmes, Artemus Ward, and Dudley Warner are the chief
names.
Since the third and fourth decades of our century, in other words,
since the epoch of the Reform Bill and the Chartist agitation, satire
has more and more tended to lose its acid and its venom, to slough the
dark sardonic sarcasm of past days and to don the light sportive garb
of the social humorist and epigrammist. Robustious bludgeoning has gone
out of fashion, and in its place we have the playful satiric wit,
sparkling as of well-drawn Moet or Clicquot, of Mortimer Collins, H.S.
Leigh, Arthur Locker and Frederick Locker-Lampson, W.S. Gilbert, Austin
Dobson, Bret Harte, F. Anstey, Dr. Walter C. Smith, and many other
graceful and delightful social satirists whose verses are household
words amongst us. From week to week also there appear in the pages of
that trenchant social censor, _Punch_, and the other high-class
comico-satiric journals, many pieces of genuine and witty social
satire. Every year the demand seems increasing, and yet the supply
shows no signs of running dry.
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