Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/340

Rh 320 S A T S A T to show that further progress was possible in both. The polish, point, and concentration of Pope remain unsur- passed, as do the amenity of Addison and the daring yet severely logical imagination of Swift ; while the History of John Bull and the Pseudologia place their friend Arbuth- not in the first rank of political satirists. The 18th century was, indeed, the age of satire. Serious poetry had for the time worn itself out ; the most original geniuses of the age, Swift, Defoe, and Richardson, are decidedly prosaic, and Pope, though a true poet, is less of a poet than Dryden. In process of time imaginative power revives in Goldsmith and Rousseau ; meanwhile Fielding and Smollett have fitted the novel to be the vehicle of satire and much beside, and the literary stage has for a time been almost wholly en- grossed by a colossal satirist, a man who has dared the universal application of Shaftesbury's maxim that ridicule is the test of truth. The world had never before seen a satirist on the scale of Voltaire, nor had satire ever played such a part as a factor in impending change. The parallel with Lucian is in some respects very close. Toleration was Voltaire's idol, as truth was Lucian's ; and thus, aiming more than his predecessor at the practical reformation of manners and institutions, his work was less purely negative. He was nevertheless a destroyer, and as utterly out of sympathy with the positive spirit of science for which he was preparing the way as Lucian could possibly be with Goths or Christians. As a master of sarcastic mockery he is unsurpassed ; his manner is entirely his own ; and he is one of the most intensely national of writers, notwith- standing his vast obligations to English humorists, states- men, and philosophers. English humour also played an important part in the literary regeneration of Germany, where, after Liscow and Rabener, direct imitators of Swift and the essayists, Lessing, imbued with Pope but not mastered by him, showed how powerful an auxiliary satire can be to criticism, a relation which Pope had somewhat inverted. Another great German writer, Wieland, owes little to the English, but adapts Lucian and Petronius to the 18th century with playful if somewhat mannered grace. Kortum's Jobsiad, a most humorous poem, innovates suc- cessfully upon established models by making low life, instead of chivalry, the subject of burlesque. Goethe and Schiller, Scott and Wordsworth, are now at hand, and as imagination gains ground satire declines. Byron, who in the 18th century would have been the greatest of satirists, is hurried by the spirit of his age into passion and description, bequeathing, however, a splendid proof of the possibility of allying satire with sublimity in his Vision of Judgment. Moore gives the epigram a lyrical turn ; Beranger, not for the first time in French literature, makes the gay chanson the instrument of biting jest; and the classic type receives fresh currency from Auguste Barbier. Courier, and subsequently Cormenin, raise the political pamphlet to literary dignity by their poignant wit. Peacock evolves a new type of novel from the study of Athenian comedy. Miss Edgeworth skirts the confines of satire, and Miss Austen, the most refined and delicate of all observers of manners, seasons her novels with the most exquisite satiric traits. Washington Irving revives the manner of The Spectator, and Tieck brings irony and persiflage to the discussion of critical problems. Two great satiric figures remain, one representative of his nation, the other most difficult to class. In all the characteristics of his genius Thackeray is thoroughly English, and the faults and follies he chastises are those especially charac- teristic of British society. Good sense and the perception of the ridiculous are amalgamated in him ; his satire is a thoroughly British article, a little over-solid, a little wanting in finish, but honest, weighty, and durable. Posterity will go to him for the humours of the age of Victoria, as they go to Addison for those of Anne's. But Heine hardly belongs to any nation or country, time or place. He ceased to be a German without becoming a Frenchman, and a Jew without becoming a Christian. Only one portrait really suits him, that in Tieck's allegorical tale, where he is repre- sented as a capricious and mischievous elf ; but his song is sweeter and his command over the springs of laughter and tears greater than it suited Tieck's purpose to acknow- ledge. In him the satiric spirit, long confined to established literary forms, seems to obtain unrestrained freedom to wander where it will, nor have the ancient models been followed since by any considerable satirist except the Italian Giusti. The machinery employed by Moore was indeed transplanted to America by Russell Lowell, whose Biglow Papers represent perhaps the highest moral level yet attained by satire. In no age has the spirit of satire been so generally diffused as in the 19th century, but many of its eminent writers, while bordering on the domains of satire, escape the definition of satirist. The term cannot be properly applied to Dickens, the keen observer of the oddities of human life ; or to George Eliot, the critic of its emptiness when not inspired by a worthy purpose ; or to Balzac, the painter of French society ; or to Trollope, the mirror of the middle classes of England. If Sartor Resartus could be regarded as a satire, Carlyle would rank among the first of satirists ; but the satire, though very obvious, rather accompanies than inspires the composition. The number of minor satirists of merit, on the other hand, is legion, and but few can be mentioned here. Poole, in his broadly farcical Little Pedlington, has rung the changes with inexhaustible ingenuity on a single fruitful idea : Jerrold's comedies sparkle with epigrams, and his tales and sketches overflow with quaint humour ; Mallock has made the most of personal mimicry, the lowest form of satire ; Samuel Butler holds an inverting mirror to the world's face with imperturbable gravity; Courthope reproduces the airy grace and sonorous melody of the Attic comedy ; and the anonymous writer of the " Barnum " Christmas number of Truth has resuscitated with equal effect its reckless fun and personality. One remarkable feature of the age is the union of caricature with literature to a degree incon- ceivable before the improvements in wood-engraving. All large capitals now have their comic illustrated journals, destined for the most part to be the marvels and stumbling- blocks of posterity. Punch, however, has become almost a national institution, and has fostered the genius of two pictorial satirists of the first rank, Leech and Tenniel. The present tendencies of the civilized world seem highly favourable to the influence of satire as a factor in human affairs, but unfavourable to the production of satiric masterpieces. Satire is the inevitable concomitant of free- dom of speech, which must continue to prevail and diffuse itself unless checked by military or socialistic despotism. But as the privilege of the many it is less likely to be the resource of the few ; and it may happen that the press, dealing with follies of the day as they arise, will more and more forestall the satire that springs from meditation and study. The principal security is the originality-and robust- ness of true satiric genius, which, having defied prisons and scaffolds in the past, may find the means of eluding public impatience and satiety in the future. (R. o.) SATRAP. See PERSIA, vol. xviii. pp. 569, 583. SATURN, an ancient Italian god, whom the Romans, and till recently the moderns, identified with the Greek god Cronus. 1. Cronus was the youngest of the Titans, the children of Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaca). Besides the Titans, Sky and Earth had other children, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handers. When the Cyclopes and the Hundred- handers proved troublesome, Sky thrust them back into