Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/325

Rh verted upon again in "Parnassus in Pillory. A satire. By Motley Manners, Esquire. New York, 1851." The anonymous bard bemoaned the sad plight of his own country:

And there is sense as well as vigor in his denunciation of that colonial attitude of so many Americans in the days before the civil war had made us somewhat less self-conscious:

Perhaps as good as any of the portraits in Parnassus in Pillory is this of Lowell:

The past fifty years have not called forth another formal satire of contemporary literature, although the need is as acute now as it ever was, and although the public relish for ill-natured remarks is as keen as ever. Probably one reason why the longer satire in verse does not make its appearance is because the immense multiplication of periodicals, weekly and monthly, affords to the intending satirist a chance to shoot his shafts one by one in the papers without having to save them up for discharge in a volley and in a volume. Thus it was that the late H. C. Bunner—a cordial lover of poetry, with a trained craftsman's appreciation of technic, a keen sense of humor, and a singular gift of parody—put forth his satires week by week in the paper he had conducted to prosperity.