Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/47

 *tue when it has it not may draw satiric fire. It is the assumption itself, the pose, that furnishes the shining mark loved by the satirist.

On this point we again have Horatian testimony:

"Quid, cum est Lucilius ausus Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem, Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora Cederet, introrsum turpis, * * *"

Gascoigne symbolised by his steel glass that which reflected the beholders as they were, not flattered as by the plated mirror; and said his effort was to "sing a verse to make them see themselves." He also identified the root of all evil with hypocrisy;—"So that they seem, and covet not to be."

Cervantes spoke of his "Herculean labor" as being "nothing more nor less than to banish mediocrity from the realm of Spanish poetry, and to sweep from its sacred precincts, which had become as foul as an Augean stable, all shams, lies, hypocrisies, and vulgar baseness whatsoever."

But the first to stress this idea with discriminating analysis was, quite appropriately, the first in his own satirical field:

practically coincides with that portion of the deception-circle which falls within vice and folly, a small margin being left outside to safeguard against inelasticity.
 * [Footnote: though folly and vice are for the most part deceitful. The circle of the satirizible

The connection between these two pairs of subdivisions is evident; hypocrisy belonging on the whole to the vicious branch, and sentimentality, to the foolish.]The phrase omitted from the Dryden citation above is, "where the very]*