Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/57

 satire seemed rather to cherish malice and glory in rudeness, often mistaking peevish scolding for noble scorn. Its keynote was "A flash of that satiric rage," or, according to Hall,

"The Satire should be like the porcupine, That shoots sharp quills out in each angry line."

Byron was the last example of both the professional, concentrated form and the truculent mood. Tennyson voices the new spirit of his century:

"I loathe it: he had never kindly heart, Nor ever cared to better his own kind, Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it."

Birrell, less caustic than De Quincey about Pope, still uses him as an instance of how not to do it:

"Dr. Johnson is more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character tells more than in any other form of verse. We want a personality behind—a strong, gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage, if you will * * * but spiteful never."

Even the traits of gloom and savagery might be dispensed with, and room made for an infusion of sweetness and light. This is implied in the condition laid down by Lionel Johnson:

"To tilt at superstition, to shoot at folly, is seldom a grateful or a gratifying pursuit, if there be no depth of purpose in it, nothing but pleasure in the consciousness of destructive power, no feeling of sympathetic pity, no tenderness somewhere in the heart, no cordiality sweetening the work of overthrow."