of superiority, are both of them social in their nature. No less
social, surely, is the function of satire. It is possible that satire
may be decaying, that it is becoming, if it has not already become, a
mere splendid or odious tradition. But let us call it a great tradition
and, upon the whole, a splendid one. Even when debased to purely party
or personal uses, the verse satire of a Dryden retains its magnificent
resonance; "the ring," says Saintsbury, "as of a great bronze coin
thrown down on marble." The malignant couplets of an Alexander Pope
still gleam like malevolent jewels through the dust of two hundred
years. The cynicism, the misanthropy, the mere adolescent badness of
Byron are powerless to clip the wings of the wide-ranging, far-darting
wit and humor and irony of _Don Juan_. The homely Yankee dialect, the
provinciality, the "gnarly" flavor of the _Biglow Papers_ do not
prevent our finding in that pungent and resplendent satire the powers
of Lowell at full play; and, what is more than that, the epitome of the
American spirit in a moral crisis.

I take the names of those four satirists, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and
Lowell, quite at random; but they serve to illustrate a significant
principle; namely, that great satire becomes ennobled as it touches
communal, not merely individual interests, as it voices social and not
merely individual ideals. Those four modern satirists were steeped in
the nationalistic political poetry of the Old Testament. They were
familiar with its war anthems, dirges, and prophecies, its concern for
the prosperity and adversity, the sin and the punishment, of a people.
Here the writers of the Golden Age of English satire found their
vocabulary and phrase-book, their grammar of politics and history,
their models of good and evil kings; and in that Biblical school of
political poetry, which has affected our literature from the
Reformation down to Mr. Kipling, there has always been a class in
satire! The satirical portraits, satirical lyrics, satirical parables
of the Old Testament prophets are only less noteworthy than their
audacity in striking high and hard. Their foes were the all-powerful:
Babylon and Assyria and Egypt loom vast and terrible upon the canvases
of Isaiah and Ezekiel; and poets of a later time have learned there the
secrets of social and political idealism, and the signs of national
doom.

There are two familiar types of satire associated with the names of
Horace and Juve