for many a decade to come.
This then was the literary censor to whom English satire of the
post-Drydenic epochs owed so much. Neither Swift nor Pope was ashamed
to confess his literary indebtedness to the great Frenchman; nay,
Dryden himself has confessed his obligations to Boileau, and in his
_Discourse on Satire_ has quoted his authority as absolute. Before
pointing out the differences between the Drydenic and post-Drydenic
satire let us note very briefly the special characteristics of the
former. Apart from the "matter" of his satire, Dryden laid this
department of letters under a mighty obligation through the splendid
service he rendered by the first successful application of the heroic
couplet to satire. Of itself this was a great boon; but his good deeds
as regards the "matter" of satiric composition have entirely obscured
the benefit he conferred on its manner or technical form. Dryden's four
great satires, _Absalom and Achitophel_, _The Medal_, _MacFlecknoe_,
and the _Hind and the Panther_, each exemplify a distinct and important
type of satire. The first named is the classical instance of the use of
"historic parallels" as applied to the impeachment of the vices or
abuses of any age. With matchless skill the story of Absalom is
employed not merely to typify, but actually to represent, the designs
of Monmouth and his Achitophel--Shaftesbury. _The Medal_ reverts to the
type of the classic satire of the Juvenalian order. It is slightly more
rhetorical in style, and is partly devoted to a bitter invective
against Shaftesbury, partly to an argument as to the unfitness of
republican institutions for England, partly to a satiric address to
the Whigs. The third of the great series, _MacFlecknoe_, is Dryden's
masterpiece of satiric irony; a purely personal attack upon his rival,
Shadwell, "Crowned King of Dulness, and in all the realms of nonsense
absolute". Finally, the _Hind and the Panther_ represents a new
development of the "satiric fable". Dryden gave to British satire the
impulse towards that final form of development which it received from
the great satirists of the next century. There is little that appears
in Swift, Addison, Arbuthnot, Pope, or even Byron, for which the way
was not prepared by the genius of "Glorious John".

Of the famous group which adorned the reign of Queen Anne, Steele lives
above all in his Isaac Bickerstaff Essays, the vehicle of admirably
pithy and trenchant prose satire upon current po