se he loves his enemy, and by a kind of exaggeration of Christianity
he loves his enemy the more the more he becomes an enemy. He has a sort
of overwhelming and aggressive happiness in his assertion of anger; his
curse is as human as a benediction. Of this type of satire the great
example is Rabelais. This is the first typical example of satire, the
satire which is voluble, which is violent, which is indecent, but which
is not malicious. The satire of Whistler was not this. He was never in
any of his controversies simply happy; the proof of it is that he never
talked absolute nonsense. There is a second type of mind which
produces satire with the quality of greatness. That is embodied in the
satirist whose passions are released and let go by some intolerable
sense of wrong. He is maddened by the sense of men being maddened; his
tongue becomes an unruly member, and testifies against all mankind.
Such a man was Swift, in whom the saeva indignatio was a bitterness to
others, because it was a bitterness to himself. Such a satirist
Whistler was not. He did not laugh because he was happy, like
Rabelais. But neither did he laugh because he was unhappy, like Swift.

The third type of great satire is that in which he satirist is enabled
to rise superior to his victim in the only serious sense which
superiority can bear, in that of pitying the sinner and respecting the
man even while he satirises both. Such an achievement can be found in
a thing like Pope's "Atticus" a poem in which the satirist feels that
he is satirising the weaknesses which belong specially to literary
genius. Consequently he takes a pleasure in pointing out his enemy's
strength before he points out his weakness. That is, perhaps, the
highest and most honourable form of satire. That is not the satire of
Whistler. He is not full of a great sorrow for the wrong done to human
nature; for him the wrong is altogether done to himself.

He was not a great personality, because he thought so much about
himself. And the case is stronger even than that. He was sometimes not
even a great artist, because he thought so much about art. Any man
with a vital knowledge of the human psychology ought to have the most
profound suspicion of anybody who claims to be an artist, and talks a
great deal about art. Art is a right and human thing, like walking or
saying one's prayers; but the moment it begins to be talked about very
solemnly, a man may be fairly certain that th