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Title: A Satire Anthology
Author: Various
Release Date: December 4, 2014 [EBook #47528]
Language: English
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A SATIRE ANTHOLOGY
_SATIRE should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that s scarcely felt or seen._
--_LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU._

A Satire Anthology
Collected by
Carolyn Wells
New York
Charles Scribner s Sons
1905

COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS
Published, October, 1905

TO
MINNIE HARPER PILLING

NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT is hereby gratefully made to the publishers of
the various poems included in this compilation.
Those by Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John G. Saxe,
Edward Rowland Sill, John Hay, Bayard Taylor and Edith Thomas are
published by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The poems by Anthony Deane and Owen Seaman are used by arrangement with
John Lane.
Through the courtesy of Small, Maynard & Co., are included poems by
Bliss Carman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson-Gilman, Stephen Crane, and
Frederic Ridgely Torrence.
Poems by Sam Walter Foss are published by permission of Lothrop, Lee &
Shepherd Co.
The Century Co. are the publishers of poems by Richard Watson Gilder
and Mary Mapes Dodge.
Frederich A. Stokes Company give permission for poems by Gelett Burgess
and Stephen Crane.
The Buntling Ball, by Edgar Fawcett is published by permission of
Funk and Wagnalls Company; Hoch der Kaiser by Rodney Blake, by the
courtesy of the New Amsterdam Book Co. The poems by James Jeffrey Roche
by permission of E. H. Bacon & Co.; and The Font in the Forest by
Herman Knickerbocker Viel, by permission of Brentano s.
The Evolution of a Name, by Charles Battell Loomis, is quoted from
Just Rhymes, Copyright, 1899, by R. H. Russell.
He and She, by Eugene Fitch Ware, is published by permission of G. P.
Putnam s Sons.

CONTENTS

Chorus of Women

_Aristophanes_

PAGE
3

A Would-Be Literary Bore

The Wish for Length of Life
The Ass s Legacy
A Ballade of Old-Time Ladies
(Translated by John Payne).
A Carman s Account of a Lawsuit
The Soul s Errand
Of a Certain Man
A Precise Tailor
The Will
From King Henry IV
From Love s Labour s Lost
From As You Like It
Horace Concocting An Ode
On Don Surly
The Scholar and His Dog
The Manly Heart
The Constant Lover
The Remonstrance
Saintship versus Conscience
Description of Holland
The Religion of Hudibras
Satire on the Scots
Song
The Character of Holland
The Duke of Buckingham
On Shadwell
Satire on Edward Howard
St. Anthony s Sermon to the
Fishes
Introduction to the True-Born
Englishman
An Epitaph
The Remedy Worse than the Disease
Twelve Articles
The Furniture of a Woman s Mind
From The Love of Fame
Dr. Delany s Villa
The Quidnunckis
The Sick Man and the Angel
Sandys Ghost
From The Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot
The Three Black Crows
An Epitaph
An Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole
The Public Breakfast
An Elegy on the Death of a Mad
Dog
On Smollett
The Uncertain Man
A Faithful Picture of Ordinary
Society
On Johnson
To Boswell
The Hen
Let Us All be Unhappy Together

_Horace_
_Juvenal_
_Ruteboeuf_

4
6
7

_Franois Villon_
_Sir David Lyndsay_
_Sir Walter Raleigh_
_Sir John Harrington_
_Sir John Harrington_
_John Donne_
_William Shakespeare_
_William Shakespeare_
_William Shakespeare_
_Thomas Dekker_
_Ben Jonson_
_John Marston_
_George Wither_
_Sir John Suckling_
_Sir John Suckling_
_Samuel Butler_
_Samuel Butler_
_Samuel Butler_
_John Cleiveland_
_Richard Lovelace_
_Andrew Marvell_
_John Dryden_
_John Dryden_
_Charles Sackville, Earl
of Dorset_

11
12
13
16
16
18
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
34
35
37
38

_Abraham Sancta Clara_

39

_Daniel Defoe_
_Matthew Prior_
_Matthew Prior_
_Jonathan Swift_
_Jonathan Swift_
_Edward Young_
_Thomas Sheridan_
_John Gay_
_John Gay_
_Alexander Pope_

41
43
45
46
48
50
52
54
55
57

_Alexander Pope_
_John Byrom_
_George John Cayley_
_Henry Fielding_
_Christopher Anstey_

60
63
64
65
67

_Oliver Goldsmith_
_Charles Churchill_
_William Cowper_

72
73
74

_William Cowper_
_John Wolcott_
(_Peter Pindar_)
_John Wolcott_
(_Peter Pindar_)
_Matt. Claudius_
_Charles Dibdin_

74

39

75
76
77
78

The Friar of Orders Gray

_John O Keefe_
The Country Squire
_Tomas Yriarte_
The Eggs
_Tomas Yriarte_
The Literary Lady
_Richard Brinsley Sheridan_
Sly Lawyers
_George Crabbe_
Reporters
_George Crabbe_
Address to the Unco Guid, or
the Rigidly Righteous
_Robert Burns_
Holy Willie s Prayer
_Robert Burns_
Kitty of Coleraine
_Edward Lysaght_
The Friend of Humanity and
the Knife-Grinder
_George Canning_
Nora s Vow
_Sir Walter Scott_
Job
_Samuel T. Coleridge_
Cologne
_Samuel T. Coleridge_
Giles s Hope
_Samuel T. Coleridge_
The Battle of Blenheim
_Robert Southey_
The Well of St. Keyne
_Robert Southey_
The Poet of Fashion
_James Smith_
Christmas Out of Town
_James Smith_
Eternal London
_Thomas Moore_
The Modern Puffing System
_Thomas Moore_
Lying
_Thomas Moore_
The King of Yvetot (Version
of W. M. Thackeray)
_Pierre Jean de Branger_
Sympathy
_Reginald Heber_
A Modest Wit
_Selleck Osborn_
The Philosopher s Scales
_Jane Taylor_
From The Feast of the Poets
_James Henry Leigh Hunt_
Rich and Poor; or, Saint and
Sinner
_Thomas L. Peacock_
Mr. Barney Maguire s Account
of the Coronation
_Richard Harris Barham_
From The Devil s Drive
_Lord Byron_
From English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers
_Lord Byron_
To Woman
_Lord Byron_
A Country House Party
_Lord Byron_
Greediness Punished
_Friedrich Rckert_
Woman
_Fitz-Greene Halleck_
The Rich and the Poor Man
(From the Russian of
Kremnitzer)
_Sir John Bowring_
Ozymandias
_Percy Bysshe Shelley_
Cui Bono
_Thomas Carlyle_
Father-Land and Mother Tongue
_Samuel Lover_
Father Molloy
_Samuel Lover_
Gaffer Gray (From Hugh Trevor ) _Thomas Holcroft_
Cockle v. Cackle
_Thomas Hood_
Our Village
_Thomas Hood_
The Devil at Home (From The
Devil s Progress )
_Thomas Kibble Hervey_
How to Make a Novel
_Lord Charles Neaves_
Two Characters
_Henry Taylor_
The Sailor s Consolation
_William Pitt_
Verses on seeing the Speake
asleep in his Chair
during One of the
Debates of the First
Reformed Parliament
_Winthrop M. Praed_

79
80
82
84
85
85
86
88
91
92
94
95
96
96
97
99
101
103
105
106
108
109
111
112
114
116
117
119
123
125
126
127
130
132
132
134
135
135
136
139
140
145
149
150
151
152

154

Pelters of Pyramids
The Annuity
Malbrouck
A Man s Requirements
Critics
The Miser
Cacothes Scribendi
A Familiar Letter to Several
Correspondents
Contentment
How to Make a Man of Consequence
The Widow Malone
The Pauper s Drive
On Lytton
Sorrows of Werther
Mr. Molony s Account of the
Ball Given to the
Nepaulese Ambassador by
the Peninsular and
Oriental Company
Damages, Two Hundred Pounds
The Lost Leader
The Pope and the Net
Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister
Cynical Ode to an Ultra-Cynical
Public
The Great Critics
The Laureate
Woman s Will
The Mourner la Mode
There is no God
The Latest Decalogue
From A Fable for Critics
The Pious Editor s Creed
Revelry in India
A Fragment
Nothing to Wear
A Review (The Inn Album, By
Robert Browning)
The Positivists
Sky-Making
My Lord Tomnoddy
Hiding the Skeleton
Midges
The Schoolmaster Abroad with
his Son
Of Propriety
Peace. A Study
All Saints
Fame s Penny Trumpet
The Diamond Wedding
True to Poll
Sleep On
To the Terrestrial Globe, By
a Miserable Wretch
The Ape and the Lady
Anglicised Utopia

_Richard Hengist Horne_

_George Outram_
_Translated by Father Prout_
_Elizabeth Barrett Browning_
_Elizabeth Barrett Browning_
_Edward Fitzgerald_
_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

155
156
161
163
164
166
166

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_
_Mark Lemon_
_Charles Lever_
_T. Noel_
_Alfred Tennyson_
_William Makepeace
Thackeray_

167
171
173
173
175
177
178

_William Makepeace
Thackeray_
_William Makepeace
Thackeray_
_Robert Browning_
_Robert Browning_

179
182
186
188

_Robert Browning_

190

_Charles Mackay_
_Charles Mackay_
_William E. Aytoun_
_John Godfrey Saxe_
_John Godfrey Saxe_
_Arthur Hugh Clough_
_Arthur Hugh Clough_
_James Russell Lowell_
_James Russell Lowell_
_Bartholomew Dowling_
_Grace Greenwood_
_William Allen Butler_

192
193
194
196
197
199
200
201
206
210
212
213

_Bayard Taylor_
_Mortimer Collins_
_Mortimer Collins_
_Robert Barnabas Brough_
_George Meredith_
_Robert Bulwer Lytton_

221
224
226
227
229
230

_Charles Stuart Calverley_

_Charles Stuart Calverley_
_Charles Stuart Calverley_
_Edmund Yates_
_Lewis Carroll_
_Edmund Clarence Stedman_
_Frank C. Burnand_
_W. S. Gilbert_

233
235
236
237
238
240
247
249

_W. S. Gilbert_
_W. S. Gilbert_
_W. S. Gilbert_

250
250
252

Etiquette
The sthete
Too Late
Life in Laconics
Distiches
The Poet and the Critics
The Love Letter
Fame
Five Lives
He and She
What Will We Do?
The Tool
Give Me a Theme
The Poem, To the Critic
Ballade of Literary Fame
Chorus of Anglomaniacs (From
The Buntling Ball)
The Net of Law
A Boston Lullaby
The V-A-S-E
Thursday
A Bird in the Hand
An Advanced Thinker
A Thought
A Sonnet
They Said
To R. K.
To Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
What s in a Name
Wed
Atlantic City
The Font in the Forest
The Origin of Sin
A Philosopher
The Fate of Pious Dan
The Meeting of the Clabberhuses
Wedded Bliss
A Conservative
Same Old Story
Hem and Haw
The Sceptics
The Evolution of a Name
The Hurt that Honour Feels
John Jenkins
A Certain Cure
The Beauties of Nature
(A Fragment from an
Unpublished Epic)
Paradise. A Hindoo Legend
Hoch! der Kaiser
On a Magazine Sonnet
Earth
A Butterfly of Fashion
General Summary
The Conundrum of the Workshops
Extracts from the Rubaiyat of
Omar Cayenne
Ballade of Expansion

_W. S. Gilbert_
_W. S. Gilbert_
_Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_
_Mary Mapes Dodge_
_John Hay_
_Austin Dobson_
_Austin Dobson_
_James Herbert Morse_
_Edward Rowland Sill_
_Eugene Fitch Ware_
_Robert J. Burdette_
_Richard Watson Gilder_
_Richard Watson Gilder_
_Richard Watson Gilder_
_A. Lang_

254
260
261
263
264
265
267
269
270
272
272
273
274
274
274

_Edgar Fawcett_
_James Jeffrey Roche_
_James Jeffrey Roche_
_James Jeffrey Roche_
_Frederick E. Weatherly_
_Frederick E. Weatherly_
_Brander Matthews_
_J. K. Stephen_
_J. K. Stephen_
_Edith M. Thomas_
_J. K. Stephen_
_R. K. Munkittrick_
_R. K. Munkittrick_
_H. C. Bunner_
_H. C. Bunner_
_Herman Knickerbocker Viel_
_Samuel Walter Foss_
_Samuel Walter Foss_
_Samuel Walter Foss_
_Samuel Walter Foss_
_Charlotte Perkins
(Stetson) Gilman_
_Charlotte Perkins
(Stetson) Gilman_
_Harry B. Smith_
_Bliss Carman_
_Bliss Carman_
_Charles Battell Loomis_
_Owen Seaman_
_Anthony C. Deane_
_Anthony C. Deane_

275
277
277
278
280
281
282
283
284
284
286
287
288
289
290
294
294
295
298
300

_Anthony C. Deane_
_George Birdseye_
_Rodney Blake_
_Russell Hilliard Loines_
_Oliver Herford_
_Oliver Herford_
_Rudyard Kipling_
_Rudyard Kipling_

317
319
320
321
321
322
324
326

_Gelett Burgess_
_Hilda Johnson_

328
331

303
304
306
307
308
310
310
313
316

Friday Afternoon at the Boston

Symphony Hall
War is Kind
Lines
From The House of a Hundred
Lights
The British Visitor
A Match
Wanted a Governess
Lines by an Old Fogy

_Faulkner Armytage_
_Stephen Crane_
_Stephen Crane_

332
336
337

_Frederic Ridgely Torrence_

_From The Troliopiad_
_Punch_
_Anonymous_
_Anonymous_

340
343
343
346
348

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
SATIRE, though a form of literature familiar to everyone, is difficult
to define. Partaking variously of sarcasm, irony, ridicule, and
burlesque, it is exactly synonymous with no one of these.
Satire is primarily dependent on the motive of its writer. Unless
meant for satire, it is not the real thing; unconscious satire is a
contradiction of terms, or a mere figure of speech.
Secondarily, satire depends on the reader. What seems to us satire
to-day, may not seem so to-morrow. Or, what seems satire to a
pessimistic mind, may seem merely good-natured chaff to an optimist.
This, of course, refers to the subtler forms of satire. Many classic
satires are direct lampoons or broadsides which admit of only one
interpretation.
Literature numbers many satirists among its most honoured names; and
the best satires show intellect, education, and a keen appreciation of
human nature.
Nor is satire necessarily vindictive or spiteful. Often its best
examples show a kindly tolerance for the vice or folly in question,
and even hint a tacit acceptance of the conditions condemned. Again, in
the hands of a carping and unsympathetic critic, satire is used with
vitriolic effects on sins for which the writer has no mercy.
This lashing form of satire was doubtless the earliest type. The Greeks
show sardonic examples of it, but the Romans allowed a broader sense of
humour to soften the satirical sting.
Following and outstripping Lucilius, Horace is the acknowledged father
of satire, and was himself followed, and, in the opinion of some,
outstripped by Juvenal.
But the works of the ancient satirists are of interest mainly to
scholars, and cannot be included in a collection destined for a popular
audience. The present volume, therefore, is largely made up from the
products of more recent centuries.

From the times of Horace and Juvenal, down through the medival ages to
the present day, satires may be divided into the two classes founded
by the two great masters: the work of Horace s followers marked by
humour and tolerance, that of Juvenal s imitators by bitter invective.
On the one side, the years have arrayed such names as Chaucer, Swift,
Goldsmith, and Thackeray; on the other, Langland, Dryden, Pope, and
Burns.
A scholarly gentleman of our own day classifies satires in three main
divisions: those directed at society, those which ridicule political
conditions, and those aimed at individual characters.
These variations of the art of satire form a fascinating study, and to
one interested in the subject, this small collection of representative
satires can be merely a series of guide-posts.
It is the compiler s regret that a great mass of material is
necessarily omitted for lack of space; other selections are discarded
because of their present untimeliness, which deprives them of their
intrinsic interest. But an endeavour has been made to represent the
greatest and best satiric writers, and also to include at least
extracts from the masterpieces of satire.
It is often asked why we have no satire at the present day. Many
answers have been given, but one reason is doubtless to be found in
the acceleration of the pace of life; fads and foibles follow one
another so quickly, that we have time neither to write nor read satiric
disquisitions upon them.
Another reason lies in the fact that we have achieved a broader and
more tolerant human outlook.
Again, the true satirist must be possessed of earnestness and
sincerity. And it is a question whether the mental atmosphere of the
twentieth century tends to stimulate and foster those qualities.
These explanations, however, seem to apply to American writers more
especially than to English.
The leisurely thinking Briton, with his more personal viewpoint, has
produced, and is even now producing, satires marked by strength,
honesty, and literary value.
But America is not entirely unrepresented. The work of James Russell
Lowell cannot suffer by comparison with that of any contemporary
English author; and, though now forgotten because dependent on local
and timely interest, many political satires written by Americans during
the early part of the nineteenth century show clever and ingenious work
founded on a comprehensive knowledge of the truth.
Yet, though the immediate present is not producing masterpieces of
satire, the lack is partially made up by the large quantity of really
meritorious work that is being done in a satirical vein. In this
country and in England are young and middle-aged writers who show
evidences of satiric power, which, though it does not make for fame and
glory, is yet not without its value.