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This satire had been written during the embargo, but, not making its appearance till after the repeal of that measure, met with less success than "Democracy Unveiled." Everybody who has known Mr. Fessenden must have wondered how the kindest hearted man in all the world could have likewise been the most noted satirist of his day.
Tom Taylor was also expected; but, owing to some accident or mistake, he did not come for above an hour, all which time our host waited. . . . But Mr. Tom Taylor, a wit, a satirist, and a famous diner out, is too formidable and too valuable a personage to be treated cavalierly.
His other subject is peasant life. In this too he begins as a satirist, with his collection Agricola ; and the manner in which he at first indulges in grotesque exaggeration of popular traits appears best perhaps in the introduction to the book, "adapted from Tacitus": The German plain from the river Danube to the Alps is inhabited by the Baiovarii.
Such a company of envious dames and damsels cannot be found among the persons of the satirist Thackeray. Kate Nickleby's beauty brings upon her at first sight the enmity of her workshop companions; in the innocent pages of "Pickwick" the aunt is jealous of the niece, and the niece retorts by wounding the vanity of the aunt as keenly as she may; and so forth through early books and late.
But Montesquieu is far more widely and justly known as a wise and learned writer on government than as a satirist. The book we have been considering was by far the lightest, as it was the earliest, of his considerable writings.
We do not take it that the modern satirist who vents his spleen on an individual or a class is describing each and all of his contemporaries, nor even that what he says is necessarily true of such individual or class. Nor is the professional moralist himself immune from jaundice or from the disease of exaggeration.
"Why, he is talking!" said the surgeon, who was now in a satisfactory state of drunkenness, addressing Beaumarchais. "His neighbor must have pulled his wires," replied the satirist. My man flushed again as he overheard the words, though they were said in a low voice. "And pray, how was the late queen?" asked Calonne, jestingly.
He was not, on the one hand, like Cobbett, an anarchist, or libeller; but yet, on the other hand, as little was he ever a lackey, cringing at the gates of Power, or a train-bearer in the retinue of Fashion. Still less was he, like Swift, the satirist of his times and of his kind, snarling at his rulers, and turning at last to gnaw, in venomous rage, his own heart.
If the statue were not dug up, as is said, until the sixteenth century, its fame spread rapidly; for, before Luther had made himself feared at Rome, Pasquin was already well known as the satirist of the vices of Pope and Cardinals, and as a bold enemy of the abuses of the Church.
He built it himself, and it is remarkable only for its plainness; with which the furniture so well agrees, that there is no one thing in it that may not be absolutely necessary, except books, and the prints of Mr. Hogarth, whom he calls a moral satirist. "Nothing, however, can be imagined more agreeable than the life that the doctor leads in this homely house, which he calls his earthly paradise.
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