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His own comedies are too rigidly constructed according to Aristotle's dictum, that the moving of laughter was a fault in comedy. Dante, accordingly, himself in this sense the greatest of satirists, in putting Horace among the five great poets in limbo, qualifies him with the title of satiro. But if we exclude the satirists, what are we to do with Aristophanes?
The taste of the time was typified in such vagaries as covering trees with artificial flowers in winter and in piling up snow so that some traces of snowy landscapes might still be seen in spring or summer. Such excess reminds the student of decadent Rome as portrayed by the great Latin satirists.
He invented a literary method which, without being great, yields to no other in interest and even in charm, and which, for its perfection, requires a rare and refined genius. Not Horace only, nor all the satirists after Horace, but Montaigne and Pepys also, belong to the school of Lucilius.
It is a great ease to my conscience that I have written so elaborate and useful a discourse without one grain of satire intermixed, which is the sole point wherein I have taken leave to dissent from the famous originals of our age and country. I have observed some satirists to use the public much at the rate that pedants do a naughty boy ready horsed for discipline.
He was complaining in society of the difficulty of finding a suitable title, when a vivacious lady said, "We have got Cornhill, and Ludgate, and Strand why not call yours Cheapside?" Oxford has always been a nursing-mother of polished satirists.
Besides, most of our late satirists seem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles have the prerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too.
In 1807 I used to meet him once more in social gatherings in the city, for he had returned in full restoration of health, his mind expanded, and his manners improved by intercourse with the European world, while Salmagundi had electrified the city and given him the first rank among its satirists.
The laziest man we know we do not like to mention his name, as the brutal world does not yet recognize sloth at its community value is one of the greatest poets in this country; one of the keenest satirists; one of the most rectilinear thinkers. He began life in the customary hustling way. He was always too busy to enjoy himself.
"After all, doctor," I said, "although at first it startled me a little to hear you say that we had no sexual ethics, yet you really say no more, nor use stronger words, than did our poets and satirists in treating the same theme.
Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirists. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned.
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