The satire of Horace always provoked a smile from its victim. But Juvenal was always almost choked with indignant fury and a noble rage. His own words, "facit indignatio versus," sum up the quality of his satire. It is strange that Dryden should have expressed his own preference for Juvenal over Horace, whose wit he says he found almost insipid. "Where he barely grins himself and only shows his white teeth, he cannot provoke me to any laughter." And yet no one knew better than Dryden what was the highest quality of satire. His own words declare it: "The nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery. . . . How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave without using any of those opprobrious terms." That is hard indeed. Satire is not a bludgeon, but a rapier.

Satire should, like a polished razor keen,

Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.

There must be, to use Dryden's phrase, "no slovenly butchering. of a man, and the satirist must be like Jack Ketch, to whom alone, as his wife said of him, it belonged "to make a malefactor die sweetly." Now it was precisely this fine quality of satire that Dryden used with such telling effect in his political verse. His first political poem was "Absalom and Achitophel," which will always remain a literary masterpiece. Like Butler's "Hudibras," it is not only remarkable as pure literature, but also for its immediate and extraordinary popularity. This is not the place to enter into a description of the poem. Suffice it to say that it was written against Lord Shaftesbury, who was charged with inciting Monmouth and his party to rebellion. The political atmosphere was very stormy at the time, and party spirit ran high. Such a poem as "Absalom and Achitophel" would be sure to be well received at any time, but at a moment of great political excitement it was certain to cause a sensation. And this was actually the case. Dr. Johnson says of it that the sale was so large that his father, an old bookseller, told him that he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's trial. It is true that it failed in its immediate object, because the Bill of indictment against Shaftesbury was, notwithstanding, ignored by the Grand Jury. But it struck with telling effect.

Its success is proved by the fact that it provoked the extreme resentment of those who felt its sting. There was no direct personal attack upon anyone, but there were many who applied the allusions in the poem to themselves and felt that the cap fitted. The result was that an extraordinary number of replies were immediately pub

lished.

Amongst these were: "Absalom Senior," by Settle; "Azarai and Hushai," by Pordage; "Towser the Second," by Care; "Poetical Reflections," by Buckingham; and an anonymous poem entitled "A Whip for the Fool's Back." The fact that so many of the literary men of the day should have thought it worth while to reply is a proof, if proof were needed, of its wonderful power and popularity. The friends of Shaftesbury celebrated his escape by striking a medal in his honour. This gave an opportunity to Dryden to return to the attack, which he did with equal ability and success in his second great political poem, the "Medal." There is a peculiar interest attaching to this poem, because there is a story, not in itself improbable, that Charles II. himself suggested the subject of it to Dryden. If true, the "Medal" occupies a unique place in political verse, for there is probably no other instance of a monarch thus enlisting a poet in his service for political ends. The success of the "Medal" was such as to call forth a plentiful crop of replies, the most famous of these being Pordage's "The Medal Reversed"; Shadwell's "Medal of John Bayes"; and Dryden's "Satire on his Muse," which has rightly or wrongly been ascribed to Somers. So that this period of English history must have been singularly fruitful in political verse.

The name of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, cannot be passed over among the political verse-writers of this period, because he has left to posterity two of the most brilliant epigrams ever written, namely, the epitaph on Charles II., and "The Commons Petition to the King." The first is too well known to be given here, but the second may, perhaps, be not quite so familiar, and it may be permitted to quote it here:

In all humility we crave

Our Sovereign may be our Slave,
And humbly beg that he may be
Betrayed to us most loyally;

And if he pleases to lay down

His sceptre, dignity, and crown,

We'll make him for the time to come
The greatest Prince in Christendom.

THE KING'S ANSWER.

Charles, at this time having no need,
Thanks you as much as if he did!

These epigrams contain all the elements of the best political verse, and have the merit of terseness and brevity, which are wanting in the longer and more laboured compositions of Dryden. It was said of Rochester by Sir Car Scroop, whom he had furiously satirised:

Thou canst hurt no man's fame with thy ill word;
Thy pen is full as harmless as thy sword.

This is probably not true, because Rochester was sometimes coarse and disgusting in his personal attacks. And, if it is true, it contains something of a compliment, because it is the function of political satire rather to prick than to wound. The brightness and pungency of the raillery should make the victim laugh almost in spite of himseif. And this is what Dryden himself claims to have done in his "Absalom and Achitophel," for he remarks that the person for whom the character of Zimri was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury.

The strength of Defoe lies in his prose writings. Yet his political poems must rank high for their practical importance. They lack many of the qualities of the finest political verse, but some of them. obtained a wide popularity. The "True-born Englishman" was the greatest success of all. Defoe was moved to write it by the fact that some people had taunted William III. with being a foreigner. This monarch admired Defoe, and admitted him to an intimacy which was honourable to them both. The taunt therefore angered Defoe, and he vented his indignation in the "True-born Englishman." He not only turned the tables upon the English in the following lines:

A true-born Englishman's a contradiction,

In speech an irony, in fact a fiction,

A metaphor invented to express

A man akin to all the universe!

but he went further and charged them with disloyalty to the king: He must have been a madman to rely

On English gentlemen's fidelity;

The foreigners have faithfully obeyed him,

And none but Englishmen have e'er betrayed him.

The success of the poem was enormous. In a very short time nine genuine and twelve pirated editions were published, and 80,000 copies were sold in the streets. It was an epoch-making book in Defoe's life. It became his title to fame, and he loved afterwards to describe his works as being written by the author of "The Trueborn Englishman." Defoe's other political verses are much less well known. "The Mock Mourners," however, went through seven editions in its day. "The Ode to the Pillory," too, is a famous political poem, because it achieved a great and immediate popularity, and because it must have had some effect in putting the High Church party to a perpetual shame. There is a fine ring of manly independence in the following lines:

Tell them the men that placed him here

Are scandals to the times;

Are at a loss to find his guilt,

And can't commit his crimes !

To the period of William III. belongs that extraordinary production, "Lilliburlero." It is a specimen of that kind of political verse which consists of popular songs rather than of satire. Though very different in aim and in form, they are just as truly political verse as the best satire. Both are alike in dealing directly with politics and in exerting directly practical, and sometimes important, influence in the political world. "Lilliburlero" is the veriest rubbish as a poem, but, unworthy as it is, it has won for itself an important place in literary history. It contributed in no slight degree to the Revolution of 1688, and Wharton, who claimed to be the author of it, boasted that he sung a king out of three kingdoms. Its popularity was rarely, if ever, equalled. "The whole army, and at last the people," says Bishop Burnet, "both in city and country, were singing it perpetually, and perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect."

The collection called the State Poems belongs to this period also. One of the best things in it is the epigram on Somers, which may be given here:

ON SOME VOTES AGAINST THE Lord Somers.

When envy does at Athens rise,

And swells the town with murmurs loud,

Not Aristides, just and wise,

Can scape the moody, factious crowd.

Each vote augments the common cry,

While he that holds the fatal shell

Can give no cause or reason why,

But being great and doing well.

It might have been expected that Swift and Pope would both have contributed something notable to English political verse. But this is not the case. Swift possessed indeed an admirable vein of irony, but he was pre-eminently a prose-writer. Pope, indeed, aspired to be a satirist. He wished, he said, to

Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men,
Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car,
Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star.

Moreover, he fancied that he succeeded, for he writes:

Yes!-I am proud-I must be proud to see

Men not afraid of God afraid of me,
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.

Yet his satire, like that of Horace, was rather ethical than political. The names of Churchill and Akenside cannot be entirely passed over, though they contributed little to the political verse of the period. The fame of the latter, indeed, as a political verse-writer depends upon a single poem, called the "Epistle to Curio," which is an admirable satire upon Pulteney for his desertion of the Whig principles which he had so loudly professed. The collection of poems known as the "Rolliad " is nothing more than a series of lampoons upon Pitt and his party, but they are very amusing. And they had their sting, and were remembered, as the following story shows. Ellis, who was one of the contributors, wrote a bitter satire upon Pitt, whom he described as

Pert without fire, without experience sage.

It so happened that at a later period he became a follower of Pitt, and co-operated with Canning in writing in the "Anti-Jacobin." Canning introduced him to Pitt, who had not forgotten his former association with the "Rolliad." Ellis was evidently embarrassed, but Pitt, with admirable tact, set him at his ease by a felicitous quotation from the Æneid.

Immo age, et a prima dic, hospes, origine nobis.

The writings of Wolcot, who wrote under the name of "Peter Pindar," cannot be passed over in silence, for they form some of the most successful political verse of the latter half of the eighteenth century. This remarkable man first practised as a physician, then took orders, and went out to the West Indies to fill a family living, and finally returned to England and turned painter and political rhymer. He was everything by starts and nothing long. But that did not prevent him from achieving a wide popularity as a poet. Not that his verses possessed much literary finish, but they tickled the popular fancy and were very amusing. Indeed, he is one of the few political verse-writers who have exerted a real practical influence on the world of politics. It is said that his pungent satire on George III. was so annoying that the Government offered him a considerable pension to desist from writing for the future.

The paper known as the "Anti-Jacobin," which was founded in 1797 by Canning and his friends, contains some of the finest political verse ever written. The paper had a short life and a merry one, for it had a lease of existence of only about nine months. But it is needless to say that some of its pieces have become classical. Canning, Frere, and Ellis were among the contributors, and even Pitt himself is said to have had a hand in it. The lines on Fox's bust beginning