An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad Part 1

An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad.

by Walter Harte.

INTRODUCTION

Since the first publication of Walter Harte's _An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad_,[1] it has reappeared more than once: the unsold sheets of the first edition were included in _A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose, Which Have Been Publish'd on Occasion of the Dunciad_ (1732), and the _Essay_ is also found in at least three late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century collections of poetry.[2]

For several reasons, however, it makes sense to reprint the _Essay_ again. The three collections are scarce and have forbiddingly small type; I know of no other twentieth-century reprinting; and, perhaps most important, Aubrey Williams claims that "the critical value for the _Dunciad_ of Harte's poem has not been fully appreciated."[3] Its value can best be substantiated, or disputed, if it is rescued from its typographical limbo in the collections and reprinted from its more attractive first edition.

Probably the immediate reason for the _Essay_ was Harte's admiration for Pope, which arose in part from personal grat.i.tude. On 9 February 1727, Harte wrote an unidentified correspondent that "Mr. Pope was pleased to correct every page" of his forthcoming _Poems on Several Occasions_ "with his own hand." Furthermore, Harte may have learned that Pope had pet.i.tioned Lady Sarah Cowper, in 1728, to use her influence to obtain him a fellowship in Exeter College, Oxford.[4]

But however appealing the _Essay_ may be as an installment on Harte's debt to Pope, there must obviously be better reasons for reprinting it. Harte himself doubtless had additional reasons for writing it. To understand them and the poem, we must also understand, at least in broad outline, the two traditional ways of evaluating satire which Harte and others of his age had inherited. One of them was distinctly at odds with Harte's aims; to the other he gave his support and made his own contribution.

One tradition stressed the "lowness" of satire, in itself and compared with other genres. This tradition, moreover, had at least two sources: the practice of Elizabethan satirists and the critical custom of a.s.signing satire to a middle or low position in the hierarchy of genres.

From the time of _Piers Plowman_, it was characteristic of English satirists "to taxe the common abuses and vice of the people in rough and bitter speaches."[5] This native character was reenforced by the Elizabethan a.s.sumption that there should be similarities between satire and its supposed etymological forebears--the satyrs, legendary half men, half goats of ancient Greece. Believing that the Roman satirists Persius and Juvenal had imitated the uncouth manners and vituperative diction of the satyrs, Elizabethan satirists likewise strove to be as rough, harsh, and licentious as possible.[6] Despite the objections to the satire-satyr etymology stated by Isaac Casaubon,[7] scurrilous satire, especially as a political weapon, was a recognizable subspecies in England at least to 1700. The anonymous author, for instance, of _A Satyr Against Common-Wealths_ (1684) contended in his preface that it is "_as disagreeable to see a Satyr Cloath'd in soft and effeminate Language, as to see a Woman scold and vent her self in_ Billingsgate _Rhetorick in a gentile and advantageous Garb_." But as Harte certainly realized, _The Dunciad_ differed greatly from unvarnished abuse, and thus required different standards of critical judgment.

Harte also rejected the critical habit of giving satire a relatively low rank in the scale of literary genres. This habit can be traced to Horace, who belittled the literary status of his own satires,[8] and it was prominent in the Renaissance. The place of satire in a hierarchical list of Julius Caesar Scaliger is perhaps typical: "'And the most n.o.ble, of course, are hymns and paeans. In the second place are songs and odes and scolia, which are concerned with the praises of brave men. In the third place the epic, in which there are heroes and other lesser personages. Tragedy together with comedy follows this order; nevertheless comedy will hold the fourth place apart by itself.

After these, satires, then exodia, lusus, nuptial songs, elegies, monodia, songs, epigrams.'"[9] Similar rankings of satire frequently recurred in the neo-cla.s.sical period,[10] as did the Renaissance supposition that each genre has a style and subject matter appropriate to it. This supposition discouraged any "mixing" of the genres: in Richard Blackmore's words, "all comick Manners, witty Conceits and Ridicule" should be barred from heroic poetry.[11] The influence of the genres theories even after Pope's death may be shown by the fact that Pope, for the very reason that he had failed to work in the major genres, was often ranked below such epic or tragic poets as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.[12]

One senses the foregoing critical a.s.sumptions about satire behind much of the early comment on _The Dunciad_. Most of the critics, to be sure, were anything but impartial; in many instances they were smarting from Pope's satire and sought any critical weapons available for retaliation. But it will not do to dismiss these men or their responses to _The Dunciad_ as inconsequential; they had the weight of numbers on their side and, more important, the authority of long-established att.i.tudes toward satire.

Although it is frequently impossible to determine exactly which critics Harte was answering in his _Essay_, brief ill.u.s.tration of two prominent types of attack can indicate what he had to vindicate _The Dunciad_ against. One of those types resembled Blackmore's objection to a mixing of genres. If satire should be barred from heroic poetry, the reverse, for some critics, was also true, and Pope should not have used epic allusions and devices in _The Dunciad_. Edward Ward, for one, thought the poem an incongruous mixture "against all rule."[13]

Pope's violation of "rule" seemed almost a desecration of epic to Thomas Cooke; of the mock-heroic games in Book II of _The Dunciad_, he complained that "to imitate _Virgil_ is not to have Games, and those beastly and unnatural, because _Virgil_ has n.o.ble and reasonable Games, but to preserve a Purity of Manners, Propriety of Conduct founded on Nature, a Beauty and Exactness of Stile, and continued Harmony of Verse concording with the Sense."[14]

The other kind of attack accused Pope of wasting his talents in _The Dunciad_, but palliated blame by reminding him of his demonstrated ability in more worthy poetical pursuits. This was one of Ward's resources; perhaps disingenuously, he professed amazement that a poet with Pope's "_sublime Genius_," born for "an Epick Muse," "sacred Hymns," and "heav'nly Anthems," would lower himself to mock at "_trifling Foibles_" or "the Starvlings of _Apollo's_ Train."[15] More concerned with Pope's potentialities than with his recent ignominy, George Lyttelton nevertheless made essentially the same point: Pope could never become the English Virgil if he "let meaner Satire ...

stain the Glory" of his "n.o.bler Lays."[16] And Aaron Hill wrote an allegorical poem to show Pope the error of _The Dunciad_ and to suggest means of escape from entombment "in his _own_ PROFUND."[17] In such censure we perhaps glimpse an opinion attributable to the still influential genres theories: a poet of "_sublime Genius_" should work in a more sublime poetic genre than satire.

In opposing this low view of satire, Harte drew upon ideas more congenial to his purposes and far more congenial to _The Dunciad_.

Originating with the Renaissance commentaries on the formal verse satire of the Romans, their lineage was just as venerable as that of the low view. These critical concepts were probably just as influential too, for they continued to be reiterated by commentaries down to and beyond Pope's time.

Whatever their quarrels, the Renaissance commentaries were virtually united in regarding satire as exalted moral instruction and satirists as ethical philosophers. Casaubon's choice for this sort of praise was Persius; Heinsius and Stapylton likened their respective choices, Horace and Juvenal, to Socrates and Plato; and Rigault considered all three satirists to be philosophers, distinguished only by the different styles which their different periods required. The satirist might disguise himself as a jester, but only to make his moral wisdom more easily digestible; peeling away his mask, "we find in him all the G.o.ds together," "_Maxims or Sentences, that like the lawes of nature, are held sacred by all Nations_."[18]

Dryden's _Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire_ drew heavily and eclectically upon these commentaries, investing their judgments with a new popularity and authority. Although Dryden condemned Persius for obscurity and other defects, he agreed with Casaubon that Persius excels as a moral philosopher and that "moral doctrine" is more important to satire than wit or urbanity. Dryden knew, moreover, that the satirist's inculcation of "moral doctrine"

meant a dual purpose, a pattern of blame and praise--not only "the scourging of vice" but also "exhortation to virtue"--long recognized as a definitive characteristic of formal verse satire.[19] But if Dryden insisted on the moral dignity of satire, he laid equal stress on the dignity attainable through verse and numbers. After complimenting Boileau's _Lutrin_ for its successful imitation of Virgil, its blend of "the majesty of the heroic" with the "venom" of satire, Dryden speaks of "the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as requisite in this [satire], as in heroic poetry itself, of which the satire is undoubtedly a species"; and earlier in the _Discourse_ he had called heroic poetry "certainly the greatest work of human nature."[20]

It is clear that Harte's _Essay_ belongs in the tradition of criticism established by the commentaries on cla.s.sical satire and continued by Dryden. Like these predecessors, Harte believes that satire is moral philosophy, teaching "the n.o.blest Ethicks to reform mankind" (p. 6).

Like them again, he believes that to fulfill this purpose satire must not only lash vice but recommend virtue, at least by implication:

Blaspheming _Capaneus_ obliquely shows T'adore those G.o.ds _Aeneas_ fears and knows, (p. 10)[21]

But perhaps Harte's overriding concern was to do for satire (with _The Dunciad_ as his focus) what Dryden's _Discourse_ had done: to rea.s.sert its dignity and majesty.

Although Harte is quite careful to distinguish satire from epic poetry, the total effect of his _Essay_ is to blur this distinction and to raise _The Dunciad_ very nearly to the level of genuine epic.

The term "_Epic Satire_" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in _The Dunciad_, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on _The Dunciad_ with a sneer.)[22] Harte's claim that

_Books and the Man_ demands as much, or more, Than _He who wander'd to the Latian sh.o.r.e_ (p. 9)

has a similar effect. The greatest epic poets and satirists have always transcended rules to follow "Nature's light"; Pope, over-topping them all, has "still corrected Nature as she stray'd"

(pp. 19, 21). But perhaps Harte's most successful attempt to elevate _The Dunciad_ comes in section two of his poem. Unlike Dryden, in whose _Discourse_ the account of the "progress" of satire is confined almost exclusively to a few Roman writers, Harte begins his account of its progress with Homer and brings it down to Pope. Deriving the ancestry of _The Dunciad_ from Homer, the greatest epic poet, obviously enhances Pope's satire. Perhaps less obviously, by extending Dryden's account to the present, Harte makes _The Dunciad_ not only a chronological _terminus ad quem_ but, far more important, the fruit of centuries of slowly acc.u.mulating mastery and wisdom.

The strategies mentioned thus far const.i.tute one series of answers to critics who charged Pope with debasing true epic. But Harte also addressed himself to such critics more directly. Although Aubrey Williams (p. 54) has clearly demonstrated Harte's awareness that the world of _The Dunciad_ does in one sense sully epic beauties, at the same time, I think, Harte knew that the epic poems to which _The Dunciad_ continually alludes remain fixed, unsullied polestars; otherwise the reader of the poem would lack a way of measuring the meanness of its characters and principles. The "charms of _Parody_" in _The Dunciad_ provide a contrast between its dark, fallen world and the undimmed l.u.s.ter of epic realms (p. 10). By using the ambiguous word _parody_, which in the eighteenth century could mean either ridicule or straight imitation,[23] Harte skillfully suggests the complex purpose of Pope's epic backdrop. The dunces, not Pope, ridicule the epic world by their words and deeds; but in turn, this world ridicules them simply by being "imitated" and incorporated in _The Dunciad_. And its incorporation is by no means equivalent to the pollution of epic. That, Harte hints, is the achievement of scribblers like Blackmore (p. 12). It is they who inadvertently write mock-epics, parodies which degrade their great models; Pope, nominally writing mock-epic, actually approaches epic achievement.

Harte's reply to those who believed Pope had wasted his talent in attacking "the Refuse of the Town" centers in the stanza beginning on p. 24 but can be found elsewhere as well. Literary "Refuse," he realized, could not safely be ignored, for he at least came close to understanding that it was "the metaphor by which bigger deteriorations," social and moral, "are revealed" (Williams, p. 14).

... Rules, and Truth, and Order, Dunces strike; Of Arts, and Virtues, enemies alike. (p. 24)

Ultimately, then, Harte seemed aware that the dunces pose a colossal threat, a threat which warrants Pope's numerous echoes of _Paradise Lost_. Harte's _Essay_, in fact, contains several echoes of the same poem. Though, like most of Pope's, these Miltonic echoes are given a comic turn which indicates a wide gap between the real satanic host and its London auxiliary, there is little doubt that Harte grasped the underlying seriousness of his mentor's a.n.a.logies and his own.

A few words remain to be said about Boileau's _Discourse of Satires Arraigning Persons by Name_, which so far as I know appeared with all early printings of Harte's _Essay_.

The _Discourse_ was first published in 1668, with the separately printed edition of Boileau's ninth satire; in the same year it was included in a collected edition of the satires. It was occasioned, evidently, by a critic's complaint that the modern satirist, departing from ancient practice, "offers insults to individuals."[24]

The only English translation of the _Discourse_ that I have discovered before 1730 appears in volume two (1711) of a three-volume translation of Boileau's works. This, however, is not the same translation as the one accompanying Harte's _Essay_; it is noticeably less fluent and lacks (as does the French) the subt.i.tle "arraigning persons by name."

The 1730 translation is faithful to the original, and the subt.i.tle calls attention to the aptness of the _Discourse_ as a defense of Pope's satiric practice.[25] It is so apt, indeed, that one could almost suspect Pope himself of making the translation and submitting it to Harte or his publisher. Pope had already invoked Boileau's name and precedent in the letter from "William Cleland"; nothing could be more logical than for Pope to turn the esteemed Boileau's self-justification to his own ends.

Cornell College

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] Robert W. Rogers, _The Major Satires of Alexander Pope_, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XL (Urbana, 1955), p. 140, dates the Essay January 7-14, 1731, N. S., on the evidence of _The Grub-Street Journal_; No. 484 of _The London Evening-Post_ (Sat.u.r.day, January 9, to Tuesday, January 12, 1731) advertises its publication for the following day.

[2] Rogers, p. 141. Thomas Park, _Supplement to the British Poets_ (London, 1809), VIII, 21-36; Alexander Chalmers, _The Works of the English Poets_ (London, 1810), XVI, 348-352; Robert Anderson, _A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain_ (London, 1794), IX, 825-982 [_sic_].

[3] _Pope's "Dunciad": A Study of Its Meaning_ (Baton Rouge, 1955), p.

54n.

[4] _The Correspondence of Alexander Pope_, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), II, 430 n., 497.

[5] George Puttenham, _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), in _Elizabethan Critical Essays_, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), II, 27.

[6] Alvin Kernan, _The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance_, Yale Studies in English, CXLII (New Haven, 1959), pp.

55, 58, 62; Oscar James Campbell, _Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida"_ (San Marino, 1959), pp. 24-25, 27, 29-30.

[7] _De Satyrica Graecorum Poesi, & Romanorum Satira Libri Duo_ (Paris, 1605).

[8] J. F. D'Alton, _Roman Literary Theory and Criticism: A Study in Tendencies_ (London, New York, and Toronto, 1931), pp. 356, 414 and n.; George Converse Fiske, _Lucilius and Horace: A Study in the Cla.s.sical Theory of Imitation_, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 7 (Madison, 1920), p. 443.

[9] Bernard Weinberg, _A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance_ (Chicago, 1961), II, 745. For similar appraisals of satire, see also I, 148-149; II, 759, 807; and Puttenham, pp. 26-28.

[10] E.g., John Dennis, "The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry" (1704), in _The Critical Works_, ed. Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore, 1939-1943), I, 338; Joseph Trapp, _Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philsophy at Oxford_ (London, 1742), p. 153.

[11] _Essays upon Several Subjects_ (London, 1716-1717), I, 76.