Of the same stamp is the mock deification of Claudius by
Seneca, and the Symposium or "Caesars" of Julian the Emperor.
Amongst the moderns we may reckon the "Encomium Moriae" of Erasmus,
Barclay's "Euphormio," and a volume of German authors which my
ingenious friend Mr. Charles Killigrew once lent me. In the English
I remember none which are mixed with prose as Varro's were; but of
the same kind is "Mother Hubbard's Tale" in Spenser, and (if it be
not too vain to mention anything of my own) the poems of "Absalom"
and "MacFlecnoe."
This is what I have to say in general of satire: only, as Dacier
has observed before me, we may take notice that the word satire is
of a more general signification in Latin than in French or English;
for amongst the Romans it was not only used for those discourses
which decried vice or exposed folly, but for others also, where
virtue was recommended. But in our modern languages we apply it
only to invective poems, where the very name of satire is formidable
to those persons who would appear to the world what they are not in
themselves; for in English, to say satire is to mean reflection, as
we use that word in the worst sense; or as the French call it, more
properly, medisance.
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