pulses, not always original and genuine, his influence passed away, like the influence of meaner men. Living rebelliously, and dying young, he left a dubious personal name; and one has to step aside from the highways of literature, and with sentiments more generous than those of the crowd, if one wishes to find and do honour to his early and half-forgotten grave.

POLITICAL SATIRE AND SQUIBS.

BURNS.

LECTURE V.

POLITICAL SATIRE AND SQUIBS.-BURNS.

CHURCHILL, though a man of genius, did not add any thing to the development of the satiric art. He falls into the ranks above Oldham, but below Dryden; and does not interfere with the supremacy of Pope, as the king of finished English Satire. He was, however, the greatest master of ridicule and invective among the English satirists between Pope and Byron, as his contemporary Cowper was of that more amiable and more purely ethical Satire, of which, in Pope's days, Young was the representative. Young's Satires have been quite eclipsed by the fame of his Night Thoughts; a work the sublimity and dark splendour of which is fleaked with the wit and fancy which were essential constituents of his mind. His Satires, entitled the Universal Passion, preceded the greatest efforts of Pope: they are grave in tone and purpose, but sparkle with epigram; and are made lively by a peculiar kind of dry shrewdqualities characteristic of their author, who

ness;

to piety and melancholy joined something of the courtier and place-hunter. He lived to a great age, dissatisfied with the proportion which his share of worldly preferment bore to that of the fortunate wits and writers of his younger days.

I now proceed to speak of a class of Satires of which this country has been prolific. I quoted, in a previous Lecture, Lord Bacon's statement, that in Henry the Seventh's time, "swarms and volleys of libels sprang forth, for which five of the common people suffered death." Libels, "pasquils," and the like, have abounded in this country in all periods of excitement. "Like straws," as Selden says, "they show how the wind blows." We have collections containing specimens "from the reign of John to that of Edward the Second;" and to this hour, when any political crisis occurs, broadsides are cried about the streets, ridiculing the leading statesmen in homely doggrel. The British are a satirical people. What nation excels us in satire and caricature? To political satire some of our very best writers have contributed. When we have a King Midas, a thousand channels murmur out the secret of the state of his ears. Our statesmen are known to multitudes only by burlesques of their features. Hence I venture to make an excursion in this political province. I must select a notable man, who has distinguished