The Bench and the Pulpit: Conflicting Elements in the Augustan Apology for Satire

Abstract

Augustan theorists of satire treat their subject in a characteristically binary manner: the model is either Juvenal or Horace; the mode is either tragic or comic and the style either high or low; the object is either vice or folly; the subject is either specific or general. Such inquiries, of course, are no different in kind from the sort of analyses we find of other art forms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Decisions about models and modes, object and subject fulfill the conventional moral and aesthetic responsibilities of a neoclassical critic. One additional question posed by Augustan writers, however, is not so conventional-is satire legal or illegal? More than any other literary form, satire raises questions about libel and censorship, and Augustan critics integrate a knowledge of Roman and English law in their examinations of the history and merit of satire.' Dryden and Addison are apt subjects for a study of the Augustan theory of satire, for a host of reasons: both write a great deal of satire, and about satire at great length; each represents an extreme in the practice of satire; both share a characteristically legal vocabulary. In other words, while Dryden and Addison advocate diametrically opposed styles of satire, each employs the language of the law to support his position. Dryden is an apologist for personal satire, a fitting posture for the poet whose Mac Flecknoe is a masterpiece of ad hominem scurrility. His defense of personal satire emerges from his Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), Dryden's scholarly preface to his own translations of Juvenal and Persius. In this essay, Dryden establishes a civic, collectivist rationale for the art form he has mastered. Personal satire, he argues, is justified, because in punishing malefactors it functions as an adjunct to the secular court system: