Post-Augustan Satire by Thomas Lockwood (review)

POST-AUGUSTAN SATIRE BY THOMAS LOCKWOOD (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. 198 pages) Everybody knows that verse satire seems to fade away in the later eighteenth century or "Post-Augustan" period. Just how this fading happens, however, has never been clearly understood. Thomas Lockwood 's new study of an old subject goes far to illuminate the death of verse satire and to furnish suggestions as to what it was that replaced it. The subtitle of Professor Lockwood's book, "Charles Churchill and Satirical Poetry, 1750-1800," is aptly chosen, for this fun-loving, fightloving writer functions as a pivot point: in his major works, especially The Rosciad and The Prophecy of Famine, the reader can see a pronounced tendency to abandon the earlier Augustan manner (exemplified by Dryden and Pope) of keeping the satirist's personality in the background or completely hidden. In Churchill's strongest verses there is a movement toward revealing the poet's unique character, its strengths and boasts as well as its weaknesses and sensitivities: "the satiric method of direct abuse as Churchill makes use of it may be said to be more obviously a means of expressing strong personal feeling" (p. 142). The implication of Lockwood's study (it needs to be said more directly) is that as the Augustan satirist moves toward the close of the century he moves ever closer to a lyrical mode which is defined by the overt expression of feelings emanating from the inner psyche. Finally, at the end of the period, with the emergence of Byron, a Janus-figure who mixes the Neoclassical and the Romantic, the satiric personality is all but crowded off the stage of poetry. The centripetal personalisms of the early nineteenth century poets leave little room for the centrifugal, society-oriented stance of the traditional Augustan satirists. At the end of the period, the aspiring writer can choose "either to be a poet and nota satirist, or to be a satirist and not a poet — but not both" (p. 182). As Lockwood acknowledges, this is of course an exaggeration, yet it contains the essence of what was happening in the history of literature around 1800. That not only poetry but all of English culture was drifting (not marching) toward an increasingly subjective assessment of life and art during the last half of the 1700's is of course a commonplace in the history of ideas; and there are moments in Post-Augustan Satire when one wishes its author had made more of an effort to align his particular topic with the broad currents of later eighteenth century thought. Still, Lockwood 's findings add to our understanding of satire, a subject which is always as Protean as it is fascinating. PETER THORPE* PETER THORPE is Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Colorado at Denver. He has published a book, Eighteenth Century English Poetry, and a number of articles and reviews on Augustan literature. 172VOL 34 NO 2(SPRING 1980) ...