Note 1 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY
Reading edition
That satire is primarily destructive criticism was asserted by Heinsius in a familiar passage quoted approvingly by Dryden in his Essay on Satire:—“Satire is a kind of poetry—in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended.” The same theory is expressed by De Gubernatis in his Storia della Satira:—“La satira è, sovra ogni cosa, una negazione.”