Note 11 — Chapter I · THE SATIRIC SPIRIT
Reading edition
“Wolves use their teeth against you, bulls their horn; Why, but that each is to the manner born?” Satires, I, 1. Conington, 46.
Some modern echoes are heard. Says Byron,—
“Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen; You doubt—see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean.” Hints from Horace.
Taine applies his general theory to this instance:
“No wonder if in England a novelist writes satires. A gloomy and reflective man is impelled to it by his character; he is still further impelled by the surrounding manners.” Hist. of Eng. Lit. IV, 166.
In Shaw’s An Unsocial Socialist, one character says of another: “Besides, Gertrude despises everyone, even us. Or rather, she doesn’t despise anyone in particular, but is contemptuous by nature, just as you are stout.”