In what other way could he so surely have put his finger on the raw of Puritan and Cavalier? As they read Mr. Dooley's gloss upon their lapses from their own principles, they could but feel themselves disarmed even as they were lunged at. And then Mr. Dunne's great success in keeping out everything like personal bitterness, his deep and unfailing well of pure laughter, the wholesome democratic optimism which betrays itself in his very audacities of ridicule of dignitaries, make his satirical work of a class by itself, so broad in its reach, and so irresistible in its appeals, when at its best, that judges of the Supreme Court of the United States as they read their decisions caricatured by "Dooley, J." are as convulsed as the chance newspaper reader. It is Hosea Biglow come to life again, and writing prose instead of poetry, while speaking Irish brogue in place of Yankee slang.

"Sir, it is intended to be low; it is satire," said Dr. Johnson, when Boswell objected to Pope's phrase, "ne'er looks forward farther than his nose." "The expression," went on the Doctor, "is debased to debase the character." Yet on another occasion he contended that the coarse and savage personal diatribes then current in the House of Commons were less objectionable than would be politer methods. "Abuse is not so dangerous when there is no vehicle of wit or delicacy, no subtle conveyance. The difference between coarse and refined abuse is as the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow." Boswell was, as ever, ready with his capping citation from the poet Young:

"As the soft plume gives swiftness to the dart,
Good breeding sends the satire to the heart."

Satire in good literary form, such as has been, for the most part, referred to in the foregoing, is not, however, the only kind, and perhaps not always the most effective. It is not your correctly made book, said Voltaire, but your tiny brochure that does the business with the people. So it has often happened that a biting phrase from speech or newspaper article, an extreme characterization of a man in the public eye, a taunt, a violent misrepresentation even, have struck home where more elaborate and studied attack has failed. We have seen even that undaunted politician, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, shrinking from the cry of "the dear loaf," raised so shrill and persistent against his fiscal proposals. It is highly noteworthy, by the way, that in this great contemporary political controversy in England, nearly all the wits and satirists have been arrayed against the Government and the Colonial Secretary. "Punch" has put a fresh point upon its graver to caricature Mr. Chamberlain, and the

inimitable Mr. Gould, in the "Westminster Gazette," has devoted to him side-splitting cartoon after cartoon, saturated with that sarcasm which wounds but does not rankle. This rallying of the English satirists against the Government falls in well with what was said earlier about the tendency of political satire to enlist in the ranks of the Opposition.

But

It should not be necessary to put in a warning against supposing that satirical treatment of a government, or a political opponent, or of a large question before the country, can alone so influence the popular mind as to snatch a verdict from it. The satirists are, after all, only the skirmishers of the political army. They beat up the enemy. They discover his weak positions. They challenge him to issue forth to battle. when the fight is really on, it must be decided by the impact of the infantry and artillery of serious argument. It is one thing to raise a laugh, but another to carry conviction. And if a cause is good, and in the hands of able men, ready to meet all comers in debate, satirical attacks upon it do but afford its champions the better opportunity. "Glittering generalities," sneered Choate, referring to the Declaration of Independence. "Yes," was Emerson's noble and effective reply, “they do glitter, those truths of the Declaration. They have a right to glitter." It was a fine example of the dignified retort on flippancy. The Rev. Homer Wilbur of Jaalam gives us a wholesome reminder on this subject. "Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire," he wrote. "There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine."

Too strong a satirical bent is as fatal to a public man in a democracy as is a reputation for levity. The late Speaker Reed is the best example of this that easily comes to mind. He had great political ambitions, as he had great powers. But unfortunately for him, one of his native gifts was a talent for satire. Too often for his own political good, it ran away with him. The temptation to answer a fool according to his folly was too strong for him. His tongue could not refrain from fitting weakness or demagoguery in the men of the day with their appropriate. characterization in biting epigram. He lashed and girded right and left. It was fun for his friends and the newspapers,-fun for him, undoubtedly, in his big-boy enjoyment of his own vocabulary, but he left resentful enemies along his track where he might as well have had admiring supporters. Moreover, Mr. Reed's continual tendency to see every thing in the distorted light of satire, with the touch of personal bitterness which showed itself after the frustration of his political hopes, really disabled him, in a measure, from rising to the height of great public service in a crisis. He made no secret of the fact that he was opposed to the war

with Spain, and especially to the insular annexations which followed it. Yet the most that he could do was to lavish his wit upon those who were directly responsible. He gibed at President McKinley as "the Emperor of Expediency," and concocted many an epigram at the expense of the expansionists,—like his saying that he already had more country than he could really love. But he had not the port of a man prepared to front a great emergency, and to go to his countrymen with words of weighty remonstrance and passionate appeal. The satirist had killed the statesHe could set off squibs, but had no stomach for the thunder of the captains and the shouting. Even if he had essayed to get a hearing for sober speech, people would have been looking for witticisms rather than wisdom, and he would have found himself gravely hampered by the reputation he had built up as a man of smart sayings but not of large

man.

utterance.

The peril which the ex-Speaker did not escape is one that evidently besets the satirical writer as well. Satire is good medicine, but bad daily food. As one of our greatest political satirists,-Lowell,-has himself asserted, in the guise of editor of the "Biglow Papers," "The danger of the satirist is that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing gloves, and yet forget that the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. ** * I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,—aliquid sufflaminandus erat. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with aqua fortis, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. Est ars etiam maledicendi, says Scaliger." Where Hosea Biglow perceived a pitfall for the feet of the satirist and drew back, lesser mortals may well hesitate to press forward. Satire used in excess and applied to all persons and subjects becomes as monotonous as the most prosy preaching.

Nor can that political satirist hope for true success who is not able to rid himself of the suspicion of being moved by personal enmity. He must make it clear that his satire is directed against a bad principle, and not inspired by rancor against any man as such. This was the rule which Aristophanes laid down for himself. He averred, in the "Wasps," that he had never attacked mere men, but that, when he saw harm threatened to the state by the action of even the greatest, he had assailed

them "with the spirit of a Hercules." This sense of public duty, with a scorn, like that of Aristophanes himself, of a bribe in any form, can alone win respect for political satire, or make it truly and lastingly an effective instrument. Yet, of course, bad principles in the vague mean nothing. We know them only as embodied in a bad man. Hence there must be personal directness in dealing with the actual exponent of the mischief-foreboding principle. You cannot make it ridiculous, without trying to make ridiculous also the man in whom, for the time being, it is writ large before the public gaze. Old Thomas Fuller, importuned by a swearing mendicant, said he would gladly have starved the fellow's profanity if he could at the same time have fed his hunger. But no such dichotomy is possible for either charity or satire. Abstractions cannot be satirized. Only as impersonated can the laugh be turned on them. "It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan that he never exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if at all." But there is a difference between being personal and being hostile. Satire, as a political weapon, may be flashed with its keen edge in such a way, not, indeed, as to avoid personal hurts, but so as to cause no wound which will not heal by first intention, while the satirist may make it evident to all beholders that he cherishes no personal animosity, and would be the first to do a kindness to his victim if only he would abandon his public vices.

M

LOUIS LUCIPIA

PARIS

I.

ARCH seventeenth, 1871, was so calm a day in Paris that no

one could have imagined that the next morning an insurrection was to break forth and by evening make itself master of the entire city. National feeling, it is true, had run high when it was known that the Prussians had committed on the first of March the last outrage of occupying Paris, but on their departure quiet had been restored in the streets. There was no excitement even when on March eleventh General Vinoy at one stroke suppressed on the ground of a state of siege six papers of the extreme republican wing. These were "Le Cri du Peuple" of Jules Vallès, "Le Vengeur" of Félix Pyat, "Le Mot d'Ordre" of Henri Rochefort, "La Bouche de fer" of Paschal Grousset, "Le Père Duchêne" of Vermersch, Alphonse Humbert, and Maxime Vuillaume, and "La Caricature" of Pilotell. It is true that the National Guard had possessed themselves of the cannon of Montmartre, that these might not be surrendered to the Prussians after the occupation. In fact, according to the convention concluded between Jules Favre and Bismarck, the National Guard could not be disarmed. But, since these cannon were no longer in danger, they were no longer guarded with jealous care by a large body of troops. "Le Moniteur universel," a paper that had no sympathy with revolt, said on March seventeenth, " Paris has become entirely quiet. There is nothing like an hour of silent meditation to restore order to the soul. The sentinels of the park of artillery at Montmartre, four only in number, will not be maintained indefinitely. Even this morning one hardly noticed them. At Belleville no other attitude is taken than that of a gate where one goes where he will as soon as permission has been given in due form." This statement made by a paper essentially conservative, a statement confirmed by the parliamentary investigation ordered by the Assembly of Versailles, shows that public order was no longer endangered by those unguarded cannon. The battalions of the National Guard thinned their own ranks, inasmuch as the workshops reopened their doors and the workmen preferred to earn their daily wage rather than receive their pay of thirty sous.

There was, to be sure, the Comité Central, but how was this Comité

Translated by C. H. C. Wright of Harvard University.

Copyright, 1903, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.