After the defeat of Culloden, satire languished for a while, to revive
again during the ministry of the Earl of Bute, when everything Scots
came in for condemnation, and when Smollett and John Wilkes belaboured
each other in the _Briton_ and the _North Briton_, in pamphlet,
pasquinade, and parody, until at last Lord Bute withdrew from the
contest in disgust, and suspended the organ over which the author of
_Roderick Random_ presided. The satirical effusions of this epoch are
almost entirely worthless, the only redeeming feature being the fact
that Goldsmith was at that very moment engaged in throwing off those
delicious _morceaux_ of social satire contained in _The Citizen of the
World_. Johnson, a few years before, had set the fashion for some time
with his two satires written in free imitation of Juvenal--_London_,
and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_. But from 1760 onward until the close
of the century, when Ellis, Canning, and Frere opened what may be
termed the modern epoch of satire, the influence paramount was that of
Goldsmith. Fielding and Smollett were both satirists of powerful and
original stamp, but they were so much else besides that their influence
was lost in that of the genial author of the _Deserted Village_ and
_Retaliation_. His _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a satire, upon sober,
moderate principles, against the vice of the upper classes, as typified
in the character of Mr. Thornhill, while the sketch of Beau Tibbs in
_The Citizen of the World_ is a racy picture of the out-at-elbows,
would-be man of fashion, who seeks to pose as a social leader and
arbiter of taste when he had better have been following a trade.

The next revival of the popularity of satire takes place towards the
commencement of the third last decade of the eighteenth century, when,
using the vehicle of the epistolary mode, an anonymous writer, whose
identity is still in dispute, attacked the monarch, the government,
and the judicature of the country, in a series of letters in which