scathing invective, merciless ridicule, and lofty scorn were united to
vigour and polish of style, as well as undeniable literary taste.

After the appearance of the _Letters of Junius_, which, perhaps, have
owed the permanence of their popularity as much to the interest
attaching to the mystery of their authorship as to their intrinsic
merits, political satire may be said to have once more slumbered
awhile. The impression produced by the studied malice of the _Letters_,
and the epigrammatic suggestiveness which appeared to leave as much
unsaid as was said, was enormous, yet, strangely enough, they were
unable to check the growing influence of the school of satire whereof
Goldsmith was the chief founder, and from which the fashionable _jeux
d'esprit_, the sparkling _persiflage_ of the society _flâneurs_ of the
nineteenth century are the legitimate descendants.[20] The decade
1768-78, therefore--that decade when the plays of Goldsmith and
Sheridan were appearing,--witnessed the rise and the development of
that genial, humorous raillery, in prose and verse, of personal foibles
and of social abuses, of which the _Retaliation_ and the Beau Tibbs
papers are favourable examples. These were the distinguishing
characteristics of our satiric literature during the closing decade of
the eighteenth century until the horrors of the French Revolution, and
the sympathy with it which was apparently being aroused in England,
called political satire into requisition once more. Party feeling ran
high with regard to the principles enunciated by the so-called "friends
of freedom". The sentiments of the "Constitutional Tories" found
expression in the bitter, sardonic, vitriolic mockery visible in the
pages of the _Anti-Jacobin_,[21] which did more to check the progress of
nascent Radicalism and the movement in favour of political reform than
any other means employed. Chief-justice Mansfield's strictures and Lord
Braxfield's diatribes alike paled into insignificance beside these