imitation of Juvenal, Persius, and Horace, they out-Juvenal Juvenal by
the violence of the language, besides descending to a depth of personal
scurrility as foreign to the nature of true satire as abuse is alien to
wit. They have long since been consigned to merited oblivion, though in
their day, from the useful and able work done by their author in other
fields of literature, they enjoyed no inconsiderable amount of fame.
Two or three lines from the _Bæviad_ will give a specimen of its
quality:--

"For mark, to what 'tis given, and then declare,
Mean though I am, if it be worth my care.
Is it not given to Este's unmeaning dash,
To Topham's fustian, Reynold's flippant trash,
To Andrews' doggerel where three wits combine,
To Morton's catchword, Greathead's idiot line,
And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant and Merry's Moorfields Whine?"[22]

The early years of the present century still felt the influence of the
sardonic ridicule which prevailed during the closing years of the
previous one, and the satirists who appeared during the first decades
of the former belonged to the robust or energetic order. Their names
and their works are well-nigh forgotten.

We now reach the last of the greater satirists that have adorned our
literature, one who is in many respects a worthy peer of Dryden, Swift,
and Pope. Lord Byron's fame as a satirist rests on three great works,
each of them illustrative of a distinct type of composition. Other
satires he has written, nay, the satiric quality is present more or
less in nearly all he produced; but _The Vision of Judgment_, _Beppo_,
and _Don Juan_ are his three masterpieces in this style of literature.