satire was founded by Washington Irving, of which Judge Haliburton (Sam
Slick), Paulding, Holmes, Artemus Ward, and Dudley Warner are the chief
names.

Since the third and fourth decades of our century, in other words,
since the epoch of the Reform Bill and the Chartist agitation, satire
has more and more tended to lose its acid and its venom, to slough the
dark sardonic sarcasm of past days and to don the light sportive garb
of the social humorist and epigrammist. Robustious bludgeoning has gone
out of fashion, and in its place we have the playful satiric wit,
sparkling as of well-drawn Moet or Clicquot, of Mortimer Collins, H.S.
Leigh, Arthur Locker and Frederick Locker-Lampson, W.S. Gilbert, Austin
Dobson, Bret Harte, F. Anstey, Dr. Walter C. Smith, and many other
graceful and delightful social satirists whose verses are household
words amongst us. From week to week also there appear in the pages of
that trenchant social censor, _Punch_, and the other high-class
comico-satiric journals, many pieces of genuine and witty social
satire. Every year the demand seems increasing, and yet the supply
shows no signs of running dry.

Political satire, in its metrical form, has had from time to time a
temporary revival of popularity in such compositions as James Russell
Lowell's inimitable _Biglow Papers_, as well as in more recent volumes,
of which Mr. Owen Seaman's verse is an example; while are not its prose
forms legion in the pages of our periodical press? It has, however, now
lost that vitriolic quality which made it so scorching and offensively
personal. The man who wrote nowadays as did Dryden, and Junius, and
Canning, or, in social satire, as did Peter Pindar and Byron, would be
forthwith ostracized from literary fellowship.