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POPE AND THE ART OF SATIRE
revenge. It is to these that satire should reach if it is to touch the man at whom it is aimed. And to reach these it must pass and salute a whole army of virtues.
If we turn to the great English satirists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, we find that they had this rough but firm grasp of the size and strength, the value and the best points of their adversary. Dryden, before hewing Ahitophel in pieces, gives a splendid and spirited account of the insane valour and inspired cunning of the
'daring pilot in extremity,'
who was more untrustworthy in calm than in storm, and
'Steered too near the rocks to boast his wit.'
The whole is, so far as it goes, a sound and
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