CHAPTER VII.
SATIRE.
Roger Rabutin de Bussy--M. Dassy--Trajan Boccalini--Pierre Billard--Pietro
Aretino--Felix Hemmerlin--John Giovanni Cinelli--Nicholas Francus--Lorenzo
Valla--Ferrante Pallavicino--Francois Gacon--Daniel Defoe--Du Rosoi--
Caspar Scioppius.
To "sit in the seat of the scorner" has often proved a dangerous position,
as the writers of satires and lampoons have found to their cost, although
their sharp weapons have often done good service in checking the onward
progress of Vice and Folly. All authors have not shown the poet's wisdom
who declared:--
"Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet."
Nor have all the victims of satire the calmness and self-possession of the
philosopher who said: "If evil be said of thee, and it be true, correct
thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those
who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens
had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and
experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his
appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked at him
along the road.
Foremost among the writers of satire stands Count Roger Rabutin de Bussy,
whose mind was jocose, his wit keen, and his sarcasm severe. He was born
in 1618, and educated at a college of Jesuits, where he manifested an
extraordinary avidity for letters and precocious talents.
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