Dryden's Relation to Germany ■ 7 



vice into reformation ;-^ the true end of satire is the amendement 

 of vices by correction;^* or to reprehend severely vice, ignorance 

 and error."-^ To lampoon another he holds dangerous but justi- 

 fies it on two grounds : first, " to avenge when we have been 

 affronted in the same nature ; or have in any way been notoriously 

 abused and can make ourselves no other reparation " ; and second, 

 " it is an action of virtue to make example of vicious men when 

 they become a public nuisance both for their own amendment and 

 for the terror of others." The most effective attitude to assume 

 in a satire, he maintains, " is a sharp well-mannered way of laugh- 

 ing a folly out of countenance." In the Essay on the Origin 

 and Progress of the Satire, Dryden holds up, as his ideal of char- 

 acterization in satire, his own character sketch of the Duke of 

 Buckingham, whom he satirizes under the name of Zimri in Ab- 

 solom and Achitophel, as a retaliation for the latter's ridicule of 

 him in The Rehearsal}^ 



Wernicke holds that the duty of the satirist is to portray natur- 

 ally the recognized prevailing vices and folHes of the times.^'^ 

 With Dryden he maintains that the best manner of correcting 

 folly in the world is with a laughing countenance (mit lachendem 

 Munde),^^ but to do this much experience and sane reflection are 

 necessary. The lampoon, he justifies also on the ground of being 

 wrongly abused. The prevailing vices and follies he would por- 

 tray only in a general way, so that those who saw their own image 

 in the portrayal would have no cause to be angry with the author. 



23 Foreword to The State of Innocence (1674), Scott-Saintshury, V, 

 p. 100 ff. 



24 Foreword to Absalom and Achitophel (1681), ibid., IV, p. 214. 



"^^ Essay on the Origin and Progress of the Satire (1693), ibid., XIII, 

 p. Iff. 



26 " The character of Zimri in my Absolom is, in my opinion, worth the 

 whole poem: it is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough: ... If I had 

 railed, I might have suffered for it justly: ... I avoided the mention 

 of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides and 

 little extravagances; to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the 

 more obnoxious." " On the Origin and Progress of the Satire," Scott- 

 Saintsbury, XIII, p. 99. 



^-'Palaestra, LXXI, p. 118. 



28 Ibid., p. 117. 



295 



