Satire's View of Sentimentalism 161 Then from the Fable, all so chaste, Trick'd up in antient-modern Taste, . . While Chorus marks the servile Mode With fine Reflexion, in an Ode, Present you with a perfect Piece, Form'd on the Model of old Greece. And he boldly carries the war into the enemy's country when he explains the classical dramatists' need for Chorus and for explanatory "prologues of a mile": "Doubtless the Antients want the Art To strike at once upon the Heart." By way of contrast, he characterizes Shakespeare, ... the Bard, who at one View, Could look the whole Creation through, Who travers'd all the human Heart, Without recourse to Grecian Art. He scorn'd the Modes of Imitation, Of altering, pilfering, and translation, Nor painted Horror, Grief, or Rage, From Models of a former Age, The bright Original he took, And tore the Leaf from Nature's Book. 15 Though a few satirists showed themselves not utterly hostile to romantic notions of critical theory, satire in general was antagonistic to the new tendencies. One aspect of the rise of romanticism which especially drew the fire of satirists was the revival of interest in the Middle Ages and in medieval literature. The pseudo-archaic style of Chatterton's Rowley afforded a happy vehicle for two amusing satires upon the believers in Rowley and upon antiquarians in general. One of these pieces, Mason's Archaeological Epistle to Dean Mittes (1782), 14 reviews the Rowleian controversy in good Rowleian "Ibid., II, 345. 13 Ibid., II, 346. 14 Although the Dictionary of National Biography denies Mason the honor of having written this pleasant poem, it is almost certainly his. It has, to be sure, been pretty generally attributed to John Baynes, because he took the copy
to the printer, "but he emphatically disclaimed the authorship." Testimony
