Satire's View of Sentimentalism 165 Likewise Moore's black influence was portrayed by William Henry Ireland in his Stultifera Navis: But in their boudoirs ladies now display Nugae canorae of the present day, Or Little poems for the fleeting hour: Effusions which our modern belles adore, Who only languish as they read for M ore; Of dulcet trifles such the magic pow'r. 22 These specimens represent the moral quality of the typical satiri- cal comment upon romantic literature in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth. Even in these later years, however, not all of satire's criti- cism of the romantics was clearly aimed from the ethical point of view. One satirist, Thomas Dermody, whose own way of life was a glass house from which he might not with impunity hurl brickbats of criticism ad personam, declared the purely aesthetic purpose of his satire: The poet's skill alone intent to scan, I ne'er dissect the morals of the man. 'Tis mine to trace the beauties of his song: To other search domestic faults belong." Other writers of verse-satire did not pretend to confine their attention so strictly to matters of artistic achievement in the literature which they discussed, but many found space in their verses for direct estimation of literary merits and defects. Of the principal romantic poets of the day, Robert Southey was most vigorously satirized. Long before the appearance of Byron's first satire, Southey was a stock object of attack. Thus he is derided by Mathias in The Pursuits of Literature: I cannot, will not, in a college gown, Vent my first nonsense on a patient town, Quit the dull Cam, and ponder in the park A six-weeks Epic, or a Joan of Arc. ^Stultifera Navis. The Modern Ship of Fools . . . (London, 1807), 2. The authorship of this satire, which was published anonymously, is by no means certain. The punning comments reter, of course, to the "Poems by Little" published by Moore in 1801. 28 The Harp of Erin (London, 1807), I, 1 13. The passage is from his More Wonders! An Heroic Epistle to M. G. Lewis, Esq., M.P. and is apropos of his
discussion of "Peter Pindar" (Dr. John Wolcot).
