THE AUGUSTANS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 729, 3 July 1953, Page 13

THE AUGUSTANS

AUGUSTAN SATIRE, Intention and Idiom in English Poetry, 1660-1750, by Ian Jack; Geoffrey Cumberlege, Clarendon Press. English price, 18/-. | HE Augustan period in English . poetry, of which the works of Dryden may be regarded as. most typical, has Tong been under a cloud of vague disapproval. Those whose taste is for the great Romantics have felt that Pope’s verse, for example, is too. prosy and urbane; those who appreciate the Metaphysical poets have felt that Augustan rhetoric and use of metaphor moves too heavily. In fact,*‘as Mr. Jack most ably propounds, when one understands the stylistic conventions of the era, the force and mobility of its poetry becomes apparent. Mr. Jack has wisely strengthened his case by confining his analysis to satirical verse. He deals in turn with the work of Butler (in Hudibras), Dryden, Pope and Samuel Johnson; and shows the different ways in which satirical method has been used © by these poets. The keynote of his discourse is found at the end of the section on Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel"It is the prominence of the element of attack in Absalom and Achitophel that makes it a satire in the English sense of the word." But though he _ successfully proves that the Augustan period was one 2of brilliant satire, he does not prove what is implied in much of his argument, namely,. that the elevated manner of the time had any great value in nonsatirical use. The "low" writing which he cites is consistently the best; Hudibras wins hands down not only over his allegorical enemies but over the windy giant of the epic style. Poets as well as the average reader could add much to their vocabulary of abuse’ by a study of this volume, even if that is not precisely what the author intended.

James K.

Baxter