Is not the historic
parallel between the two pairs of writers still further verified?
Chaucer wisely chose the epic form for his greatest poem, because he
could introduce thereinto so many distinct qualities of composition,
and the woof of racy humour as well as of sprightly satire which he
introduces with such consummate art into the texture of his verse is of
as fine a character as any in our literature. In Langland's great
allegory, the satire is earnest, grave and solemn, as though with a
sense of deep responsibility; that in Chaucer's _Canterbury
Tales_--nay, in all his poems--is genial, laughing, and good-natured;
tolerant, like Horace's of human weaknesses, because the author is so
keenly conscious of his own.
Langland and Chaucer both died about the beginning of the fifteenth
century. But from that date until 1576--when Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_,
the first verse satire of the Elizabethan age, was published--we must
look mainly to Scotland and the poems of William Dunbar, Sir David
Lyndsay, and others, to preserve the apostolic succession of satire.
William Dunbar is one of the greatest of British satirists. His _Dance
of the Seven Deadly Sins_, in which the popular poetic form of the
age--allegory--is utilized with remarkable skill as the vehicle for a
scathing satire on the headlong sensuality of his time, produces by its
startling realism and terrible intensity an effect not unlike that
exercised by the overpowering creations of Salvator Rosa.
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