This contemporary
opinion regarding the fact that _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ was
esteemed a satire of outstanding merit in those days, is a curious
commentary on Hall's boastful couplet describing himself as the
earliest English satirist.
To name all the writers who, in this fruitful epoch of our literature,
devoted themselves to this kind of composition would be impossible.
From 1598 until the death of James I. upwards of one hundred separate
satirists can be named, both in verse and prose. Of these Bishop Hall
is one of the greatest, and I have chosen him as the leading
representative of the period. To the study of Horace and Juvenal he had
devoted many years of his early manhood, and his imitation of these two
great Romans is close and consistent. Therefore, for vigour, grave
dignity, and incisiveness of thought, united to graphic pictures of his
age, Hall is undeniably the most important name in the history of the
Elizabethan satire, strictly so called. His exposures of the follies of
his age were largely couched in the form, so much affected by Horace,
of a familiar commentary on certain occurrences, addressed apparently
to an anonymous correspondent.
Contemporary with Hall was Thomas Nash, whose _Pierce Penilesse's
Supplication to the Devil_ was one of the most extraordinary onslaughts
on the social vices of the metropolis that the period produced. Written
in close imitation of Juvenal's earlier satires, he frequently
approaches the standard of his master in graphic power of description,
in scathing invective, and ironical mockery.
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