Yet the intrusion of laughter into invective, just because it is the solvent of all serious moods, tends, as we have seen, to develop, if only for an instant, a lighter tone. Hence the gamut of dissimilar tones in satire, which at the one end is furiously denunciatory, at the other almost playful and good-temperedly jocular. The early popular “farce” of the Greeks, with its mocking and ironical speeches, and the satirical songs of the Middle Ages were apparently pieces of rollicking fun, like the comedy of Aristophanes, in which the satirical note was half-drowned in buffoonish laughter. Where, however, the composition is palpably a satire, the serious purpose may be seen to dominate and to colour the whole expression. The characteristics of satire, thus roughly indicated, hold good alike whether the vices exposed be those of an individual, of a social class, of a society at a particular moment, or of mankind as a whole. In any case, the point of view is clearly that of a supposed moral judge and sentencer. The presence of a purpose of serious exposure is not by any means equally clear in all cases; whence the denotation of the term satire is not sharply bounded. Comedy itself has been said to have a strong satirical element, and this seems certainly true of the compositions of Aristophanes, which, as Bergk remarks, contain in their mixture of tones {382} a “biting scorn” and a “bitter irony”.[315] Romances, as pictures of men and their manners, are often described as satirical, presumably because a free delineation of human vices is taken to imply the condemnatory attitude and the intention to castigate. Yet here the castigation may be of the mildest, as in _Gil Blas_, which, according to Sainte-Beuve, does not hold up men in the mass to ridicule as wicked and foolish, but rather exposes their meanness and dulness.[316] M. Taine finds the satirist’s lash laid on heavily in the English school of fiction, even in the writings of Thackeray.[317] Yet judgments as to a writer’s intention based on the prevailing tone of the world he portrays are apt to seem subjective and capricious. Satire proper, where the purpose of ridicule is confessed, is a very different thing. We see this in the works of Juvenal, of whom Prof. Tyrrell writes, “He is always in a rage and a laugh seems to sit strangely on his lips”.[318] In this more serious and poignant satire the laugh takes on a shrill note of malignity from its mental _entourage_. The virulence of the satire of antiquity has since been softened. This is frequently effected by allegorical disguise. The mediæval satires, such as that on cunning and treachery in the fable of the Fox, are examples. The satires of Voltaire and of the English satirists, including the bitter and unsparing Swift, illustrate the same tendency.