Before 1700 interest in English satire centres inevitably around the name of Dryden. Among his contemporaries were, of course, other satirists, some of them distinguished by originality and genius. The true political satire, used so effectively against the Parliamentarians by Cleveland (1613–1658), had been revived in the work of Denham (1615–1669) and Marvell (1621–1678). Formal satire in the manner of Juvenal and Boileau had been attempted by Oldham (1653–1683) in his _Satires against the Jesuits_ (1678–9). Moreover, several new forms had been introduced: Butler (1612–1680) in _Hudibras_ (1663) had created an original variety of burlesque, with unusual rhymes, grotesque similes, and quaint ideas; Cotton (1630–1687) in his _Scarronides_ (1664) had transplanted the travesty from the French of Scarron; and Garth (1661–1719) had composed in the _Dispensary_ (1699) our earliest classical mock-heroic. Marvell, Rochester, Sedley, Dorset, and others had written songs and ballads of a satiric character, most of them coarse and scurrilous. But the work of these men, like that of their predecessors in satire, Lodge, Donne, Hall, Marston, Guilpin, Wither, and Brome, is, as a whole, crude and inartistic, rough in metre and commonplace in style. Dryden, who took up satire at the age of fifty, after a long and thorough discipline in literary craftsmanship, avoided these faults, and polished and improved the verse-satire, preserving its vigor while lending it refinement and dignity. Dryden’s satire is distinguished by clearness, good taste, and self-control. The author was seldom in a rage, nor was he ever guilty of indiscriminate railing. Seeking to make his victims ridiculous and absurd rather than hateful, he drew them, not as monsters or unnatural villains, but as foolish or weak human beings.[3] It is significant, too, that he did not often mention his adversaries by their real names, but referred to them, for the most part, by pseudonyms, a device through which individual satire tends constantly to become typical and universal. Although he asserted that “the true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction,” he rarely, except in poems which were designedly theological, permitted a moral purpose to become obtrusive. Deliberately putting aside the octosyllabic metre of Butler as too undignified for satire, Dryden chose what he called the “English heroic,” or iambic pentameter couplet, as best suited to heroic poetry, of which he considered satire to be properly a species. This measure, already employed by Hall, Donne, and others as a medium for satire, is, as Dryden perceived, admirably suited for concise and pointed expression. Having used it successfully in his plays, he was already familiar with its possibilities and skilful in its management, and in his hands it became harmonious, varied, and incisive, a very different measure from the couplet as handled by even so near a contemporary as Oldham.