Pope’s chief contemporary in formal satire in verse was Young, whose _Love of Fame, The Universal Passion_ was finished in 1727, before the publication of the _Dunciad_. The seven satires which this work contains comprise portrayals of type characters under Latin names, diversified by allusions to living personages, the intention being to ridicule evils in contemporary social life. The _Epistles to Pope_ (1730), by the same author, are more serious, especially in their arraignment of Grub Street. Young’s comparatively lifeless work made seemingly no strong appeal to Byron. The latter never mentions him as a satirist, although he does quote with approval some favorite passages from his work. Lighter in tone and less rigidly formal in structure was the poetry of a group of writers headed by Prior and Gay, both of whom were at their best in a kind of familiar verse, lively, bantering, and worldly in spirit. Prior managed with some skill the octosyllabic couplet of Butler; Gay was successful in parody and the satiric fable.[9] The connection of Prior and Gay with Byron is not a close one, although the latter quoted from them both in his _Letters_, and composed some impromptu parodies of songs from Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_.[10] With Swift Byron had, perhaps, more affinity. Swift’s cleverness in discovering extraordinary rhymes undoubtedly influenced the versification of _Don Juan_,[11] and his morbid hatred of human nature and sordid views of life sometimes colored Byron’s satiric mood.[12] Much lower in the literary scale are the countless ballads and lampoons of the period which maintain the rough and ready aggressiveness of Marvell, in a style slovenly, broken, and journalistic. Events like the trial of Sacheverell and the South Sea Bubble brought out scores of ephemeral satires which it would be idle to notice here. Of these scurvy pamphleteers, three gained considerable notoriety: Tom Brown (1663–1704), Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723), and Ned Ward (1667–1731). Defoe, in several long satires, especially in the formidable folio _Jure Divino_, shows the results of a study of Dryden, although his lines are rugged and his style is colloquial. The work of no one of these men had any visible influence on Byron, but their production illustrates the wide-spread popularity at this time of satire, even in its transitory and unliterary phases.