All Churchill’s work is marked by vigor, effrontery, and earnestness, and the ferocity and vindictiveness of much of it give force to Gosse’s description of the author as “a very Caligula among men of letters.” However, although he was responsible for two of the most venomous literary assaults in English--that on Hogarth in the _Epistle to William Hogarth_ (1763) and that on Lord Sandwich in _The Candidate_ (1764)--he did not stab from behind or resort to underhand methods. Despite his obvious crudities, he is the most powerful figure in English satire between Pope and Byron. Churchill employed two measures: the heroic couplet, in the _Rosciad_ (1761) and several succeeding poems; and the octosyllabic couplet, in _The Ghost_ (1763) and _The Duellist_ (1764). His versification is seldom polished, but his lines have, at times, something of the robustness and impetuous disregard of regularity which lend strength to Dryden’s couplets. It was to Churchill that Byron attributed in part what he was pleased to term the “absurd and systematic depreciation of Pope,”[25] which, in his opinion, had been developing steadily towards the end of the eighteenth century. Churchill frankly acknowledged his preference of Dryden over Pope,[26] a partiality which he shared with Voltaire and Dr. Johnson. The fact is, however, that, despite his failure to attain smoothness and artistic finish, he owed more to Pope than he realized or cared to admit.[27] With Cowper, Byron had temperamentally little in common; yet Cowper is interesting, if only for the reason that he proves, by contrast with Churchill, the range in manner of which the classical satire is capable. He was most successful in a kind of mildly moral reproof, which has often ease, humor, and apt sententiousness, although it rarely possesses energy enough to make it effective as satire. Cowper’s familiar verse, often satirical in tone, is almost wholly admirable, the best of its kind between Prior and Praed. The satire of Crabbe is essentially realistic. It portrays things as they are, dwelling on each sordid detail and sweeping away all the illusions of romance. In _The Village_ (1783), for instance, Crabbe describes life as he found it among the lower classes in a Suffolk coast town--a life barren, humdrum, and dismal: thus the poem is an antidote, possibly intentional, to the idyllic and sentimental picture drawn by Goldsmith in _The Deserted Village_. The ethical element is always present in Crabbe’s work, and thus he preserves the didacticism of Pope and Cawthorn; but his homely phraseology, his sombre portraiture, and his pitiless psychological analysis of character connect him with a novelist like Hardy. Possibly some of the realism of _Don Juan_ may be traced to the example of Crabbe, for whom Byron had both respect and affection.[28]