Nor is it possible to insist upon the reformatory purpose behind the satiric spirit. Dryden’s dictum that the satirist “is bound, and that is _ex officio_, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue,” commendable as it may be, has been by no means a universal law for satire, and one is forced to admit that whatever emphasis particular satirists may have given to this rule in theory, the common practice has too often been at variance with it. Ultimately the single indispensable element of the satiric spirit is the wish to deny, rebuke, or destroy. It is evident that the satiric spirit may show itself, to a certain extent, in nearly every known type of literature, even at times in the epic or the lyric, to say nothing of the prose essay or novel. The specific term satire ought, however, to be applied solely to a work in which the predominating motive is attack, whether on individuals, on institutions, or on mankind in general. Thus we say that _Childe Harold_ has satiric features; but it is not, like _The Age of Bronze_, strictly a satire. For present purposes, too, it is desirable to narrow the field definitely by discussing the satiric spirit only so far as it has chosen verse for its medium, and by discarding the drama as belonging to another department of research. The subject may be further confined by neglecting poems which are obviously unliterary and make no pretensions to constructive or stylistic merit. The title verse-satire will be used loosely to fit any formal literary production in verse devoted ostensibly to negative criticism, whether direct or indirect, animated by sympathy or hatred; in short, to any non-dramatic poem, whatever its method, which has for its principal or avowed object the holding of vice, folly, or incapacity up to ridicule or reprobation. In Byron’s work there are many poems containing slight satiric elements, and others which are plainly satires in the narrower sense of the term; some are conveniently labelled, while others must be tested with regard to their intention and manner, and classified accordingly.