The power of satire is usually much exaggerated; as a matter of fact, it is one of the least effective of psychological weapons. Almost anything can turn its edge. Juvenal is not reported to have done much more than incur the dislike of his contemporaries; and Swift, the most serious satirist since Juvenal, never effected anything by satire alone. His two most immediately effective pamphlets, the _Drapier’s Letters_, and the _Conduct of the Allies_, contained passages of satire, irony, and every other sort of appeal, but neither of them can be called satirical as a whole. Satire, like wit, is effective in small doses given at opportune moments; but, as in the case of wit, sustained satire defeats its own object. It owes what power it wields to the contrast in which it stands to the prevailing mood of the work in which it appears: its unexpected appearance therein. Surprise is the condition of its doing any work at all. Surely if this were not the case the satirical journals of, let us say, Germany or France, would have dissolved in laughter the vices aimed at long before now. But satire is expected of them, is discounted in advance, and positively adds to the attractiveness of the objects satirised. I will not go so far as to say that Cervantes recalled dead Chivalry to life by satirising it, though the crop of romances that followed _Don Quixote_ in England may almost be said to justify the charge; but it can safely be said that a satire directed against Capitalism would lengthen rather than contract the life of the dragon, by adding amusement to its claims to exist.