Perhaps no satirist had a more thorough conception than our author of what is the real mission of satire in the moral history of mankind; --_that_ is, to shew vice its own image--to scourge impudent imposture --to expose hypocrisy--to laugh down solemn quackery of every kind--to create blushes on brazen brows and fears of scorn in hollow hearts--to make iniquity, as ashamed, hide its face--to apply caustic, nay cautery, to the sores of society--and to destroy sin by shewing both the ridicule which attaches to its progress and the wretched consequences which are its end. But various causes prevented him from fully realising his own ideal, and thus becoming the best as well as the first of our satirical poets. His style--imitated from Persius and Juvenal--is too elliptical, and it becomes true of him as well as of Persius that his points are often sheathed through the remoteness of his allusions and the perplexity of his diction. He is very recondite in his images, and you are sometimes reminded of one storming in English at a Hindoo--it is pointless fury, boltless thunder. At other times the stream of his satiric vein flows on with a blended clearness and energy, which has commanded the warm encomium of Campbell, and which prompted the diligent study of Pope. There is more courage required in attacking the follies than the vices of an age, and Hall shews a peculiar daring when he derides the vulgar forms of astrology and alchymy which were then prevalent, and the wretched fustian which infected the language both of literature and the stage. Whatever be the merits or defects of Hall's satires, the world is indebted to him as the founder of a school which were itself sufficient to cover British literature with glory, and which, in the course of ages, has included such writers as Samuel Butler, with his keen sense of the grotesque and ridiculous--his wit, unequalled in its abundance and point--his vast assortment of ludicrous fancies and language--and his form of versification, seemingly shaped by the Genius of Satire for his own purposes, and resembling heroic rhyme broken off in the middle by shouts of laughter;--Dryden, with the ease, the _animus_, and the masterly force of his satirical dissections--the vein of humour which is stealthily visible at times in the intervals of his wrathful mood --and the occasional passing and profound touches, worthy of Juvenal, and reminding one of the fires of Egypt, which ran along the ground, scorching all things while they pursued their unabated speed;--the spirit of satire, strong as death, and cruel as the grave, which became incarnate in Swift;--Pope, with his minute and microscopic vision of human infirmities, his polish, delicate strokes, damning hints, and annihilating whispers, where 'more is meant than meets the ear;' --Johnson, with his crushing contempt and sacrificial dignity of scorn; --Cowper, with the tenderness of a lover combined in his verse with the