A time so rich as the Elizabethan in new forms of literature could hardly fail to produce the satirist. In this case also there were Italian and, it need hardly be added, Classic models to follow, and they were followed. Satiric writing there had always been, and that inevitably, since so soon as men began to record observation at all they would see that there was much vice and folly in the world, and from this experience all satire springs. The satiric spirit abounded in the prose pamphlet literature of the time. Between this and the help afforded by the Latin models, who supplied the ready-made mould, the poetic satirists were led forward by the hand. As a class, and in so far as they were satirists, they were the least interesting body of writers of their time. It is very necessary to limit this estimate to their satires; for the four who may be mentioned here are all, for one reason or another, notable men, or even more. Lodge, without ever attaining to originality or power of the first order, was a successful writer in many kinds. Marston has a deservedly high place in our dramatic literature. Hall, though that part of his life lies outside the scope of this book, was a divine and controversialist of mark in his later years. Donne, who however belongs in the main to a later time, is one of the most enigmatical and debated, alternately one of the most attractive and most repellent, figures in English literature. If Hall’s boast in the Prologue to his Satires-- “I first adventure, follow me who list, And be the second English Satirist,” is to be taken seriously, he must be supposed to have claimed the honour of leading. If so, he must also be presumed not to have known _The Steel Glass_ of Gascoigne, an undeniable though rambling and ineffective satire, belonging to the first half of the queen’s reign. [SN: _Lodge._] He certainly ignored the earlier claim of Lodge, whose _Fig for Momus_ appeared in 1595, two years before the first six books of Hall’s _Virgidemiarum_. But it may be that he wrote long before he printed, and in any case the originality is not great enough to be worth fighting over, since both were followers of Latin originals; while it appears more than probable that Marston and Donne were turning their thoughts in the same direction about the same time. In fact, the Poetic Satire was so certain to arise that many men may well have begun it together in complete independence one of another. The satire of Lodge is confessedly a mere echo of Horace. [SN: _Hall._]