This cannot be said of the Satires of Joseph Hall. Hall, who in his very interesting brief autobiography says that he was born on the 1st January, 1574 (which, if he went by the old official calendar, means 1575), and was educated at the Puritan College of Emmanuel, Cambridge, lived to attain the bishopric of Exeter, to play a conspicuous part in the early days of the Long Parliament, to be translated to Norwich in the eclipse of King Charles’s fortunes, and to be rabbled out of his palace by the Puritans. He died at Heigham in 1656. His Satires, therefore, appeared when he was at the utmost only twenty-three. Although marked by a certain youthful loftiness of moral pose and some impudence, they show an undoubted maturity of form much more meritorious then than it would be now, when there is so much more in English to copy. In “A Postscript to the Reader,” printed with the first issue of the _Virgidemiarum_ (a pedantic title taken from _Virgidemia_, a gathering of rods), he states what undoubtedly was the literary faith of the satirists of the time: “It is not for every one to relish a true natural satire, being of itself, besides the nature and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and therefore cannot but be unpleasing both to the unskilful and over-musical ear.” In other words, a rough form and a deliberate violation of melody were proper to satire. Marston and Donne acted on that rule. But Hall in his own verses is not markedly hard of conceit or harsh of style. His couplets flow easily enough, carrying with them shrewd but not very important remarks on the contradictions of sinners. We can well believe that when Pope was shown them late in life he wished he had seen them sooner, and that he thought the first satire of the sixth book “optima satira.” Hall’s attitude of superiority to a sinful world is rather comic in a young gentleman who knew no more of it than lay inside the walls of “pure Emmanuel.” His worst fault was a habit of sniffing at contemporary poets, whose poetic shoe-latchet he was not worthy to undo. He falls upon the sonneteers and their “Blowesses” (_i.e._, Blowsibellas) after a fashion afterwards bettered by Swift with his incomparable brutality.[69] [SN: _Marston._] Marston’s first set of Satires were printed under the assumed name of W. Kinsayder in 1598, together with a poem called _Pygmalion’s Image_. A second instalment of the Satires followed next year, and both bear the same title--_The Scourge of Villainy_. There was not much villainy to which Marston had better call to apply the scourge than the greasy lubricity of _Pygmalion’s Image_. He preferred to scold at his contemporaries in verse which is as pleasant to read as charcoal would be to eat, and to lecture an imaginary world made up of vices which he took at second hand from Latin books, in a style which raises the image of ancient Pistol unpacking his heart with curses. FOOTNOTES: