SOURCE: "Satire and the Images of Self in the Romantic Period: The Long Tradition of Hazlitt's Liber Amoris," in English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, edited by Claude Rawson, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 209-25.

In this essay, Butler examines the satirical elements that appear in some Romantic writings, as well as the extent to which Liber Amoris can be considered a satiric commentary on contemporary doctrines of the imagination.

Satire is a mode with which we do not as a rule associate the Romantic period. Among the trees of the literary forest a few scrubs can still be picked out: minor satirical verse like Mathias's Pursuits of Literature, Gifford's Baviad and Maeviad, the contributions of Canning and Frere to The Anti-Jacobin, and the Smith brothers' Rejected Addresses. These sold well at the time but have not worn well since, for future generations have become convinced that the Spirit of...