SOURCE: "From the Eclipse of Satire to Butler," in English Satire and Satirists, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1925, pp. 120-44.

In the following essay, Walker discusses the political atmosphere that Butler satirizes in Hudibras.

The eclipse of satire which marked the closing years of the reign of James I. lasted through the whole of that of his ill-fated son. For twenty years or more satire, both in prose and in verse, was merely incidental. A thread of satire runs through all the character-writers, and the finest product of that school, Earle's Microcosmography, which has been treated in the preceding chapter, was published in the reign of Charles I. Though the Theophrastic vein showed signs of exhaustion, "characters" continued to be produced all through the century, and a very witty specimen, The Character of a Sneaker, is dated 1705. Fugitive pieces now and then, but very rarely, show great ability...