SOURCE: Chernaik, Warren L. “The Rise of Heroic Satire.” In The Poetry of Limitation: A Study of Edmund Waller, pp. 172-92. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

In the following excerpt, Chernaik argues that Waller was instrumental in the development of poetic satire.

Waller served as an example to his neoclassical successors in two ways—as a model for imitation, especially in panegyric and satire, and as an innovator in technique. Waller's role in the development of the heroic couplet is a subject several critics have commented upon; the only book-length study of the poet, Alexander Ward Allison's Toward an Augustan Poetic: Edmund Waller's “Reform” of English Poetry, devotes itself entirely to this subject. But other equally important aspects of Waller's influence, in particular the relationship between his panegyrics and Augustan verse satire, have received much less attention.

One index to the major role Waller played in forming the...