George Crabbe

"In 1775 Crabbe published anonymously an amusing pastiche called Inebriety, A Poem. It satirizes the effects of liquor on various kinds and classes of people, from laborers to parsons to fine ladies. Footnotes to the poem identify the particular passages from Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733-1734) and The Dunciad (1743 version) which Crabbe parodies, but the poem's most effective section is a mock-heroic account of the return of a drunken husband to his angry wife and the ensuing battle. Crabbe's preface declares that this poem was principally composed for "The Ladies," and its third part is devoted entirely to satirizing the effects of drink on women, ironically exhorting them to ape the failings of men."