George William Curtis calls Rip "the constant and unconscious satirist of American life," but surely Irving would have smiled at finding so purposeful a mission laid upon the stooping shoulders of his vagabond ne'er-do-well hero.

I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion,as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside; and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question.

Other writers, however, are of the same opinion with our satirist with regard to him.

It was the misfortune of the Duchess of Marlborough to have this witty and malignant satirist for an enemy.

It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive," is, however, more to the point:

Our greatest surprise in this satire comes not only from discovering the expression, "sweetness and light," made famous by Matthew Arnold in the Victorian age, but also from finding that a satirist like Swift assigned such high rank to these qualities.