satirical spirit grows in authors with the advance of life; and it is a
pitiful sight, that of those who have passed the meridian of years and
reputation, grinning back in helpless mockery and toothless laughter
upon the brilliant way they have traversed, but to which they can return
no more. Hall, on the other hand, exhausted long ere he was thirty the
sarcastic material that was in him; and during the rest of his career,
wielded his powers with as much lenity as strength.

Perhaps no satirist had a more thorough conception than our author of
what is the real mission of satire in the moral history of mankind;
--_that_ is, to shew vice its own image--to scourge impudent imposture
--to expose hypocrisy--to laugh down solemn quackery of every kind--to
create blushes on brazen brows and fears of scorn in hollow hearts--to
make iniquity, as ashamed, hide its face--to apply caustic, nay cautery,
to the sores of society--and to destroy sin by shewing both the ridicule
which attaches to its progress and the wretched consequences which are
its end. But various causes prevented him from fully realising his own
ideal, and thus becoming the best as well as the first of our satirical
poets. His style--imitated from Persius and Juvenal--is too elliptical,
and it becomes true of him as well as of Persius that his points are
often sheathed through the remoteness of his allusions and the perplexity
of his diction. He is very recondite in his images, and you are sometimes
reminded of one storming in English at a Hindoo--it is pointless fury,
boltless thunder. At other times the stream of his satiric vein flows
on with a blended clearness and energy, which has commanded the warm
encomium of Campbell, and which prompted the diligent study of Pope.
There is more courage required in attacking the follies than the vices of
an age, and Hall shews a peculiar daring when he derides the vulgar forms
of astrology and alchymy which were then prevalent, and the wretched
fustian which infected the language both of literature and the stage.