By 'Satire' we mean a specific from of composition in verse or prose designed to ridicule a particular person or class or group of persons for some folly or eccentricity. Therefore satire is an employment of sarcasm, irony, or keen wit in ridiculing some prevailing vices, absurdities, abuses or follies in an individual or social group. The satire has no ill intention; it is meant only to draw the victim’s attention to his folly with view to reforming him. Thus satire can be best defined in these words: "it is the expression, in adequate terms, of the sense of amusement or disgust by the ridiculous or unseemly provided that humor is directly recognizable and that the utterance in invested with literary form" (Garnett).
In Dryden's satire there is a kind of good-humoured scorn without any sense of triumph over the adversary. Dryden the satirist is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease, because according to his conception, the true end of satire is the amendment of vice by correction or moral reformation.
Dryden wrote regular satires after he was personally attacked by Butler and Buckingham in their Rehearsal for swindling the style of their heroic play. There upon Dryden wrote a series of satires the most notable of which are Absalom and Achitiphel, Mac Flecknoe, and The Medal. But in his Satires there is a no personal malice, no rancor and no defamation. There is but pure amusement.
