Satire in Augustans
Those Augustans were totally into using irony, humor and exaggeration to ridicule and expose people's (and society's) vices. In fact, satire is one of the defining characteristics of Augustan literature. And we're not just talking about one genre or style of writing: these writers were satirical in poetry, in prose, in—well, they were satirical everywhere.
No person, or subject, was too high or too low for the Augustans' satirical attacks. Political figures? Check. Religious figures? Check. Other writers and literary figures? Check.
The Augustans prided themselves on exposing society's double standards, showing how superficial, not to mention contradictory, many of the laws and values that governed English society were.
Shmoops:
Check out Jonathan Swift's sharp satire in A Modest Proposal, in which he proposes that one way to deal with the Irish poor is to eat their babies (Quote #2). We can't make this stuff up, folks.
And here's Jonathan Swift satirizing courtly language in this quotation (Quote #1) from Gulliver's Travels.