CHAPTER II

THE VICTORIAN CONTRIBUTION

By the nineteenth century the general inheritance in ideas and methods had become so cumulatively rich and various that the chances for novelty might seem correspondingly meager. But there is always something new under the sun, and the process of amalgamating that modicum of newness with the great bulk of the old and established goes steadily and eternally on--except for abnormal phases of retrogression, or revolution--forming that ceaseless change in changelessness we call history. The body of satiric tradition bequeathed to the Victorians underwent, accordingly, a normal amount of subtraction, addition, and modification, before being passed on to their successors.

The endowment itself was large and comprehensive, including both substance and modes, as well as a supplementary current of criticism and interpretation. In none of these were the Victorians responsible for a transformation, yet none did they leave _in statu quo_. In form, however, a great change had recently occurred, operating both positively and negatively, of which they were just in time to take advantage. The positive side of it was the development of the satiric novel in the preceding century, whereby the channel of fiction had already been accommodated to the satiric stream. This tendency was reinforced by the negative side, the abandonment of English satire’s one conventional outlet, the heroic couplet, which naturally diverted the current still more. The chance that made Byron not only a brilliant climax to the long line that extended back to Hall and Lodge, and through them to Juvenal and Horace, but the conclusion as well, is one of the striking situations in the history of literature. This transference of the main bulk of satire from the medium of poetry to that of prose would probably have been accomplished in any case, for since the Romantic Triumph, poetry had been again devoted to its true mission as the voice of imagination and spiritual vision, while at the same time the novel was finding a congenial sphere of action as a public forum for the discussion of all things from current events to a philosophy of life. Satire, being presumably a utilitarian product, would naturally be more suitably allied with fiction, a branch of Applied Art, than with the Pure Art of poetry. This union is advantageous for another reason,--the improvement as to proportion. In verse satire the emphasis is on the satire; in satiric fiction, the former noun has been relegated to the qualifying function of the adjective. Since one of the perils of satire is over-emphasis, and since it can best avoid this peril by combination, the gain in this arrangement is obvious. As a matter of fact, pure, isolated satire is a non-existent abstraction, as is illustrated by the very circumstance of the origin of the name. The _satura lanx_ was a dish of assorted fruit, and the primitive _saturæ_ which borrowed its name were the impromptu miscellanies in speech which constituted the social part of the old Roman Harvest Home. Lucilius and later Horace, wanting a title for their running commentary on men and manners, found this conveniently ready. When Juvenal adopted it, he had no notion of restricting the application:[427]

“_Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,_ _Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli._”

With all these things is the modern novel also concerned, and it too finds some of them amenable to humorous treatment, and some only to serious. But so far as change is concerned, it occurs during this period more in substance than in form. Vice and Folly are still the nominal targets, whenever these traits seem to be a cause or an effect of Deceit.[428] But they are somewhat altered in shape, in consequence of a more subtle analysis of their nature. The great discovery was made about the deceiver that he is quite as likely as not to be deceiving himself as well as others,--more than others, indeed, inasmuch as his very blindness renders him the more transparent. The world, moreover, growing in suspiciousness and incredulity, is the less easily deceived and the more able to detect the fraud, which thus reacts like a boomerang against its perpetrator. In the nineteenth century Pecksniff really was an archaism; and since Dickens no novelist has portrayed anything so bald as an unadulterated and unexplained hypocrite.[429] The evolution in portrayal from the hypocrite to the sentimentalist is perfectly illustrated by the difference between Pecksniff and Bulstrode. For the latter we have only a little less sympathy than for Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmisdale, in spite of his inferiority in fineness and ultimate courage. For we are shown the “strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had longed for years to be better than he was.”[430] Even his prayer after becoming virtually a murderer is not really a piece of hypocrisy. “Does anyone suppose,” asks Eliot, “that private prayer is necessarily candid--necessarily goes to the roots of action?”[431]

George Eliot is, however, even more impressed with the auto-intoxication of optimism as it manifests itself in what might be called group psychology; and especially against a disregard of the law of cause and effect does she turn the shafts of her quiet irony. At the period when the Raveloe tale opens,--[432]

“It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar favor of Providence toward the landed interest, and the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels.”

In pursuance of this comfortable philosophy,--

“* * * the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life.”

In another story we are introduced to some “pious Dissenting women, who took life patiently, and thought that salvation depended chiefly on predestination, and not at all on cleanliness.”[433] In a higher social class this innocence of the connection between effort and achievement leads to the fatuous complacency from which Gwendolen Harleth was aroused by the cruel shock of being told the truth about her musical abilities:[434]

“She had moved in a society where everything, from low arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than they like--otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present obliged to put up with.”

Another busy circle had made two important discoveries: the superiority of the probable over the actual; and the advantage of a well-chosen nomenclature, whereby a taste for cruelty may be gratified by the simple device of calling it kindness. The first was made over the gossip about Bulstrode:[435]

“Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.”

The second developed in a later phase of the same affair:[436]

“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”

It was because of this understanding of the limitless possibilities and universal prevalence of self-deception that Meredith was able to see the absurdity in egoism, which is the form of the malady induced by vanity. And this perception, as a modern critic observes, is the source of the contrast between two well-known egoists,--Sir Charles Grandison and Sir Willoughby Patterne:[437]

“Both, superficially viewed, are the same type: a male paragon before whom a bevy of women burn incense. But O the difference! Grandison is serious to his author, while Meredith, in skinning Willoughby alive like another Marsyas, is once and for all making the worship of the ego hateful.”

If one should ask, remembering the necessity for self-assertion in the exacting requirements of our human destiny, why so indispensable a thing as egoism should be ridiculous, Meredith has his answer ready:[438]

“Nay, to be an exalted variety is to come under the calm curious eye of the comic spirit, and to be probed for what you are.”

It is in “imposing figures” that the malign imps “love to uncover ridiculousness.” Moreover,--[439]

“They dare not be chuckling while Egoism is valiant, while sober, while socially valuable, nationally serviceable. They wait.”

This turn of the satiric road from the hypocritical to the sentimental side of deceit marked a passage not only through traits of character, as already noted, but through the realm of institutions, where it might at first seem to be more out of place. But there is no reason why organizations should not be as sentimental as the individuals of which they are composed. Indeed, so far as crowd psychology is in operation, they would be strengthened in self-deception by their very numbers. Whether this is the case or not, it is true that the tendency increased from Peacock to Butler to see in organized groups the absurdity of a complacent inefficiency. Not because they were failures did English institutions come under the rod, but because they flourished under a mighty delusion of success. Smug incompetence, self-satisfied futility, these were the gaping incongruities between pretense and performance that made tempting targets out of Society, Church, School, and State; and thitherward were trained the big and little guns of the satirists.

There is, of course, an underlying cause of this transference of interest from the more simple and patent hypocrite to the more subtle and baffling sentimentalist, individual and collective, and that is found in the spirit of investigation, analysis, probing beneath surfaces,--not new, to be sure, but newly operative on a large scale,--known as Science. Science in the intellectual world, and democracy in the political are the two forces which began in the nineteenth century the Conquest of Canaan that now in the twentieth they are gradually completing.

That these two armies are allies is obvious. The end of democracy is an elevation of the whole plane of human life,--a leveling up and not the leveling down so feared by Carlyle and the conservative English opinion of the time. On the emotional and ethical side it is humanitarian, but in itself it is a rational utilitarian principle. For this unquestionably practical end, Pure Science furnishes the justification, indeed, the initial premises, by showing the biology and psychology of all relationships, the respective effects of coöperation and antagonism in the natural world, and kindred factors; while Applied Science supplies the means to that end by discoveries and inventions bearing on the amelioration and enhancement of living conditions.

The recognition of such startling innovations would be inevitably slow, and their adoption still slower. But it is precisely in their ultimately successful struggle for admission into the life and thought of the nineteenth century that we trace the evolution of the satire of the period, for the satiric reaction is merely one of the many reflections of that struggle.

A humanitarian democracy has turned the old _ex cathedra_ criticism into the forensic. The satirist has been obliged, as one commentator observes, to descend from the upper window whence he had been haranguing the mob below; he might have added, much of the mob itself has been admitted into the entrance halls at least of the great Administration Building of modern life. But meanwhile the scientific method has added reason to emotion, so that while the democratic ideal was conceived in a rationalized sympathy, the stress has slipped more and more from the sympathetic to the rational element. None of the Victorians expressly would have denied the Moral Obligation to be Intelligent, but George Eliot, Meredith, and Butler were the first to make a real point of it. For by the latter half of the century the laboratory had come to be acknowledged as the colleague, if not the successor, of the pulpit, for implicit sermonizing as well as explicit instruction. And in the exercise of these functions, while the pulpit may indulge at times in a decorous ridicule, it is the laboratory that is the real, spontaneous, unconscious satirist. When the solemn moral exhortation, _Ought_, was supplanted by the autocratic scientific command, _Must_--_if_, the expression changed from earnest pleading to detached humor. For the moralist takes himself, his message, and his hearers, seriously, but the scientist has the indifferent attitude that if you refuse to obey, the consequences, serious indeed and not to be averted or escaped, will come, not in the guise of punishment or retribution, but through the inexorable operation of law. Accordingly, if you try to delude yourself into the supposition that you can evade the orders of nature, the joke is on you.

While, therefore, in Victorian satire the old familiar faces of Society, State, and Church reappear, they are subjected to a new treatment, as the result of a new diagnosis.

The School and the Press are the only additions to the time-honored objects, because of their more recent emergence into the light. The erection of the School into a public institution, together with the subsidence of the Church into the sphere of private life, marks indeed a radical change in viewpoint,--advancing from the assumption that the State must insure the religion of its citizens, let them be educated how they might (except that for a long time they had no choice but to take their secular learning from the hands of the clergy) to the realization that if those responsible for the general welfare would provide for a general diffusion of enlightenment, the religious sentiment might safely be trusted to those whom it concerned, namely, the individuals themselves. In regard to all these institutions the old, sharply defined contrast between guilty, satirized protagonist and indicting, satirical antagonist has disappeared. In its place is a decided tendency toward the fellow-member, fellow-citizen, fellow-sinner attitude, which at least has the advantage always held by the empiric knowledge of the insider over the deductive inference of the outsider.

In the social field the most notable alteration is in the satire of woman. From the time of the Greek Simonides and the Hebrew epigrammatists, feminine foibles have been alluring game for masculine-made arrows. The shrew, the gossip, the blue-stocking, the interfering stepmother, the intriguing wife, the extravagant daughter, the lady of fashion, have been detected with unerring clarity of vision and pursued with accomplished skill. They have also been taken for granted. It was not until the modern inquiry into cause and effect was instituted that the feminine failure was viewed as an effect of which society was largely the cause, by withholding opportunity on one hand, and on the other encouraging the very ignorance and inanity it affected to despise. This discovery led logically to the shifting of the satire from effect back to cause, and the addition of another item to the list wherein the concerted action of the social group is held accountable for any malign influence on its members.

This probing into causes is even more sweepingly operative in the larger society of mankind and the body politic. The study of economics and sociology inevitably has switched the old partisan antagonism into a new opposition based more consciously on theories of government,--still partisan, to be sure, but less on personal and more on philosophical grounds. The new element this brings into political satire is the effort to create a public sense of shame for official incompetence, since in a democracy (and such, in some form or other, is almost every modern State) the blame for this incompetence rests ultimately on the public. Modern critics may echo Isaiah’s scornful complaint of state officialdom,--“The ancient and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail,”--but their remedy would lie not in increased reliance on a theocracy but in a more adequate popular referendum. John Barton concludes his impassioned tirade against mill-owners and capitalists with the argument,--[440]

“Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know. We’re their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as Dives and Lazarus, with a great gulf betwixt us: but I know who was best off then.”

On another occasion he adds this explanation,--[441]

“What we all feel sharpest is the want of inclination to try and help the evils which come like blights at times over the manufacturing places, while we see the masters can stop work and not suffer.”

To this serious and personal grief Meredith responds, as it were, in his more impersonal and ironic manner. Diana represents the view from a position of equality, and the satire of one’s own class:[442]

“And charity is haunted, like everything we do. Only I say with my whole strength--yes, I am sure, in spite of the men professing that they are practical, the rich will not move without a goad. I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet, until you are strong enough to force my hand;--that’s the speech of the wealthy. And they are Christians. In name. Well, I thank heaven I’m at war with myself.’”

Kingsley is spurred by the subject to a bitter sarcasm:[443]

“The finest of us are animals, after all, and live by eating and sleeping, and, taken as animals, not so badly off, either--unless we happen to be Dorsetshire laborers--or Spitalfield weavers--or colliery children--or marching soldiers--or, I am afraid, one half of English souls this day.”

Nor is he lacking in a constructive outlook. In connection with a fling at the “amusingly inconsistent, however well-meant scene in _Coningsby_,” in which Disraeli illustrates his idea of a beneficent aristocracy, he has one of his characters meditate that--[444]

“It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age * * * to make the people constantly and visibly comprehend that property is their protector and their friend, but I question whether it will suit the people themselves, unless they can make property understand that it owes them something more definite than protection.”

At that time there was not much disposition to believe these ills could be cured by legislation. On the contrary, the numerous satiric hits at various governmental departments were aimed not at the general _laissez faire_ policy of the State, but at its indifferent success in the matters over which it had already assumed jurisdiction, and its unwarranted encroachment into others. The reasoning seemed to be that an institution which had been unfaithful and convicted of inertness, graft, and stupidity in its limited operations would be unlikely to be more alert, honest, and intelligent if its burdens were increased. David Copperfield is shocked to learn from Mr. Spenlow the ways of the law, and still more so at Mr. Spenlow’s coldness toward the idea of reform.[445] Henry Little wades through and climbs over all sorts of official obstacles until “he had done, in sixty days, what a true inventor will do in twenty-four hours, whenever the various metallic ages shall be succeeded by the age of reason.”[446] A prison inspector is finally confronted with actual facts of a horrifying nature:[447]

“How unreal and idle appeared now the twenty years gone in tape and circumlocution! Away went his life of shadows--his career of watery polysyllables meandering through the great desert into the Dead Sea.”

But more subtle and vital than all these errors,--the error indeed at the root of them all,--is the failure of the State to utilize the fine material placed at its disposal, potentially if not actually, in the lives of noble and capable youth. No one before Lytton could have laid at the door of society the wasted possibilities of a Godolphin. No one before Meredith could have made the thwarted career of a Beauchamp a pitiful satire on “his indifferent England,” who appeared, “with a quiet derision that does not belie her amiable passivity, to have reduced in Beauchamp’s career the boldest readiness for public action, and some good stout efforts besides, to the flat result of an optically discernible influence of our hero’s character in the domestic circle: perhaps a faintly outlined circle or two beyond it.”[448]

In Society and the State all opposition is necessarily factional, for none can stand entirely outside. This was true of the Church also, during its undisputed supremacy, when to be excommunicated was equivalent to being imprisoned or otherwise put outside the pale. But by the sixteenth century Skelton could say in _Colyn Clout_,

“For, as farre as I can se, It is wrong with eche degre; For the temporalte Accuseth the spiritualte; The spirituall agayne Dothe grudge and complayne Upon the temporall men:”

By the eighteenth, Voltaire could get a hearing, albeit a hostile and scandalized one. And by the nineteenth, we have not only Brontë and Kingsley censuring from within, but Meredith and Butler from without. So far as there is a new note in the censure, it is in harmony with the whole strain of the time. For the old crude gibes against the old crude faults of hypocrisy, sensuality, and greed, is substituted the criticism that a huge organization fails to utilize the tremendous power of its equipment, prestige, and authority, in the furtherance of general progress and the establishment of a genuine kingdom of God here upon earth. For from the spiritualte as well as the temporalte the new humanitarian spirit demands recognition and service.

These modifications in form and substance were induced by a modification, probably unconscious, of the idea of satire itself, and they in turn reacted on it to strengthen the changing conception. The two main elements,--a wider socialization in the point of view, and a firmer insistence on an understanding of conditions such as could not be secured under the old artless habit of accepting the premises,--stand for that union of feeling and intelligence which was the ideal of the nineteenth century. “Men,” says Meredith, “and the ideas of men, which are * * * actually the motives of men in a greater degree than their appetites; these are my theme;”[449] and again, “The Gods of this world’s contests demand it of us, in relation to them, that the mind, and not the instincts, shall be at work.”[450] The corollary of this is that though satire may be “a passion to sting and tear,” it must do so “on rational grounds.”[451] “Satire,” says Trollope, “though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed. Caricature may too easily become a slander, and satire a libel.”[452] Sympathy and intelligence have no objection to pungency and forcefulness, but they have no real need for truculence or unfairness. It is, as Garnett suggests, the unsophisticated man who regards satire as the offspring of ill-nature. Such was the intellectual status of Lady Middleton, who could not feel an affinity for Elinor and Marianne Dashwood:[453]

“Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.”

The vague notion that a satirist is something disagreeable will of course never quite be eradicated, at least not until people learn to like being ridiculed and criticised. But in manner he is undeniably growing less disagreeable than has been his wont. Another reason for this, in addition to the changes already noted, is the increased activity of that reflexive sense of humor which operates as an antitoxin to the vanity inherent in all critics. A wholesome fear of being absurd serves to reduce one’s chances of being that rich anomaly, a ridiculous satirist. The modern satirist may possess a mind conscious to itself of right and a conviction that he has a mission to perform. But he is more prone to conceal or even disclaim these things than to advertise them. Even Fielding did not proclaim, as he might have done, that he first adventured. Peacock trusted to his readers to discover that fools being his theme, satire must be his song. Since his time, satire, while questioning all things with a new penetration, has succeeded in taking on an air of unconcern and in realizing that neither promises nor apologies are necessary. Post-Byronic satire seldom vaunts itself, and, however superior it may feel, it pretends that it is not puffed up. A historian describes the change that takes place between the Age of Elizabeth, when satire “was the pastime of very young men, who ‘railed on Lady Fortune in good set terms,’” and the Commonwealth, when the combatants “left Nature and Fortune with their withers unwrung, and aimed at the joints in the harness of their enemies.”[454] To the Victorians, satire was neither a pastime nor a matter for deadly earnestness. Armored antagonists had gone out of fashion; and Lady Fortune was left to the metaphysicians.

It is, indeed, a matter of curious interest that one object of satire, life itself, which had drawn fire occasionally all the way from Aristophanes to Byron, should have been neglected by the Victorians,--though the neglect may be accounted for by their interest in the concrete and their generally optimistic outlook. On the other hand, one of the most philosophic and least optimistic of them devotes several bow-shots to a sort of counter attack, against those who consider the universe a fit subject for satire. The Prelude to _Middlemarch_ identifies the heroine as one of those unfortunate women of deep souls and shallow circumstances, “who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action.” To this the comment is added:[455]

“Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.”

The fact, however, that “Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing,” is not an irony of fate so much as a folly of society. Later in the story the philosophizing of one of the characters leads the author to the reflection:

“Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations.”

Nay, the metaphysician himself does not altogether escape. Piero de Cosimo is accused of being one and repudiates the idea:[456]

“Not I, Messer Greco; a philosopher is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble. I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life. Fowls cackle, asses bray, women chatter, and philosophers spin false reasons--that’s the effect the sight of the world brings out of them.”

This perception of the Idol of the Cave, and the whole trend of Eliot’s argument is evidence that the pragmatic attitude existed some time before it was so vividly and enduringly defined by Professor James.

Since these various changes bring about no complete break with the satiric tradition, we may expect to find the connecting links with both the remote and the immediate past as much in evidence as are the features of novelty. Peacock’s indebtedness was to the Athenian comedy, and Lytton’s to the near-contemporary Byron. Mrs. Gaskell had Jane Austen and Crabbe and the whole gallery of eighteenth-century village vignettes for her humors of rural life; while her _Mary Barton_ probably reached back to _Sybil_, as it did forward to the line of economic novels. Thackeray had a large store to draw on for his burlesques, as did Lytton and Butler for their pseudo-Utopias.

Nor is there any abrupt termination to satiric affairs as the Victorians left them at the end of the century. The years stand as sign posts along the way, and not as barriers across it. The changes they call our attention to were less patent to those in and by whom they were working than to us with our perspective. From our moderate distance we are able to discern not only the evolutionary process but some of its results.

In a national award the satiric prize would undoubtedly go to the French, whose genius for satire not only gave them preëminence among the peoples in that line, but gave their satire precedence over their other literature. But with this exception, the total effect of satire in the Victorian novel ranks artistically with the highest at large, and surpasses some other elements of the fiction itself. For the nineteenth-century novel is undeniably didactic, and therefore, while it gains in point, significance, and intellectual interest, it loses in romantic interest and esthetic purity. It is here that satire becomes its salvation, for by giving much of the criticism a humorous turn it counteracts the didactic effect, enhances delight, and, to readers of a sensitive response, makes a point that would not be sharpened by increased vehemence. No invective against the Countess de Saldar could be so illuminating as Lady Jocelyn’s thorough relish of her as a specimen. It is of a piece with Mr. Bennet’s enjoyment of Collins and Wickham;[457] with Lamb’s avowal that he would rather lose the legacy Dorrell cheated him out of than “be without the idea of that specious old rogue;” and with the dismay of Don Antonio over the restored sanity of Don Quixote.[458] It is the secret of Trollope’s charm, as Hawthorne indicated when he described the impression of those “beef and ale” novels,--

“* * * as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.”

It would have been a saving grace to many of the _dramatis personæ_ if they could have shared the experience of a romantically inclined youth who, after building an air castle in which he figured first as a conquering hero and then as a magnanimous patron, suddenly “came to:”[459]

“And then he turned upon himself with laughter, discovering a most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet.”

“What a pity it is,” exclaimed Butler,[460] “that Christian never met Mr. Common-Sense with his daughter, Good-Humour, and her affianced husband, Mr. Hate-Cant.” Bunyan doubtless would have replied that he also approved of these somewhat worldly characters, but that they were people of less importance in their day than they became thereafter. The progress of the modern pilgrim is toward a City of Sanitation rather than Holiness, but sanitation is interpreted so widely as to include the soul also in the cleansing process. For this work Common-Sense and Hate-Cant are our efficiency experts; and that Good-Humour should be a member of their household is inevitable at a time when graciousness is accounted not a negligible adornment but a fundamental virtue.

To the poise and proportion contributed to satire by the emphasis on the quality of humor, must be added the justice that comes from a rationalized sympathy, and from the counter, positive element which restores the balance pulled down by destructive criticism. A striking example of both is furnished by Meredith in his explanation of one of his characters. No pretender has ever been more skillfully pursued or more thoroughly unmasked than the ambitious daughter of the great Mel. After such treatment no one before this time could have presented so fairly the case for the defendant:[461]

“Now the two Generals--Rose Jocelyn and the Countess de Saldar--had brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes: the former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety and her own interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence. I will not be so bold as to state which of the two I think right. Good and evil work together in this world. If the Countess had not woven the tangle, and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,--never have had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms and habits of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him simply as God created him, and clave to him.”

Thackeray and Trollope also apologize for some of the people they ridicule, but with this characteristic difference, that Thackeray bespeaks your indulgence for a Pendennis or a Philip on the Horatian ground,

“_Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille est_ _Qui minimis urgetur._”

But Trollope conscientiously reminds the reader that his picture of an Archdeacon Grantly, a George Bertram, even a Mrs. Proudie, is one-sided; that their dramatic and amusing faults have been allowed to overshadow their less entertaining but existent virtues; and that to know all would be, not to forgive all, but to forgive judiciously. His story of the childish lapse and manly recovery of the vicar Robarts concludes with the reflection, “A man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great deal.”[462] This is a clear, cool discrimination far more difficult to attain than Thackeray’s nebulous implication that though this man is certainly very imperfect and not worth a great deal yet his dear womenkind excuse him and we adore them for it.

George Eliot is too stern to do much excusing, but she always gives due weight to “the terrible coercion of our deeds.” If she insists on the baleful effect of yielding to temptation, she insists also on an appreciation of the tempting force. She analyzes the culprit:[463]

“The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike.”

But at the same time she warns his judges:

“Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.”

Elsewhere, on the same theme, she indicates her general impression of the relative amounts of human wisdom and folly:[464]

“And to judge wisely I suppose we must know how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part of the world’s history.”

This is in agreement with the point of the lines written on the portrait of Beau Nash at Bath, placed between the busts of Newton and Pope:

“This picture placed these busts between, Gives satire all its strength: Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length.”

But this Victorian painter of Folly, and at least some of her contemporaries, endeavored to make satire realistic by drawing Wit and Wisdom on a proportionate scale. It was in recognition of this that Stevenson said,

“My compliments to George Eliot for her Rosamund Vincy; the ugly work of satire she has transmuted to the ends of art by the companion figure of Lydgate; and the satire was much wanted for the education of young men.”

Victorian literature would not have cared to produce a _Ship of Fools_,--though a passenger list might easily be culled out from its fiction,--nor a _Hudibras_, nor a _Dunciad_, nor even a _Tartuffe_, for George Warrington voiced the general sentiment when he said of that great drama that it could not be reckoned great in comparison with _Othello_, because “‘a mere villainous hypocrite should not be chief of a great piece.’”[465]

This segment of literature may not be more sincere in its claim of truth-telling, but it shows more art in its method; and it is perhaps even less flattering to human nature in its assumption that simple exposure, without exaggeration, is quite enough.

Nor did it ever expect its satire to prove revolutionary. Peacock, first on the list, confessed, through one of his characters, of having been cured of a passion for reforming the world, “by the conviction of the inefficacy of moral theory with respect to producing a practical change in the mass of mankind.” He adds,--[466]

“Custom is the pillar round which opinion twines, and interest is the tie that binds it. It is not by reason that practical change can be effected, but by making a puncture to the quick in the feelings of personal hope and personal fear.”

The fear of being ridiculous is of course one of those which may be punctured to the quick, and thereby a practical change effected. It is also true that, the human constitution and capacity being what they are, constant criticism is necessary. It is the spur, the brake, the corrective, to inform us when we are going too slow, too fast, or in the wrong direction. It is not by nature an agreeable thing, and there are times when it should not be made so. But if there are deeds and characters beyond the reach of humor, it is equally true, conversely, as Meredith says:[467] “There are questions as well as persons that only the Comic can fitly touch.” The paradox arises in the fact that while criticism is essentially scientific, satire is a branch of esthetics, which nevertheless has practical proclivities. These it does no harm to exercise, providing it wreaks no violence on its character as an art. But the effect of satire must not be confused with its quality. It cannot be said that he satirizes best who reforms most,--the harvest of reform from satiric seed being granted. Concerning a pitchfork or muckrake there is no question of art: concerning a statue there is no question of utility: but satire is like a silver spoon, which partakes of both qualities, and is estimated sometimes according to one, sometimes the other, and sometimes a compromise between the two.

“_C’est une étrange entreprise_,” exclaimed Molière, “_que celle de faire rire les honnêtes gens_.” The strangeness of it becomes more striking when we remember that the laughter of the race is directed against itself and at the very things over which it is most sensitive,--its own inept follies and poor flimsy pretenses. But it is unendurable only in the form of the “grinning sneer” of Blifil. Even ridicule may be welcome if it comes from the genial Allworthy, whose “smiles at folly were indeed such as we may suppose the angels bestow on the absurdities of mankind.” Not all satirists are so benign, but such benignity is not incompatible with the finest satire. Meredith himself, after writing a dozen novels permeated with the most pungent satire, said in the last one that “if we bring reason to scan our laugh at pure humanity, it is we who are in place of the ridiculous, for doing what reason disavows.”[468]

It may be that as we reason more we laugh less; and that brings the question whether it were wiser to check the reasoning or quench the laughter. Since, however, laughter is likely to improve in quality as it diminishes in quantity, we may be content to abjure the witticism at which “the fool lifteth up his voice with laughter,” and substitute the reflective wit over which “the clever man will scarce smile quietly.” Such was the mild aspiration of the humorous Victorians; but though mild, the spirit was ubiquitous. It gave tone to the pessimism of Thompson and temper to the optimism of Stevenson; it colored darkly the defiant pages of Carlyle and tinged lightly the protesting paragraphs of Arnold; it lent an edge to the sentiment of Tennyson and humanized the philosophy of Browning. It even dignified the comicality of _Punch_, for Douglas Jerrold, at least, was far from being an irresponsible jester. His gruesome _Dish of Glory_, with its ironical advice to the French to eat the Algerians as fast as they conquer them, will bear comparison with _The Modest Proposal_. The dedication of volume eight also illustrates the new effect of self-turned irony:

“As young Aurora, with her blaze of light, Into the shade throws all the pride of night, And pales presumptuous stars, who vainly think That every eye is on them as they blink:

So _Punch_, the light and glory of the time, His wit and wisdom brilliant as sublime, Scares into shades Cant’s hypocritic throng, Abashes Folly, and exposes wrong.”

This may sound like an echo from the Elizabethans and the Augustans; but the difference wherewith the Victorians wear their rue is as important as it is subtle. The two great influences of their time, Science and Democracy, operating upon their life and literature, made them at once sensitive to the reasons for man’s shortcomings, and sensible of the absurd position of the avowed castigator--who, moreover, by his very situation as a sharp-shooter renders himself in turn the more conspicuous target.

Man’s record here below gives little cause, it is true, for congratulation; so discounted are his astonishing successes by his disheartening, hopeless failures. Colossal in blunder as in achievement, stupendous in fanaticism as in imagination, nevertheless he may maintain, on the authority of a deterministic philosophy, that he has literally done the best he could. His very faculty of deception is often but an adoption of that protective coloring recognized as one of Nature’s most admirable devices. The human race is indeed provocative, but who that understands can have the heart to yield to the provocation? Even the most accomplished satirist of his time concluded that he would stick to sober philosophy,--[469]

“And irony and satire off me throw. They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.”

But though a knowledge of mortal psychology does have a tendency to take the starch out of satire, it does not thereby destroy the fabric but only leaves it the more diaphanous. It no longer rustles and crackles but flows instead with the sweeter liquefaction of Julia’s silk. This gentle diffusion of her presence is a less obtrusive rôle than satire has hitherto enjoyed but is none the less essential, and in any case it is all that can be allowed by a scientific, democratic society, too well informed to deal only with surfaces, too preoccupied with its own business and desires, such as they are, to worry much about the fiasco others make of theirs, too polite to scold even with wit, and too truly humorous to tolerate the superior pose.

In proportion however, as the individual is spared, the burden of responsibility is shifted to the collected shoulders of the society he has bound himself into. Logically, of course, the collection is no more guilty than its constituents, but it has the advantage of being quite as vulnerable and capable of improvement, and yet not endowed with personal feelings to be wounded or personal ability to retaliate.

So far as there is a definite Victorian contribution to the garner of satire, it lies in this democratization of objects and rationalization of methods. How great an impulse the Victorians gave to the era of agnosticism and revaluation of all ideals whose inception so troubled the waters of their reluctant souls, we never can know. What Shaw, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Rostand, even Wells and Nietzsche, would have been without Peacock, Disraeli, Carlyle, Dickens, George Eliot, Huxley, Meredith, and Butler, is a question that admits of a wide solution. But it is assuredly as foolish to disdain the offerings of a past generation, however erring, ignorant, and prejudiced we may consider it in the light of our own emancipation and advancement, as to suppose that we shall count for more than our due modicum in the centuries to come.

However that may be, we have as yet invented nothing to surpass the general Victorian satiric philosophy,--that the wisest reaction to life is a high seriousness graced with humor, and the most acceptable attitude toward one’s fellow creatures is a compassionate comprehension of our common tragedy, redeemed from emotionalism by an ironic appreciation of the human comedy.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Since the bibliography of this subject is necessarily too extensive to be cited in full, the following list includes only those volumes of especial importance, particularly in the field of satire. For convenience the list is classified according to the main divisions of the material.

I

ON SATIRE

Alden, R. M.: _The Rise of Formal Satire in England under Classical Influence_. Univ. of Penn. Pub., Phil. Series, VII, 2, 1902.

Bergson, Henri: _Laughter_. (Translated by Brereton and Rothwell.) Macmillan, 1912.

Brown, John: _An Essay on Satire_. In Dodsley’s Collection of Poems.

Buckingham, Duke of: _An Essay on Satire_. In the Scott-Saintsbury edition of Dryden, XV.

Dryden, John: _Essay on Satire_. Above, XIII.

Flögel, Karl. _Geschichte des Grotesk Komischen in Litterature_, (reprinted.) 1886.

Garnett, Richard: Article on Satire in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Hannay, James: _Satire and Satirists_. Redfield, 1856.

Henderson, E. F.: _Symbol and Satire in the French Revolution_. Putnam, 1912.

Lenient, C.: _La Satire en France au Moyen Age_. Hachette, 1859.

Lenient, C.: _La Satire en France au XV et XVI Siècles_. Hachette, 1866.

Meredith, George: _Essay on Comedy_. Scribner.

Morris, Corbyn: _An Essay towards fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule_. London, 1743.

Neff, T. L.: _La Satire des Femmes dans la Poesie Lyrique Français du Moyen Age_. Paris, 1900.

Previté-Orton, C. W.: _Political Satire in English Poetry_. Cambridge University Press, 1910.

Schneegans, H.: _Geschichte der Grotesken Satire_. Strassburg, 1984.

Tucker, S. M.: _Verse-Satire in England before the Renaissance_. Columbia University Press, 1908.

Comments on satire of a more incidental and yet interesting nature are found in prefaces and translations, in essays on kindred topics, and in general histories of literature. (In some cases it is hard to decide to which group a given citation should be assigned. A few are practically interchangeable.)

Ball, A. P.: _The Satire of Seneca_. Columbia University Press, 1902.

Besant, Sir Walter: _The French Humourists from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Centuries_. Bentley, 1873.

Boileau, Nicolas: A short prose treatise published with the _Satires_.

Bourne, Randolph: _The Life of Irony_. Atlantic Monthly, III, 357.

Cannan, Gilbert: _Satire_. (Short monograph.) Doran.

Chesterton, G. K.: _Pope and the Art of Satire_. In _Varied Types_. Dodd, Mead, 1908.

Fuess, C. M.: _Lord Byron as a Satirist in Verse_. Columbia University Press, 1912.

Headlam, Cecil: _Selections from the British Satirists_. Robinson, 1897.

Jackson, Thomas: _The Use of Irony_. Introductory Essay to _A Narrative of the Fire of London_, by Peter Maritzburg. London, 1869.

L’Estrange, A. G.: _History of English Humour_. London, 1877.

Matthews, Brander: _On American Satire in Verse_. Harper’s Magazine, CIV, 294.

Myres, Ernest: _English Satire in the Nineteenth Century_. Living Age, 1882.

Paley, F. A.: _Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets_. Macmillan, 1892.

Smeaton, W. H.: _English Satires_. London, 1899.

Stokes, F. G. (editor): _Epistolæ Obscurorum Vivorum_. Chatto and Windus, 1909.

Symonds, J. A.: _The Renaissance in Italy_. (Vol. V, Chap. XIV.) Holt, 1888.

Taine, H. A: _History of English Literature_. Chapter on Thackeray.

Ullman, B. L.: _Horace on the Nature of Satire_. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1917.

Van Laun, H.: _History of French Literature_. Introduction, and Book IV, Chap. I. Putman, 1876.

Wright, Thomas: _Anglo-Saxon Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century_. London, 1872.

Wright, Thomas: _A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art_, 1865.

The satirists themselves who have been sufficiently self-conscious of their art to discuss it more or less include, on the Continent, Horace, Juvenal, Lucian, Cervantes, and Boileau; and in England, Barclay, Skelton, Gascoigne, Marston, Jonson, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Young, Johnson, Fielding, Churchill, Cowper, Wolcott, Gifford, Byron, Peacock, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, and Meredith.

II

ON THE NOVEL

Brownell, W. C.: _Victorian Prose Masters_. Doubleday, Page, 1902.

Brownell, W. C.: _The Novelists_. (Warner Classics.) Doubleday, Page, 1905.

Burton, Richard: _Masters of the English Novel_. Holt, 1909.

Cross, W. L.: _Development of the English Novel_. Macmillan, 1905.

Dawson, W. J.: _Makers of English Fiction_. Revell, 1905.

Holliday, Carl: _English Fiction_. Century, 1912.

Lord, W. F.: _The Mirror of the Century_. Lane, 1906.

Oliphant, James: _Victorian Novelists_. Blackie, 1899.

Phelps, W. L.: _Advance of the English Novel_. Dodd, Mead, 1916.

Raleigh, Walter: _The English Novel_. Murray, 1911.

Saintsbury, George: _The English Novel_. Dutton, 1913.

Stoddard, F. L.: _Evolution of the English Novel_. Macmillan, 1909.

On the Nineteenth Century in general some of the most important volumes are:

Brandes, Georg: _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_. London, 1905.

Bryce, James: _Studies in Contemporary Biography_. Macmillan, 1903.

Chesterton, G. K.: _The Victorian Age in Literature_. Holt, 1914.

Gosse, Edmund: _English Literature in the Nineteenth Century_. Putnam, 1901.

Harrison, Frederic: _Studies in Early Victorian Literature_. Longmans, 1906.

Magnus, Laurie: _English Literature in the Nineteenth Century_. Putnam, 1909.

Saintsbury, George: _History of Nineteenth Century Literature_. Macmillan, 1899.

Saintsbury, George: _The Later Nineteenth Century_. In _Periods of European Literature_. Blackwood, 1907.

Walker, Hugh: _Literature of the Victorian Era_. Cambridge University Press, 1901.

III

ON THE NOVELISTS

Brontë. Birrell, Augustine: _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. Walter Scott, 1887. Gaskell, Mrs.: _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. Harper, 1902. Goldring, Maude: _Charlotte Brontë, the Woman; a Study_. Scribner, 1916. Shorter, C. K.: _The Brontës: Life and Letters_. Scribner, 1900.

Butler. Cannan, Gilbert: _Samuel Butler, a Critical Study_. London, 1915. Harris, J. E.: _Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon_. London, 1916.

Dickens. Chesterton, G. K.: _Charles Dickens, a Critical Study_. Dodd, Mead, 1906. Chesterton, G. K.: _Appreciation and Criticism of the Works of Charles Dickens_. Dent, 1911. Cooper, F. T.: (Translator from the French of Keine and Lumet, in the Great Men Series.) Stokes, 1914. Crotch, W. W.: _The Pageant of Dickens_. Chapman and Hall, 1916. _The Soul of Dickens_. Chapman and Hall, 1916. _Charles Dickens, Social Reformer_. Chapman and Hall, 1916. Fitzgerald, P. H.: _The Life of Charles Dickens as Revealed in his Works_. Chatto and Windus, 1905. Forster, John: _Life of Charles Dickens_. (Now included with the Gadshill edition). Chapman and Hall, 1904. Gissing, George: _Charles Dickens, a Critical Study_. Dodd, Mead, 1898. Hughes, J. L.: _Dickens as an Educator_. Appleton, 1901. Marzials, Sir Frank: _Life of Charles Dickens_. Walter Scott, 1887. Swinburne, C. A.: _Charles Dickens_. London, 1913. Ward, A. W.: _Charles Dickens_. (Men of Letters.) Harper, 1901.

Disraeli. Arnot, Robert: _The Earl of Beaconsfield_. Dunn, 1904. Brandes, Georg: _Lord Beaconsfield, a Study_. Scribner, 1880. Froude, J. A.: _Lord Beaconsfield_. (Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria.) London, 1890. Mill, John: _Disraeli, the Author, Orator, and Statesman_. London, 1863. Moneypenny and Buckle: _Life of Benjamin Disraeli_. Macmillan, 1916. O’Connor, T. P.: _Lord Beaconsfield, a Biography_. Fisher Unwin, 1905.

Eliot. Blind, Mathilde: _George Eliot_. (Eminent Women.) Allen, 1884. Browning, Oscar: _Life of George Eliot_. (Great Writers). Walter Scott, 1892. Cooke, G. W.: _George Eliot, a Critical Study_. Houghton, Mifflin, 1883. Cross, J. W.: _Life and Letters of George Eliot_. Blackwood, 1885. Stephen, Leslie: _George Eliot_. (Men of Letters.) Macmillan, 1902. Thomson, Clara: _George Eliot_. (Westminster Biographies.) Paul, Trench, 1901.

Gaskell. Shorter, Clement: _Life of Mrs. Gaskell_. (Men of Letters.) Macmillan, 1904.

Kingsley. Kaufman, M.: _Charles Kingsley, Christian Socialist and Social Reformer_. London, 1892. Stubbs, C. W.: _Charles Kingsley and the Christian Social Movement_. (Victorian Era.) London, 1899.

Lytton. Cooper, Thomas: _Lord Lytton_. (Men of the Time.) Routledge, 1873. Lytton, Earl of: _Life of Edward Bulwer, first Lord Lytton_. Macmillan, 1913.

Meredith. Bailey, E. J.: _The Novels of George Meredith_. Scribner, 1907. Beach, J. W.: _The Comic Spirit in Meredith_. Longmans, Green, 1911. Crees, J. H. E.: _George Meredith, a Study_. Oxford University Press, 1918. Curle, R. H. P.: _Aspects of George Meredith_. Dutton, 1908. Hammerton, J. A.: _George Meredith in Anecdote and Criticism_. London, 1909. Le Gallienne, Richard: _George Meredith, Some Characteristics_. Lane, 1915. Lynch, Hannah: _George Meredith_. London, 1891. Moffat, James: _A Primer to the Novels of George Meredith_. London, 1909. Trevelyan, G. M.: _The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith_. London, 1913.

Peacock. Freeman, A. M.: _Thomas Love Peacock, a Critical Study_. Kennerley, 1911. Paul, H.: _The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock_. London, 1904. Van Doren, Carl: _Life of Thomas Love Peacock_. Dutton, 1911. Young, A. B.: _Life and Novels of Thomas Love Peacock_. Norwich, 1904.

Reade. Coleman, John: _Charles Reade_. London, 1903.

Thackeray. Benjamin, L. S.: (Lewis Melville.) _William Makepeace Thackeray, a Biography_. Lane, 1910. Benjamin, L. S.: _Some Aspects of Thackeray_. Little, Brown, 1911. Chesterton and Melville: _Thackeray_. London, 1903. Jack, A. A.: _Thackeray, a Study_. London, 1895. Merivale and Marzials: _Life of William Makepeace Thackeray_. Scott, 1891. Trollope, Anthony: _William Makepeace Thackeray_. (Men of Letters.) Macmillan, 1905. Whibley, Charles: _William Makepeace Thackeray_. (Modern English Writers.) London, 1904.

Trollope. Escott, Thomas: _Anthony Trollope_. Lane, 1913.

Nearly half these novelists left collections of letters. Lytton’s and George Eliot’s were published with their biographies. The others are:

Dickens. Edited by Mamie Dickens and Georgina Hogarth. Latest edition, Macmillan, 1893.

Meredith. Edited by his son. Scribner, 1912.

Thackeray. _A Collection of Letters of Thackeray_. (To the Brookfields.) Scribner, 1887. _Letters of Thackeray to an American Family._ Smith, Elder, 1904. _Some Family Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray._ Houghton, Mifflin, 1911.

The only autobiography is Trollope’s. Edited by H. M. Trollope. Harper, 1883.

* * * * *

Two especially noteworthy pieces of editorial Introduction should be mentioned: Garnett’s for Peacock, and Mrs. Ritchie’s for Thackeray. Among the many essays and shorter studies are the following:

Brontë, in Gates’s _Studies and Appreciations_; and Swinburne’s _A Note on Charlotte Brontë_.

Eliot, in Darmstetter’s _English Studies_, Dowden’s _Studies in Literature_, Morley’s _Critical Miscellanies_, Myers’ _Modern Essays_, and Sherer’s _Essays on English Literature_.

Meredith, in Elton’s _Modern Studies_, Henderson’s _Interpreters of Life and the Modern Spirit_, and Sherman’s _On Contemporary Literature_. Forman is editor of a volume _Some Early Appreciations of Meredith_.

Reade, in _Swinburne’s Miscellanies_.

Trollope, in Bradford’s _A Naturalist of Souls_, and Julian Hawthorne’s _Confessions in Criticism_.

And finally there are certain combinations and groups, such as:

Brontë and Eliot, in Bonnell’s _Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Jane Austen_.

Brontë, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, and Trollope, in Saintsbury’s _Corrected Impressions_; and Peacock, in his _Essays in English Literature_.

Brontë, Disraeli, Kingsley, and Eliot, in Stephen’s _Hours in a Library_; and Trollope, in his _Studies of a Biographer_.

Dickens and Thackeray, in Bagehot’s _Literary Studies_, and Field’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.

Dickens, Thackeray, and Eliot, in Clark’s _Study of English Prose Writers_.

Dickens, Thackeray, and Kingsley, in Lang’s _Essays in Little_.

Dickens and Lytton, in Home’s _New Spirit of the Age_.

Dickens, in Hutton’s _Criticism on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers_, and Eliot, in his _Essays on Some Modern Guides to English Thought_.

Dickens, Disraeli, Gaskell, and Meredith, in More’s _Shelburne Essays_.

Disraeli and Peacock, in Garnett’s _Essays of an ex-Librarian_.

Eliot, in Berle’s _George Eliot and Thomas Hardy_.

Eliot and Trollope, in James’s _Partial Portraits_.

The following editions of the novelists are those referred to in the text.

Brontë. _Jane Eyre._ Haworth edition. Harper. _Shirley_ and _Villette_. Dent edition.

Butler. _Erewhon_ and _Erewhon Revisited_. Dutton. _The Way of All Flesh. Modern Library_ edition. Boni and Liveright.

Dickens. _Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_, _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Hard Times_, _Little Dorrit_, _Tale of Two Cities_, _Our Mutual Friend_. Hearst International edition. _Great Expectations_, and _Edwin Drood_. The Jefferson Press. _Dombey and Son._ Crowell. _Barnaby Rudge._ Chapman and Hall. _Disraeli._ Longmans, Green.

Eliot. _Middlemarch_ and _Mill on the Floss_. Blackwood. All the others, Scribners’ Standard edition.

Gaskell. Smith, Elder.

Kingsley. Macmillan.

Lytton. Knebworth edition. Routledge and Sons.

Meredith. _Sandra Belloni_, _Celt and Saxon_, and _One of Our Conquerors_: Scribner. All the others, Constable.

Peacock. Aldine edition. Dent.

Reade. Dana Estes.

Trollope. Cathedral Series and _The Claverings_: Smith, Elder. Manor House Series. Dodd, Mead. _The Bertrams._ Harper. _The Way We Live Now._ Chapman and Hall.

Thackeray. Dana Estes.

INDEX

_Absalom and Achitophel_, 12 n.

_Adam Bede_, 152, 252, 277, 309 f.

Addison, Joseph, 48, 89.

_Adventures of an Atom_, 193.

_Adventures of Philip, The_, 186.

Alden, R. M., 40.

_Alice_, 158.

_Alton Locke_, 131, 191 n., 198, 212 f., 221.

_Amazing Marriage, An_, 98, 157, 203, 274, 283, 309 n., 313.

_Anti-Jacobin, The_, 169.

_Apology for Smectymnuus, An_, 12.

Ariosto, L., 124.

Aristophanes; his comedy, 4, 8; comments by Cope and White, 19, 48, 78, 204, 304.

_Aristophanes’ Apology_, 10, 15, 34, 37.

Aristotle, 7, 49.

Arnold, Matthew, 49, 134, 177, 223, 313, 315.

Austen, Jane, 49, 84, 112, 123 n., 129, 134 n., 156, 238, 245, 306.

_Author, The_, 17.

_Autobiography_, (Trollope’s), 52 n.

Bacon, Francis, 273.

_Barchester Towers_, 88, 108 f., 209.

Barclay, Alexander, 21 n., 243.

_Barnaby Rudge_, 96.

_Barry Lyndon_, 78, 79, 148.

_Beauchamp’s Career_, 88, 98 f., 115, 155, 160, 174, 192, 197, 213 f., 224, 301, 302.

Bergson, Henri, 7, 28.

_Bertrams, The_, 142, 202 f., 208 f., 221.

_Bigelow Papers, The_, 4, 168.

Birrell, Augustine, 35.

Blackmore, Sir Richard, 46.

Blake, William, 49.

_Bleak House_, 97, 140, 141, 202.

Boileau, N., 48.

_Book of Snobs, The_, 206 f., 219 f., 286.

Bourne, Randolph, 128.

Bright, John, 170, 204.

Brontë, Charlotte, 46, 49, 50, 85, 92, 116, 130, 131, 156, 170, 180, 183 f., 191, 210, 218, 231, 260, 270, 271, 279, 285, 301.

Brown, John, 12 f., 36, 123 n.

Browne, Sir Thomas, 176.

Browning, Robert, 10, 15, 34, 37, 49, 76, 98, 172 n., 313.

Bryce, James, 84 n.

Buckingham, 2nd Duke of, 9.

Burns, Robert, 48.

Burton, Robert, 49.

Butler, Samuel, 46, 48, 61, 62, 63 f., 81, 82, 87, 128, 130, 145, 180, 187, 190, 191, 198, 202, 210, 214, 218, 219, 221, 222, 231, 246 n., 269, 270, 273, 278, 280, 287, 290 n., 294, 295, 301, 306, 307, 315.

Byron, Lord, 11 n., 17, 28, 35, 48, 76, 169, 171, 173, 177, 223, 289, 304, 306.

Cannan, Gilbert, 69 n.

_Candidate, The_, 16.

Carlyle, Thomas, 38 n., 49, 177, 195, 204, 222 n., 228, 236 n., 294, 313, 315.

_Catherine_, 62 n., 79, 148.

_Caxtons, The_, 25.

Cervantes, 4, 9 n., 25, 48, 51, 67 n., 70, 175 f., 307.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 286.

Chesterton, G. K., 65 n., 71 n., 195, 246 n.

Churchill, Charles, 6, 16 f., 48.

Claudius, 169.

_Cloister and the Hearth, The_, 88.

_Coffee-House Politician, The_, 23.

Coleridge, S. T., 171 f., 173, 177.

Collins, Wilkie, 46.

_Colloquies of Society_, 173 n.

_Colyn Clout_, 21 n., 301.

_Coming Race, The_, 63 n., 68, 72, 81, 133, 193, 227.

_Coningsby_, 170, 174, 299.

_Covent Garden Journal, The_, 9 n.

Cowper, William, 17 n., 18, 33, 49, 176.

_Cranford_, 88.

Croce, Benedetto, 4.

_Crochet Castle_, 62, 132, 145, 171, 220.

Crotch, W. W., 246 n.

_Daniel Deronda_, 236 f., 251, 253 n., 281, 292, 310.

Dante, 49.

_David Copperfield_, 78, 199, 218, 219, 250, 300.

Dawson, W. J., 15.

Defoe, Daniel, 12, 17, 22, 49, 70, 74 n., 89, 128, 183.

De Quincey, Thomas, 14, 33, 49, 128.

Dewey, John, 5.

Dickens, Charles, 46, 48, 53, 92, 95 f., 130, 157, 170, 174, 183, 187, 190, 191, 195, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 218, 222 n., 231, 234, 235, 237, 238, 240, 244, 247, 249, 250, 260, 262, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 278, 285, 287, 290, 315.

_Diana of the Crossways_, 161, 185, 214, 239, 276, 284, 298, 302.

_Dinner of Trimalchio, The_, 127.

Disraeli, Benjamin, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 61, 62, 72 f., 77, 81, 82, 89, 123, 130, 134, 156, 170, 173, 174, 187, 188, 191, 193 f., 198, 202, 210, 216, 225, 231, 244, 271, 279, 299, 315.

_Doctor Thorne_, 143, 192.

_Dombey and Son_, 138, 141, 218, 219, 250 f.

Domitian, 67, 169.

_Don Juan_, 4, 76, 82.

_Don Quixote_, 82, 127.

Donne, John, 48.

Dowden, Edward, 191.

Dryden, John, 12, 21 f., 48, 123 n., 286.

_Duke’s Children, The_, 217 n., 240.

Dunbar, William, 48.

_Dunciad, The_, 82, 169.

_Edwin Drood_, 232, 270.

Edgeworth, Maria, 84.

_Egoist, The_, 78, 88, 98, 100, 101, 153, 184 f., 277, 283, 293.

Eliot, George, 46, 47, 49, 92, 116, 130, 152, 157, 170, 177, 180, 183, 191, 205, 216, 235, 236, 247, 251, 253, 256, 257, 261, 273, 274, 277, 278, 280, 281, 285, 287, 291, 295, 309, 315.

_Emma_, 78.

_England and the English_, 225.

_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, 17.

_English Humorists, The_, 50.

_English Novel, The_ (Raleigh’s), 26, 304.

_Epistle to William Hogarth_, 16.

_Epistles to the Literati_, 174.

Erasmus, 49.

_Erewhon_, 63 n., 68, 81, 82, 146 f., 190, 202, 214 f., 227.

_Erewhon Revisited_, 63 n., 69, 81, 216, 290 n.

_Essay on Comedy, An_, 14, 27 f., 31 n., 36 n., 160, 293, 312.

_Essay on Satire, (Brown’s)_, 12 f., 36, 123 n. (Dryden’s), 21 n., 22, 123 n.

_Ettrick Shepherd, The_, 1, 174 n.

Euripides, 48.

_Evan Harrington_, 161, 162, 190, 255, 284, 307, 308 f.

_Every Man in his Humour_, 8.

_Fair Haven, The_, 69.

_Farina_, 63 n., 79, 81.

_Fatal Boots, The_, 103.

_Felix Holt_, 158 n., 170, 192, 198, 236, 251, 291, 304 n.

Ferrier, Susan, 111, 238.

Fielding, Henry, 9, 14, 22 f., 28, 37 n., 48, 51 n., 89, 91, 286, 303.

_Framley Parsonage_, 119 f., 142, 143 f., 196, 207, 309.

France, Anatole, 49, 124, 246 n.

Freeman, A. M., 66 n.

Fuess, C. M., 28.

Galsworthy, John, 125.

Garnett, Richard, 10, 36, 67 n., 303.

Gascoigne, George, 25, 48.

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 45, 49, 84, 92, 130, 157, 183, 191, 195, 205, 216, 247, 270, 279, 285, 287, 306.

Gay, John, 6.

_Getting Married_, 180.

Gibbon, Edward, 49.

Gifford, William, 14, 17, 48, 171.

_Godolphin_, 234, 276.

_Golden Ass, The_, 127.

Goldsmith, Oliver, 48.

_Great Expectations_, 160.

_Great Hoggarty Diamond, The_, 62 n., 79.

_Gryll Grange_, 63 n., 65, 67.

_Gulliver’s Travels_, 68, 82, 89.

Hall, Joseph, 35, 48, 124, 289.

Hannay, James, 2.

_Hard Times_, 138, 198, 218.

Hardy, Thomas, 46, 49, 156, 223.

Harris, J. E., 71 f.

_Harry Richmond_, 98.

Hazlitt, William, 30 n.

Headlam, Cecil, 286.

_Headlong Hall_, 62 n., 171.

Hebrew _Adversary_, The, 2.

Hebrew Prophets, The, 48.

Heinsius, Daniel, 40 n.

Herford, C. H., 21.

_Henry Esmond_, 88.

_Historical Register, The_, 9.

Homer, 49.

Hood, Thomas, 48.

Hook, Theodore, 170.

Horace, 6, 7, 11, 21, 25, 32 f., 48, 60, 286, 289.

Humor, 5, 7, 59, 83, 86, 280.

Hutten, Ulrich von, 127.

Huxley, Thomas, 177, 315.

_Hypatia_, 88.

Ibsen, Henrik, 71.

_Imaginary Conversations_, 27, 34.

_Infernal Marriage, The_, 62 n., 76 f., 198.

_Intriguing Chambermaid, The_, 22.

Irony, 50, 121 f., 129, 163 f.

_Isaiah_, 297.

_Ixion_, 62 n., 76, 81, 173, 203 f., 223.

James, William, 305.

_Jane Eyre_, 88, 218.

Jerrold, Douglas, 313.

_Job_, 2, 48.

Johnson, Lionel, 22, 35, 176.

Johnson, Samuel, 35, 49, 286.

Jonson, Ben, 8, 48, 59, 229.

Jordan, David Starr, 243.

_Joseph Andrews_, 78.

_Journey from this World to the Next, A_, 68.

_Journey to Parnassus, A_, 175 n., 176.

Juvenal, 6, 11, 21, 37, 48, 169, 286, 289.

Kenelm Chillingly, 113 f., 133, 188, 221 n., 274.

Kingsley, Charles, 46, 49, 50 n., 92, 130, 131, 156, 174, 180, 185 f., 187, 191, 195, 210, 212, 215 n., 219, 221, 231, 236 n., 248 n., 249, 252 n., 260, 270, 271, 273, 279, 287, 298 f., 301.

Kingsley, Henry, 46.

Knight, Charles, 53.

Lamb, Charles, 6, 129, 175.

Landor, W. S., 27, 34.

Langland, W., 49.

_Last Chronicles of Barset, The_, 109, 118, 237, 261.

_Last Days of Pompeii, The_, 88.

_Latter Day Pamphlets_, 201 n.

_Legend of the Rhine, The_, 62 n., 79, 81.

Lenient, C., 163, 181.

_Letters to Obscure Men_, 127.

_Little Dorrit_, 97, 199.

Lodge, Thomas, 48.

_Looking Backward_, 73, 227.

_Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, 185.

_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 78.

Lowell, J. R., 168, 193.

Lucian, 4, 9 n., 27, 125, 126.

Lucretius, 49.

Lydgate, John, 148, 243.

Lytton, E. Bulwer, 45, 49, 61, 62, 68, 72 f., 81, 82, 85, 89, 130, 157, 173, 174 f., 177, 183, 187, 191, 192 f., 198, 205, 219, 222 n., 225, 227, 231, 234, 237, 244, 249, 259, 270, 271, 272, 275, 278, 279, 285, 286, 300, 306.

Macaulay, T. B., 173 n.

MacDonald, George, 46.

_MacFlecknoe_, 169.

_Madame Bovary_, 61.

Maeterlinck, M., 16, 315.

_Maid Marian_, 62 n., 65, 79, 81, 145.

_Makers of English Fiction_, 15.

Mallock, W. H., 177.

_Maltravers_, 234 f., 237.

_Mansfield Park_, 209.

_Man and Superman_, 4.

Marston, John, 12, 17.

_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 84, 101, 134, 137.

_Mary Barton_, 88, 198, 298, 306.

Masefield, John, 128.

Massey, Gerald, 170.

_Melincourt_, 62 n., 81, 171, 172, 173, 182 f., 192, 205, 226, 247 f., 311.

Meredith, George, 2, 14, 27, 28, 31 n., 46, 47, 48, 50 n., 54, 61, 62, 71 n., 77, 79, 81, 82, 92, 97 f., 117, 130, 152, 157, 170, 180, 183, 184, 187, 190, 192, 195, 213 f., 216, 217 n., 222, 223, 224, 231, 240, 242, 244, 245, 247, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258 f., 262, 269, 270, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 280–287, 293, 295, 298, 301, 302, 308, 312, 313, 315.

_Middlemarch_, 151, 158, 192, 238, 253, 274, 281, 291, 292, 304.

_Mill on the Floss, The_, 150, 238, 274.

Milnes, R. M., 170.

Milton, John, 12, 49.

_Misfortunes of Elphin, The_, 62 n., 65, 81, 192, 206.

_Modern Utopia, A_, 68.

_Modest Proposal, A_, 147, 313.

Molière, Jean-Baptiste, 28, 73 n., 312.

Moore, Thomas, 48.

More, Sir Thomas, 49.

Morris, Corbyn, 129.

Morris, William, 227.

_My Novel_, 91, 235, 244 n.

Napoleon, 169.

Nero, 169.

_Never too Late to Mend_, 199, 300.

_New Atlantis, The_, 68.

_New Machiavelli, The_, 287.

_New Republic, The_, 177.

_Newcomes, The_, 192, 277, 307 n.

_News from Nowhere_, 227.

_Nicholas Nickleby_, 96, 139, 140, 218, 233.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 125, 315.

_Night and Morning_, 193, 199, 234.

_Nightmare Abbey_, 62 n., 64, 171, 172, 223, 272.

_Noctes Ambrosianae_, 173.

North, Christopher, 1, 174 n., 187 n.

_North and South_, 198, 205, 248.

_Northanger Abbey_, 62 n., 78.

_Novels by Eminent Hands_, 62 n., 79, 174.

_Old Curiosity Shop, The_, 202.

_Old Wives’ Tale, An_, 61.

Oliphant, Mrs., 65 n.

_Oliver Twist_, 95, 95, 137, 139, 270.

_One of our Conquerors_, 154, 160, 179, 197, 223 f., 284, 302.

_Orley Farm_, 160, 202.

_Our Mutual Friend_, 106 f., 202.

_Patience and Foresight_, 314.

_Paul Clifford_, 51 n., 96 n., 198.

Peacock, Thomas Love, 45, 48, 51 n., 52, 61, 62, 63 f., 77, 79, 81, 82, 87, 130, 144, 170, 180, 182, 183, 191, 192, 194, 198, 203, 205, 219, 225, 231, 234, 247, 259, 269, 270, 272, 278, 281, 287, 294, 303, 305 f., 311, 315.

_Peg Woffington_, 88.

_Pelham_, 107, 132, 173, 177, 187, 188, 192, 194, 221, 223, 276 n.

_Pendennis_, 94, 150.

Persius, 8, 169.

Peter Pindar, 177 f.

_Phineas Finn_, 141, 184.

_Phineas Redux_, 170.

_Pickwick_, 78, 88, 199, 202, 232.

_Piers Plowman_, 82.

Plato, 49.

_Political Satire in English Poetry_, 29.

Pope, Alexander, 12, 33, 35, 48.

_Praise of Folly_, 127.

Previté-Orton, C. W., 29.

_Pride and Prejudice_, 134 n.

_Punch_, 313.

_Put Yourself in his Place_, 198, 300.

Rabelais, François, 67 n.

Raleigh, Walter, 26, 123 n., 304.

_Ralph the Heir_, 260 f.

_Rape of the Lock, The_, 4.

Reade, Charles, 46, 47, 49, 52, 92, 130, 157, 191, 195, 198, 199 f., 205, 216, 224 f., 231, 249, 270, 273, 279, 287.

_Rebecca and Rowena_, 62 n., 78 n., 79.

_Renaissance in Italy, The_, 15, 124.

_Reynard the Fox_, 2, 82.

_Rhoda Fleming_, 162, 241 f., 256, 274.

_Richard Feverel_, 163, 216, 257 n., 274.

Richardson, Samuel, 51 n.

_Romance of the Rose, The_, 82.

_Romola_, 151, 252, 274, 305.

_Rose and the Ring, The_, 63 n., 79.

Rostand, Edmond, 78, 256 n.

Saintsbury, George, 60, 129.

_Sandra Belloni_, 154, 155, 190, 254, 255 f.

Satire, 1, 2, 4, 5 f., 10, 11 f., 19 f., 32 f., 41 f., 48 f., 50 f., 59, 82 f., 86 f., 167 f., 179 f., 229 f., 278, 289, 293 ff.

_Satire Menippée, La_, 169.

_Scenes from Clerical Life_, 88.

Scott, Sir Walter, 46, 49.

_Scourge of Villainy, The_, 12, 17.

Seneca, 169.

_Sense and Sensibility_, 246, 303.

_Seven Satires_, 9.

Shakespeare, William, 39, 49, 67 n., 73 n., 286.

_Shaving of Shagpat, The_, 63 n., 78, 80, 81, 307 n.

Shaw, G. B., 11 n., 65 n., 71, 78, 228, 315.

Shelley, P. B., 49, 51 n., 171, 177.

Sherman, S. P., 287.

_Ship of Fools, The_, 21 n.

_Shirley_, 50, 131, 180, 184, 198, 203, 210 f.

Sidgwick, Henry, 18.

_Silas Marner_, 203, 253, 291.

_Sir Harry Hotspur_, 209.

Skelton, John, 21 n., 48, 169, 301.

_Sketches and Travels_, 272.

_Small House at Allington, The_, 217 n.

Smollett, Tobias, 48, 111, 126, 193.

Socrates, 59.

Southey, Robert, 59, 171, 173, 177.

_Spectator, The, No. 451_, 176.

Spenser, Edmund, 48.

Spingarn, J. E., 4.

Steele, Richard, 127.

_Steele Glas, The_, 25.

Stephen, Leslie, 43, 123.

Sterne, Laurence, 49, 89, 111.

Stevenson, R. L., 310 f., 313.

Swift, Jonathan, 4, 9 n., 22 n., 48, 70, 128, 145, 200, 204, 280.

_Sybil_, 136, 189, 194 n., 195, 198, 210, 306.

Symonds, J. A., 15, 124.

Taine, H. A., 11 n., 23, 27, 272 n., 273, 278.

_Tale of Two Cities, A_, 88, 244.

_Tancred_, 135 f., 170, 194, 225.

_Task, The_, 17 n., 18, 33.

Tatlock, J. S. P., 122 n.

Tennyson, Alfred, 35, 48, 313.

Thackeray, W. M., 46, 48, 50, 51 n., 53, 61, 62, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 92 f., 116, 130, 148, 157, 169, 170, 174 f., 183, 187, 189, 191, 205, 206, 209, 217, 219, 231, 235, 240, 243 n., 244, 245, 247, 249, 251, 256, 258, 270, 272, 273, 278, 285, 286, 289, 306, 309.

Thirlwall, Connop, 121.

Thorndike, A. H., 44 f.

_Tom Jones_, 9, 25, 37 n., 78.

_Tragic Comedians, The_, 162.

Traill, H. D., 191.

_Transcripts and Studies_, 191.

Trollope, Anthony, 46, 48, 51, 52, 66, 84, 89 f., 92, 117, 130, 157, 174, 183, 187, 190, 191, 198, 202 f., 207, 209, 219, 221, 222, 231, 235, 237, 240, 243 n., 244, 245, 256, 260, 263, 270, 271, 273, 276, 278, 279, 285, 287, 302, 307, 309.

_Trueborn Englishman, The_, 12 n., 17, 22.

Twain, Mark, 48, 76.

_Twelfth Night_, 78.

_Two Years Ago_, 248 n., 252 n.

_Universal Passion, The_, 18, 33, 80 n.

_Unsocial Socialist, An_, 11 n.

_Up to Midnight_, 246 n.

_Utopia_, 68.

Van Doren, Carl, 67 n.

Van Laun, H., 169.

_Vanity Fair_, 78, 88, 92 f., 101, 149, 175, 183, 286.

Victoria, Queen, 67.

Victorian, 42, 43, 44, 45, 61, 84, 112, 117, 129, 170, 180, 226, 230, 231, 239, 259, 272, 274, 277, 286, 287,296, 306, 310, 311, 315, 316.

Victorians, The, 61, 158, 179, 180, 191, 203, 217, 227, 228, 270, 274, 275, 287, 288, 295, 304, 306, 313, 314, 315.

_Villette_, 211 f., 218, 260.

Virgil, 49.

_Virginians, The_, 311.

_Vittoria_, 98, 155, 282 n.

Voltaire, 38 n., 48, 301.

_Voyage of Captain Popanilla, The_, 62 n., 74, 81, 189, 194 n., 202.

Walker, Hugh, 67 n., 78 n.

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 191 n.

_Warden, The_, 207, 209 f., 222.

_Way of All Flesh, The_, 65 n., 68, 147 f., 215 n., 218.

_Way We Live Now, The_, 240 f., 263 f.

Wells, H. G., 73, 315.

Wendell, Barrett, 29 n.

_What Will He Do with It?_, 91 f., 112 f., 272.

Wit, 59, 83, 86, 110 f.

_Wives and Daughters_, 112, 131, 249.

Wolsey, Cardinal, 169.

Wordsworth, William, 49, 171.

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 48.

Wyclif, John, 49.

_Yeast_, 132, 186, 213 n., 221, 236 n., 260, 298 f., 299.

_Yellowplush Papers, The,_ 62 n., 79, 103, 174.

Yonge, Charlotte, 46.

_Young Duke, The_, 134 f., 189, 198 n.

Young, Edward, 9, 18, 33, 49, 80 n.

Printed in the United States of America

VITA

Frances Theresa Russell was born in Iowa in 1873, and in 1895 received the degree of Ph. B. from the State University. The year of 1898–99 was spent in graduate study at Radcliffe, her major subject up to this time being Latin.

In 1900 she married Dr. Frank Russell, of the Department of Ethnology of Harvard University, and during the remainder of his life was engaged in the study of Anthropology.

In 1906 she became assistant in Philosophy at the Leland Stanford Junior University, and in 1907, assistant in English. She was appointed Instructor in the English Department in 1908, and Assistant Professor in 1916. For the next two years she was registered as a graduate student in the English Department of Columbia University, and in 1919 resumed her work at Stanford University, California.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Churchill, in _The Author_.

[2] _Satires_, I, 10, 15.

[3] Drummond’s translation. A similar couplet is rendered by Evans,

“He, with a sly, insinuating grace, Laugh’d at his friend, and look’d him in the face.”

[4] Preface to _Every Man in his Humour_.

[5] _Essay on Satire_, by the Duke of Buckingham: Dryden’s Works, XV, 201.

[6] Young: Preface to the _Seven Satires_.

[7] Fielding: _Historical Register_: Dedication to the Public, III, 341.

[8] Fielding: _Tom Jones_: Dedication to George Lyttleton, VI, 5.

He also says, in _The Covent Garden Journal_: “Few men, I believe, do more admire the works of those great masters who have sent their satire (if I may use the expression) laughing into the world. Such are the great triumvirate, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift.”

[9] Browning: _Aristophanes’ Apology_.

[10] Garnett, in the Enc. Brit. 9th edition.

[11]

“Wolves use their teeth against you, bulls their horn; Why, but that each is to the manner born?” _Satires_, I, 1. Conington, 46.

Some modern echoes are heard. Says Byron,--

“Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen; You doubt--see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean.” _Hints from Horace._

Taine applies his general theory to this instance:

“No wonder if in England a novelist writes satires. A gloomy and reflective man is impelled to it by his character; he is still further impelled by the surrounding manners.” _Hist. of Eng. Lit._ IV, 166.

In Shaw’s _An Unsocial Socialist_, one character says of another: “Besides, Gertrude despises everyone, even us. Or rather, she doesn’t despise anyone in particular, but is contemptuous by nature, just as you are stout.”

[12] _Scourge of Villainy._

[13] _Apology for Smectymnuus._

[14] “The end of Satire is reformation.” Preface to _The Trueborn Englishman_.

[15] “The true end of Satire is the amendment of vices by correction.” Preface to _Absalom and Achitophel_.

[16] “Now the author, living in these times, did conceive it an endeavour worthy an honest satirist, to dissuade the dull, and punish the wicked, in the only way that was left.” Preface of Martinus Scriblerus to _The Dunciad_.

[17] _An Essay on Satire._ Occasioned by the death of Pope. Inscribed to Dr. Warburton. In Dodsley’s Collection of Poems, Vol. III.

[18] Fielding: _Covent Garden Journal_.

[19] Preface to the Translation of Juvenal.

[20] _Essay on Comedy_, 76.

[21] _The Renaissance in Italy_, V, 270.

[22] _Makers of English Fiction_, 86.

[23] _Scourge of Villainy_, Satire II.

[24] Preface to _The Trueborn Englishmen_.

[25] Preface to his translation of Aristophanes.

[26] _The Task: The Time-Piece._

His object is to point out the superiority of the preacher, who steps in

“* * * when the sat’rist has at last Strutting and vaporing in an empty school, Spent all his force and made no proselyte.”

Later, however, he inadvertently admits even clerical insufficiency:

“Since pulpits fail, and sounding boards reflect Most part an empty ineffectual sound, What chance that I, to fame so little known, Nor conversant with men or manners much, Should speak to purpose, or with better hope Crack the satiric thong?” (From _The Garden_).

[27] Preface to _The Universal Passion_.

The last part of the passage anticipates our discussion of satire as exposure.

[28] _Essays on Great Writers: Some Aspects of Thackeray._

[29] Introduction to Croiset’s _Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens_.

[30] Skelton: _Colyn Clout_.

“Of no good bysshop speke I, Nor good priest I escrye, Good frere, nor good chanon, Good nonne, nor good canon, Good monke, nor good clerke, Nor yette of no good werke; But my recounting is Of them that do amys.”

[31] Barclay: Preface to _Ship of Fools_.

“This present Boke myght have been callyd nat inconvenyently the Satyr (that is to say) the reprehencion of foulysshnes. * * * For in lyke wyse as olde Poetes Satyriens repreved the synnes and ylnes of the peple at that tyme lyvynge; so and in lyke wyse this our Boke representeth unto the iyen of the redars the states and condicions of men.”

[32] _Essay on Satire._

[33] _Trueborn Englishman._

[34] _Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift._

He adds, as to motive:

“Yet malice never was his aim; He lash’d the vice, but spared the name;

* * * * *

His satire points at no defect, But what all mortals may correct; For he abhorr’d that senseless tribe Who call it humour when they gibe:

* * * * *

True genuine dullness moved his pity, Unless it offer’d to be witty.”

[35] Preface to _The Intriguing Chambermaid_: Epistle to Mrs. Clive.

[36] Prologue to _The Coffee-House Politician_.

[37] _Hist. of Eng. Lit._: on Dickens.

[38] _Post Liminium._

[39] These relationships may be suggested by a graphic diagram. Not all folly is vicious, though all vice is foolish. Not all deception is either vicious or foolish, though folly and vice are for the most part deceitful. The circle of the satirizible practically coincides with that portion of the deception-circle which falls within vice and folly, a small margin being left outside to safeguard against inelasticity.

The connection between these two pairs of subdivisions is evident; hypocrisy belonging on the whole to the vicious branch, and sentimentality, to the foolish.

[40] _Satires_, II, 1.

[41] _The Steele Glas._

[42] Preface to _The Journey to Parnassus_. Gibson’s translation.

[43] Fielding: _Tom Jones_.

The phrase omitted from the Dryden citation above is, “where the very name of satire is formidable to those persons, who would appear to the world what they are not in themselves:”

[44] Raleigh: _The English Novel_.

[45] _Hist. of Eng. Lit._: on Dickens.

[46] _Imaginary Conversations_: Lucian and Timotheus.

Timotheus, exultant over the _Dialogues_, remarks that “Nothing can be so gratifying and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule.” Disappointed, however, in his assumption that Lucian is now ready to embrace the true faith, which turns out to be a _non sequitur_, he accuses the inflexible pagan of sacrilege, ready to turn into ridicule the true and the holy. To which Lucian in turn replies “In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hands a blade without a hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary.”

Lucian himself, in _The Angler_, declares it his business to hate quacks, jugglery, lies, and conceit.

[47] _Essay on Comedy._

[48] _Laughter_, 174.

[49] _Byron as a Satirist_, 180.

[50] _Political Satire in English Poetry_, 240.

In his _Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature_, Wendell contributes another link to the chain of evidence:

“Sincere or not, satire is essentially a kind of writing which pretends to unmask pretense.”

[51] Hazlett, in his essay on _Wit and Humour_, remarks that “it has appeared that the detection and exposure of difference, particularly where this implies nice and subtle observation, as in discriminating between pretence and practice, between appearance and reality, is common to wit and satire with judgment and reasoning.”

[52] Meredith characterises the chase of Folly by the Comic Spirit as conducted “with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox.”

[53] _Satires_: I, IV, 78 ff.

[54] _Universal Passion._

[55] _Charity._

[56] _Literary Theory and Criticism._ The Poetry of Pope.

[57] _Imag. Conv._ Lucian to Timotheus.

[58] _Arist. Apol._

[59] In spite of Cowper’s and Byron’s assertions to the contrary.

[60]

“All zeal for a reform that gives offense To peace and charity, is mere pretense; A bold remark; but which, if well applied, Would humble many a tow’ring poet’s pride.” (_Charity._)

[61] _Sea Dreams._

[62] _Collected Essays_, I, 187.

[63] _Post Liminium._

[64] Preface to _Headlong Hall_, in the Aldine edition of Peacock, 40. In his _Essay on Comedy_, Meredith goes beyond mere absence of hate:

“You may estimate your capacity for comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them the less; and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes,” 72.

It is true that on the next page he differentiates,--“If you detect the ridicule, and your kindliness is chilled by it, you are slipping into the grasp of satire.” But he is evidently using satire in the older, narrower sense.

[65] John Brown’s _Essay on Satire_.

[66] _Spectator_, 209. L.

[67] Browning: _Aris. Apol._ Cf. Fielding, _Tom Jones_, VI, 357, for a similar distinction.

[68] Cf. Brown’s _Essay on Satire_ for scorn of Shaftesbury’s idea that ridicule is the test of truth; refuted ironically in the lines,--

“Deride our weak forefathers’ musty rule, Who _therefore_ smil’d, _because_ they saw a fool; Sublimer logic now adorns our isle, We _therefore_ see a fool, _because_ we smile.”

He concludes that wit is safe only when rationalized:

“_Then_ mirth may urge, when reason can explore, _This_ point the way, _that_ waft us to the shore.”

(Carlyle expresses a similar opinion in his essay on Voltaire.)

[69] Heinsius, in his _Dissertations on Horace_. A conception drawn perhaps from the Aristotelian “purging of our passions” through tragedy.

[70] _Rise of Formal Satire in England._ 49.

[71] Leslie Stephen: _George Eliot_, 67–68.

[72] Thorndike, _English Literature_ in _Lectures on Literature_, 268–9.

[73] This theoretically includes only the novel, though the term is used in the widest sense. In the cases of Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, and Meredith, the line is rather hard to draw between the novel and sketches, tales, short stories, and burlesques. Peacock, Lytton, Disraeli, and Butler force us to make the limits of the novel decidedly flexible.

[74] If it were desirable to eliminate the thirteenth chair, it might be done in a number of ways. Peacock might be ruled out as a contemporary of the earlier generation, as _Gryll Grange_ is all that carries him over. Butler on the other hand belongs to the later, except that _Erewhon_ appeared in the year of _Middlemarch_. As a satirist, Brontë is so near the edge of the circle that her inclusion at all is questionable. Since it happens, however, that the year of her death coincides with that of Reade’s first novel, we might fancy her yielding a place to him, so that there were never more than twelve at one time.

[75] _English Humorists_; _Swift_, 2.

Cf. Kingsley: “One cannot laugh heartily at a man if one has not a lurking love for him.” _Two Years Ago_, 143.

And Meredith: “And to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope for good.” _Essay on Comedy_, 40. Also: “You share the sublime of wrath, that would not have hurt the foolish, but merely demonstrate their foolishness.” Ibid. 85.

[76] _Autobiography_, 133.

[77] Preface to _Oliver Twist_, xv.

That Dickens was mistaken as to the real point of _Don Quixote_, does not impair his argument.

Thackeray had the same motive, of course, in his ridicule of _Paul Clifford_ and the sentimental-picaresque; not because it was sentimental or picaresque, but because it was misleading. In that respect it was he who inherited the mantle of Cervantes, as did Fielding before him in his ridicule of Richardson.

[78] “The vices that call for the scourge of satire, are those which pervade the whole frame of society, and which, under some specious pretense of private duty, or the sanction of custom and precedent, are almost permitted to assume the semblance of virtue.” _Melincourt_, 160. (And here it is the pretense that makes it vulnerable.)

In the Introduction, _Maid Marian_ is described to Shelley as a “comic romance of the twelfth century, which I shall make the vehicle of much oblique satire on all the oppressions that are done under the sun.”

He became, however, so carried away with the romance that he lost sight of the satire, except for brief glimpses.

In the Preface to _Headlong Hall_ (1837 edition) he rounds up the current follies, under the name Pretense:

“Perfectibilians, deteriorationists, statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, morbid visionaries, romantic enthusiasts, lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners, march, and will march forever, _pari passu_, with the march of mechanics which some facetiously call the march of intellect. * * * The array of false pretensions, moral, political, and literary, is as imposing as ever; * * * and political mountebanks continue, and will continue, to puff nostrums and practice legerdemain under the eyes of the multitude; following * * * a course as tortuous as that of a river, but in a reverse process: beginning by being dark and deep, and ending by being transparent.” 46–7.

His motto for _Crochet Castle_ is:

“_De monde est plein de fous, et qui n’en veut pas voir,_ _Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir._”

[79] “And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist in my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.” _Autobiography_, speaking of _The Way We Live Now_.

Of _Framley Parsonage_: “The story was thoroughly English. There was a little fox-hunting and a little tuft-hunting; some Christian virtue and some Christian cant. There was no heroism and no villainy.” _Autobiography_, 129.

[80] _The Young Duke_, 173.

[81] _Never Too Late to Mend_, 216.

[82] _Vanity Fair_, I, 104.

[83] Ibid., I, 106.

Cf. his Preface to _The Newcomes_: “This, then, is to be a story, may it please you, in which jackdaws will wear peacocks’ feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks, in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves * * * exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking;” 7.

[84] Preface to _Pickwick_ (1847 edition), xix.

Cf. his letter to Charles Knight: “My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else--the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time--and the men who, through long years to come, will do more to damage the real, useful truths of political economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole life:” _Letters_, I, 363.

[85] _The Later Renaissance_, 113.

[86] _Evolution of the English Novel_, 120.

[87]

1816 _Headlong Hall_ 1817 _Melincourt_ (also _Northanger Abbey_) 1818 _Nightmare Abbey_ 1822 _Maid Marian_ 1828 _The Voyage of Captain Popanilla_ 1829 _The Misfortunes of Elphin_ 1831 _Crochet Castle_ 1833 _Ixion_, and _The Infernal Marriage_ 1839 _Catherine_ 1841 _The Yellowplush Papers_ 1845 _The Legend of the Rhine_ 1847 _Novels by Eminent Hands_ 1849 _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_ 1850 _Rebecca and Rowena_ 1855 _The Rose and the Ring_ 1856 _The Shaving of Shagpat_ 1857 _Farina_ 1861 _Gryll Grange_ 1871 _The Coming Race_ 1872 _Erewhon_ 1901 _Erewhon Revisited_

[88] _Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon_, 65.

[89] Draper: _Social Satire of Thomas Love Peacock_. Modern Language Notes, XXXIV, I

[90] With the exception of _The Way of All Flesh_; another instance of Butler’s wider range.

[91] The word _novel_ must of course be stretched if it is to include this set of fantastic fiction. But that is easily done by accepting Chesterton’s dictum: “Now in the sense in which there is such a thing as an epic, in that sense there is no such thing as a novel.” _Charles Dickens_, 114.

The other alternative is the one taken by Mrs. Oliphant: “We use the word adventurer advisedly, for we cannot regard Peacock’s entry into the field of fiction as by any means an authorized one. One cannot help feeling that he did not want to write novels, but that he found that he could not get at the public in any other way; * * * The consequence is that his novels are not novels in the proper sense of the word.” _Victorian Age of English Literature_, 16.

Cf. Shaw, of whose dramas a similar statement might be made.

[92] “The desideratum of a Peacockian character is that he shall be able to talk.” Freeman: _Life and Novels of Peacock_, 233.

[93] _Crochet Castle_, 35.

[94] “He has knowledge, wit, humour, technical skill, cleverness in abundance, some genius, he is a keen observer, a caustic critic. What he lacks is humanity, just that which is the essence of the greatness of the great humourists--Cervantes, Rabelais, Shakespeare.” Walker: _Lit. of the Victorian Era_, 618. (He explains that humanity in work is meant, not of character.)

[95] “But because he laughed without responsibility he belongs less with the writers of power than with those of whom laughter has exacted a great, as of all laughter exacts a certain, penalty.” Van Doren, _Life of Peacock_, 281.

(One could wish the nature of this “penalty” had been elucidated a bit, instead of being entirely taken for granted. In any case, it must be largely subjective, and therefore a thing which exists only by being felt.)

[96] The phrases are Van Doren’s and Walker’s respectively. Cf. Garnett:

“It cannot be said that the satire of _Gryll Grange_ is very Archilochian. The author has lost the power of raising a laugh at the objects of his dislike, and merely assails them with a genial pugnacity, so open, honest, and hearty as inevitably to conciliate a certain measure of sympathy.” _Introduction._

[97] With _The First Canterbury Settlement_, in 1863.

[98] The coincidence that gave the public _The Coming Race_ in 1871, and _Erewhon_ in 1872 brought the charge of a possible plagiarism in the latter. If the absurd notion that Butler needed any light borrowed from Lytton, is worth expelling, Butler’s own candid statement about it should be sufficient for the purpose.

[99] Cannan says of _Erewhon_, “Few good books have so many faults, and yet it remains the one enduring satire of the nineteenth century.” _Samuel Butler_, 32.

(Whether the _of_ means _directed against_ or _produced by_, the verdict is undoubtedly valid.)

[100] One’s astonishment that it was Meredith who had the honor of rejecting the manuscript of _Erewhon_, submitted to Chapman and Hall, is exceeded only by the astonishment at the reason given,--that it was a philosophical treatise, not likely to interest the general public. One would hardly accuse this critic of a conservative reluctance to expose the public to iconoclastic bacilli, though he had not yet become the author of _Beauchamp’s Career_, nor would one suppose his “public” to be composed entirely of tired business men and sentimental school girls. There remain the two cruxes in the history of satire: failure of the satirist Thackeray to appreciate the satirist Swift, and of the satirist Meredith to appreciate the satirist Butler. If they prove anything it is the diversity among satirists.

[101] Harris: _Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon_, 13.

Cf. Chesterton’s whimsical remark that “the best definition of the Victorian Age is that Francis Thompson stood outside it.”

[102] _The Coming Race_, 47.

[103] Women were the wooers and choosers in this feministic community, but the problem of feminism was apparently solved by the practice of voluntary relinquishment of wings, by the feminine wearers, after marriage, and a strict devotion to the domestic life.

[104] “And where a society attains to a moral standard in which there are no crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy can extract its aliment of pity and sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which comedy can lavish its mirthful satire, it has lost its chance of producing a Shakespeare, a Molière, or a Mrs. Beecher Stowe.” _The Coming Race_, 230.

[105] After the manner of Defoe’s _Turkish Merchant: the Conduct of Christians Made the Sport of Infidels_, and others of this type.

[106] _Popanilla_, 380. The ensuing debate is made the peg for some vivacious burlesque on Parliamentary speeches.

[107] _Ibid._, 385.

[108] _Popanilla_, 394.

[109] _Ibid._, 459. The whole is in ridicule of Utilitarianism.

[110] _Ixion_, 272.

[111] A prominent feature of this is a white ass (the Public) which the prime minister leads by the nose.

[112] The laborers.

[113] These two are alike in their handling of sparkling dialogue.

[114] Walker’s dictum (_Victorian Literature_, 700) that “Good burlesque is impossible except through sound criticism,” is an instance of the dangerous half truth. The sounder the criticism the better the burlesque, to be sure, but only as _criticism_: as _burlesque_ it may be highly successful in spite of some critical unsoundness. Indeed, it must necessarily contain the element of injustice that inheres in all exaggeration,--the very foundation of burlesque and caricature.

Moreover, Walker’s conception of the burlesque is indicated when he calls _Rebecca and Rowena_ “perhaps the best burlesque ever penned.” As a matter of fact, it is not only far from that preëminence, but it is in form actually less of a burlesque than most of the others under consideration.

[115]

“Heroes and gods make other poems fine; Plain Satire calls for _sense_ in every line.” Young: _Universal Passion_.

[116] In one of Lytton’s first volumes is an observation interesting as perhaps the germ from which the plan of _The Coming Race_ was developed.

Vincent, the philosopher of the story, remarks. (_Pelham_, 57):

“There are few better satires on a civilized country than the observations of visitors less polished; while, on the contrary, the civilized traveller, in describing the manners of the American barbarians, instead of conveying ridicule upon the visited, points the sarcasm on the visitor; and Tacitus could not have thought of a finer or nobler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by his treatise on the German simplicity.”

[117] Mill: _Disraeli, the Author, Orator, and Statesman_, 20.

He adds,--“although we cannot claim for it the merit of that matchless production, still, regarding it as a work of a very young man, it is to our thinking one of infinite promise.”

[118] Perhaps pardon should be asked on behalf of the irresponsible Circumstance which allowed so large a preponderance in this matter to the sex notoriously romantic, flighty, ignorant of real life, and impatient of its prose and drudgery. As to the one man, Bryce remarks, in his _Studies in Contemporary Biography_, “But whoever does read Trollope in 1930 will gather from his pages better than from any others an impression of what everyday life was like in England in the ‘middle Victorian’ period.”

[119] _Ernest Maltravers_, 32. Cf. _How It Strikes a Contemporary_.

[120] These types may be summarized for convenience in a topical outline:

I. Direct. II. Dramatic. 1. Situation. 2. Character. a. Witty protagonists. db. Comical antagonists.

[121] Trollope: _Ralph the Heir_, 275.

[122] _Ibid._, 275–276.

[123] _The Bertrams_, 150.

[124] _Vanity Fair_, I, 225.

[125] _Vanity Fair_, I, 396. In Chapter XIX occurs the remark, “Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters.”

[126] _Ibid._, I, 214.

[127] _Ibid._, I, 233.

[128] _Vanity Fair_, II, 304.

[129] Among countless such gems, the following is of purest ray serene:

“Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.” _Vanity Fair_, II, 43.

[130] _Pendennis_, II, 53.

The introductory chapter of _The Newcomes_ needs only to be recalled as an instance of the satirical fable. Nor is the beginning of _Henry Esmond_ lacking in the satirical tone.

[131] _Oliver Twist_, 350. The idea was possibly suggested by _Sartor Resartus_.

[132] _Nicholas Nickleby_, I, 286. This thrust is aimed especially at _Paul Clifford_.

[133] _Barnaby Rudge_, I, 296.

[134] _Bleak House_, 553.

[135] _Little Dorrit_, I, 139.

[136] Cf. his description of one of his favorite characters, Nesta Radnor,--“what she did, she intended to do.”

[137] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 2, 3, 4.

[138] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 6.

[139] _The Egoist_, 132. Later he indicates the corollary of this,--

“But not many men are trained to courage; young women are trained to cowardice. For them to front an evil with plain speaking is to be guilty of effrontery and forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and therewith their commanding place in the market.” _Ibid._, 296.

Cf. _Evan Harrington_, 208, for the muddled state of a young woman’s mind, only to be penetrated by “that zigzag process of inquiry conducted by following her actions, for she can tell you nothing, and if she does not want to know a particular matter, it must be a strong beam from the central system of facts that shall penetrate her.”

[140] _The Egoist_, 156.

[141] _The Egoist_, 5.

[142] _The Egoist_, 5.

[143] _Our Mutual Friend_, I, 166.

[144] Trollope: _Barchester Towers_, 299.

[145] _The Egoist_, 4. The “her” refers to Comedy.

[146] _Barchester Towers_, 472–3.

[147] _Last Chronicles of Barset._

[148] Book II, Chapter I.

[149] Vol. I, 78–9.

[150] Lytton’s _Kenelm Chillingly_, 1873, and Meredith’s _Beauchamp’s Career_, 1876.

[151] Lytton’s _Kenelm Chillingly_, 38.

[152] _Ibid._, 39. An echo from _The Coming Race_, published two years earlier.

[153] _Ibid._, 40.

[154] _Ibid._, 90. Later he imagines a hypothetical contribution to _The Londoner_, bringing “that highly intellectual journal into discredit by a feeble attempt at a good-natured criticism or a generous sentiment.” 161.

Kenelm grows into some likeness to his old tutor Welby, an unpedantic, versatile scholar, who belonged to “the school of Eclectical Christology.” The Rev. John Chillingly, for instance, did not perceive Welby’s realism, for the latter listened to idealistic eulogies without contradicting them; having “grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished cruelty of sarcasm.” 34.

[155] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 167.

[156] _Shirley_, II, 90.

[157] _Ibid._, II, 351.

[158] _Ibid._, II, 250.

[159] It is not in a novel but the shortest of his Short Stories that Meredith has presented to us his truly wittiest character, shown with the brief but startling distinctness of a flash-light. Nowhere is there a more perfect embodiment of the satiric spirit than Lady Camper. It required a malicious imagination to produce the cartoons of the City of Wilsonople, and to use them with such wicked effectiveness. Yet this Limb of Satan was maleficent only to bless, ultimately. The fine military figure upon which she turned the shaft of illumination is equally perfect as the incarnate satirizible; not a sinner, not a villain, but a complacent, fatuous, selfish gentleman, “open to exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies,” but capable of an improvement that amounted to regeneration.

“Well, General,” his teleological tormentor finally explains, “you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I would assist you. I gave you plenty of subject-matter. I will not say I meant to work a homœopathic cure.”

She further admonishes him that the triumph is his rather than hers, if he cares to make the most of it. “Your fault has been to quit active service, General, and love your ease too well * * * You are ten times the man in exercise. Why, do you mean to tell me that you would have cared for those drawings of mine when marching?” Idleness, moreover, is a first aid to vanity. “You would not have cared one bit for a caricature,” Lady Camper continues, “if you had not nursed the absurd idea of being one of our conquerors.” His final salvation, she concludes, was his sensitiveness to ridicule.

[160] _Last Chronicles of Barset_, 97.

[161] _Ibid._, 175.

[162] _Framley Parsonage_, 259.

[163] _Framley Parsonage_, 264.

[164] _Ibid._, 266.

[165] On dramatic irony, see _American Philological Association Transactions_, 1917, for summary of an interesting unpublished paper read before the Society by Dr. J. S. P. Tatlock.

[166] As advised by John Brown in his _Essay on Satire_:

“The Muse’s charms resistless then assail, When wrapt in _irony’s_ transparent veil;

* * * * *

Then be your lines with sharp encomiums grac’d; Style _Clodius_ honorable, _Busa_ chaste.”

And not long before this, Dryden had been saying: “How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of these opprobrious terms! * * * Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not.” _Essay on Satire_, 98.

[167] Stephen: _Hours in a Library_, Second Series. 347.

Another critic of another novelist makes the point by a vivid illustration:

“A rabbit fondling its own harmless face affords no matter of amusement to another rabbit, and Miss Austen has had many readers who have perused her works without a smile.” Raleigh: _The English Novel_, 253.

[168] _Life and Letters_, I, 207.

[169] _The Renaissance in Italy_, V, 8.

[170] _Irony, Living Age_, 259: 250.

[171] _A Second Century Satirist_, 187. A translation by W. D. Sheldon.

[172] _Adventures of an Atom_, II, 121.

[173] Randolph Bourne: _The Life of Irony_. _Atlantic_, III, 357.

[174] Corbyn Morris, in _An Essay towards fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule_.

[175] _The English Novel_, 195.

[176] _Wives and Daughters_, 397.

[177] _Shirley_, I, 236.

[178] _Alton Locke_, 58.

[179] _Yeast_, 158.

[180] _Pelham_, 9.

[181] _Crochet Castle_, 21.

[182] _Kenelm Chillingly_, 25.

[183] _Coming Race_, 43.

[184] As an introduction this reminds one of the ironic terseness of Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (_Pride and Prejudice._) And--“About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income.” (_Mansfield Park_.)

[185] _The Young Duke_, 85. Cf. a similar account of Tom Towers, of _The Jupiter_, in Trollope’s _Warden_.

[186] _Tancred_, 37.

[187] _Ibid._, 37.

[188] _Tancred_, 39.

[189] _Sybil_, 113.

[190] _Oliver Twist_, 42.

[191] _Martin Chuzzlewit_, I, 17.

[192] _Ibid._, I, 234.

[193] _Dombey and Son_, II, 416. Cf. the Musical Banks of Erewhon.

[194] _Hard Times_, 156.

[195] Arthur Clennam had remarked that the patriarchal Mr. Casby is a fine old fellow. Mr. Panks snorts a bitter concurrence of opinion:

“Noble old boy, an’t he? * * * generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent I engaged to pay him, sir. But we never do business for less, at our shop.” _Little Dorrit_, I, 554.

[196] _Oliver Twist_, 219.

[197] _Nicholas Nickleby_, II, 26.

[198] _Bleak House_, 195.

[199] _Nicholas Nickleby_, II, 85.

[200] _Dombey and Son_, 433.

[201] _Bleak House_, 105.

[202] _Phineas Finn_, I, 214. In the story same Lady Glencora uses the Socratic method on Mrs. Bonteen to make her admit she is really an advocate of social equality.

[203] _Framley Parsonage_, 180.

[204] _Ibid._, 183. Cf. Heine’s remark of Louis Phillipe, that he “rose in solid majesty, every pound a king.”

[205] _The Bertrams_, 6. There are pages in this strain.

[206] _Dr. Thorne_, 207.

[207] _Framley Parsonage_, 477.

[208] _Last Chronicles_, 16.

[209] _Maid Marian_, 15.

[210] _Maid Marian_, 96.

[211] _Crochet Castle_, 90.

[212] _Erewhon_, 110.

[213] _Ibid._, 113–116.

[214] _Erewhon_, 153. Butler’s ability to deliver the casual nudge as well as the deliberate blow is shown in a feature of the prison régime; convict labor is required,--a trade already learned, if possible, otherwise--“if he be a gentleman born and bred to no profession, he must pick oakum, or write art criticisms for a newspaper.” 126.

[215] _The Way of All Flesh_, 26.

[216] _Vanity Fair_, I, 115.

[217] _Vanity Fair_, I, 128.

[218] _Ibid._, 192.

[219] _Ibid._, 255.

[220] _Ibid._, 110.

[221] _Pendennis_, II, 22.

[222] _Mill on the Floss_, I, 189.

[223] _Middlemarch_, I, 161. This book is also pervaded by the exuberant presence of the versatile but cautious Mr. Brooke, who had always “gone a good deal into that at one time,” but always wisely refrained from pushing it too far, as one never can tell where such things will lead.

[224] _Romola_, II, 523.

[225] _Middlemarch_, I, 179.

[226] _Adam Bede_, I, 245. It could not be said of him as it was of Vincy in the above connection,--“The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”

[227] _Letters_, II, 501. In another he speaks of the fine irony of French criticism, which “instructs without wounding any but the vanitous person”: and adds that “England has little criticism beyond the expression of likes and dislikes, the stout vindication of an old conservatism of taste.” _Ibid._, 569.

[228] _The Egoist_, 43. (The “leg” of course referring to Mrs. Jenkinson’s famous epigram).

[229] _The Egoist_, 113.

[230] _Sandra Belloni_, 157.

[231] _Ibid._, 153.

[232] _One of Our Conquerors_, 415.

[233] _Ibid._, 195.

[234] _Vittoria_, 373.

[235] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 369.

[236] _Sandra Belloni_, 68. This is followed by a fling at the “alliance with Destiny”, which reminds us of our recent American slogan of “Manifest Destiny.”

[237] _Letters_, II, 555. To Leslie Stephen, 1904.

[238] _An Amazing Marriage_, 480.

[239] _Ibid._, 147. Cf. also citations in the first part of this chapter.

[240] _Middlemarch_, I, 142. She also comments as follows on the undeniably just statement of Jermyn to Mrs. Transome that Harold should be told the secret of his birth:

“Perhaps some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is this of a deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it.” _Felix Holt_, II, 242.

[241] _Diana of the Crossways_, 423.

[242] _Evan Harrington_, 117.

[243] _Evan Harrington_, 137.

[244] _Rhoda Fleming_, 301. Later, however, an equivalent amount, placed in his hands in trust for another purpose, conveniently paid this debt. “It was enough to make one in love with civilization.” _Ibid._, 326.

[245] _The Tragic Comedians_, 195.

[246] _Richard Feverel_, 8.

[247] _Ibid._, 322.

[248] Van Laun: _History of French Literature_, II, 27.

[249] Cf. also the riot of personalities in Blackwood’s, Frazer’s, and other periodicals of their time.

[250] Butler’s etchings in _The Way of All Flesh_, are also from personal sources.

[251] Freeman observes, “Peacock abused contemporary poets generally, the Lake School particularly, and Southey in especial, for eighteen years.” _Thomas Love Peacock, A Critical Study_, 141.

[252] _Melincourt_, 106.

[253] _Melincourt_, 108.

[254] _Nightmare Abbey_, 23. That this was a typical experience is well known. Cf. Browning’s _Lost Leader_.

[255] _Ibid._, 49.

[256] _Melincourt_, 80. In his Review of Southey’s _Colloquies of Society_, Macaulay points out the Laureate’s two unique faculties,--“of believing without a reason, and of hating without a provocation.”

[257] Quoted in his biography, by the Earl of Lytton, I, 347.

The Ettrick Shepherd tries to rally Tickler out of his glumness by the argument,--“Everybody kens ye’re a man of genius, without your pretending to be melancholy.”

[258] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 39.

[259] Both are quoted in the _Life_ by the Earl of Lytton, I, 548, 549.

[260] _Journey to Parnassus_, Chapter IV. Gibson’s translation.

[261] _Spectator_, 451, C.

[262] _Charity_, II, 501 ff.

[263] Lionel Johnson, in _Post Liminium_.

[264] _Victorian Age of Eng. Lit._, 461.

[265] _One of Our Conquerors_, 267.

[266] _Shirley_, I, 330.

[267] _Melincourt_, 10.

[268] _Melincourt_, 17.

[269] _Ibid._, 150.

[270] _Shirley_, II, 71. Trollope speaks through Laura Kennedy and Madame Max Goesler, in _Phineas Finn_, the former of whom longs vainly to go out and milk the cows, while the latter complains of having only vicarious interests.

[271] _Phineas Finn_, III, 103. After finally accepting Lord Chiltern, she almost gives him up because she cannot stand his idleness.

[272] _The Egoist_, 21.

[273] _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, 182.

[274] _Diana of the Crossways_, 158.

[275] _The Egoist_, 163. Cf. Simeon Strunsky’s essay on _The Eternal Feminine_, in _The Patient Observer_; a humorous sermon which might have been developed from this logical text.

[276] _Yeast_, 110. Elsewhere in the volume the author expounds his feministic philosophy: “She tried, as women will, to answer him with arguments, and failed, as women will fail.” 29. “Woman will have guidance. It is her delight and glory to be led.” 177.

[277] _The Adventures of Philip_, II, 42.

[278] _Ibid._, I, 237. Thackeray’s patronizing smugness and antique attitude towards women come out with a beautiful unconsciousness in a letter to one of them, and that one a prime favorite with him, Mrs. Brookfield: “I am afraid I don’t respect your sex enough, though. Yes I do, when they are occupied with loving and sentiment rather than with other business of life.” His fair correspondent could not retort that he would have found a congenial soul in Meredith’s Lady Wathin, who “both dreaded and detested brains in women, believing them to be devilish;” but she might have reminded him of the twinkling chivalry of Christopher North, who confessed, “To my aged eyes a neat ankle is set off attractively by a slight shade of cerulian.”

[279] _Pelham_, 291.

[280] _Pelham_, 73.

[281] _Kenelm Chillingly_, 42.

[282] _Ibid._, 81.

[283] _The Young Duke_, 6.

[284] _The Young Duke_, 16.

[285] _Ibid._, 86.

[286] _Sybil_, 153.

[287] _Erewhon_, 136.

[288] Concluding his contrast between _Alton Locke_ and Disraeli’s Trilogy, in _Transcripts and Studies_, 193. In this connection another contrast, between Disraeli and Mrs. Ward, is interesting, because it turns on the effect of humor. “Her presentment of the lighter side of English political life is accurate, and in its way interesting and historically valuable, but it is wholly wanting in that brilliant satiric touch which has made Disraeli’s novels live as literature when their political significance has utterly passed away.” Traill, in _The New Fiction_, 44.

[289] _The Misfortunes of Elphin_, 63.

[290] _Melincourt_, 165.

[291] _The Coming Race_, 81.

[292] _Pelham_, 210.

[293] _Tancred_, 73. Cf. the king’s speech to Popanilla; also Gerard’s observation,--“‘I have no doubt you will get through the business very well, Mr. Hoaxem, particularly if you be “frank and explicit”; that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.’” _Sybil_, 403.

[294] _Sybil_, 43.

[295] In his _Dickens_, 81. Dickens himself admits in a letter to Macready (1855) that he has “no present political faith or hope--not a grain.”

[296] _Framley Parsonage_, 14.

[297] _One of Our Conquerors_, 3.

[298] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 19.

[299] _Ibid._, 28.

[300] _The Infernal Marriage_, 353. In _The Young Duke_ there is an allusion to “the two thousand Brahmins who constitute the World,” and to “the ten or twelve or fifteen millions of Pariahs for whose existence philosophers have hitherto failed to adduce a satisfactory cause.” 132.

[301] P. 430. “Yet no entering wedge of criticism was possible, in so impervious an object. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but _the_ system, to be considered.”

[302] _Never Too Late to Mend_, 286.

[303] _Ibid._, 415.

[304] _Never Too Late to Mend_, 360.

[305] This foreshadows a similar scene in Frank Norris’s _Octopus_.

[306] _Ibid._, 182.

[307] _Ibid._, 345.

[308] _Ibid._, 229. The antipodal point of view in _Latter Day Pamphlets_ illustrates vividly the availability of satire for either side of a cause.

[309] _Orley Farm_, III, 237.

[310] _The Bertrams_, 5.

[311] _The Bertrams_, 8.

[312] _Melincourt_, II, 10. Cf. some other clerical cognomens, Gaster, Grovelgrub; and the way in which they were lived up to.

[313] _The Misfortunes of Elphin_, 65. There is a similar hit through Friar Tuck, in _Maid Marian_, 30.

[314] _Book of Snobs_, 232.

[315] _Framley Parsonage_, 23. On another occasion we are told that “Mrs. Proudie’s manner might have showed to a very close observer that she knew the difference between a bishop and an archdeacon.”

[316] _Ibid._, 86.

[317] _The Warden_, 50.

[318] _The Bertrams_, 114.

[319] _Ibid._, 303.

[320] _Sir Harry Hotspur_, 93.

[321] _Barchester Towers_, 77.

[322] _The Warden_, 32.

[323] Although Kingsley threw _Shirley_ aside because the opening seemed to him vulgar. Harriet Martineau said the same of _Villette_.

[324] _Shirley_, I, 2.

[325] _Shirley_, I, 355.

[326] _Villette_, II, 186.

[327] _Villette_, II, 210–11.

[328] _Villette_, II, 220.

[329] _Alton Locke_, 186.

[330] _Alton Locke_, 229–30. Cf. 205ff. for an equally forceful presentation of the other side through the eloquent rebuke to illogical complaints, given by Eleanor Staunton. It is in _Yeast_ that Papacy is satirized, a typical hit being the unconscious irony of Vieuxbois’ assertion,--“I do not think that we have any right in the nineteenth century to contest an opinion which the fathers of the Church gave in the fourth.” 114. Alton Locke also says,--“A man-servant, a soldier and a Jesuit, are to me the three great wonders of humanity--three forms of moral suicide, for which I never had the slightest gleam of sympathy, or even comprehension.” 187.

[331] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 622.

[332] _Erewhon_, 151.

[333] _Ibid._, 155.

[334] _Ibid._, 157. Cf. Kingsley’s statement that the working men distrust the clergy. In _The Way of All Flesh_, Butler observes, “A clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself to look facts fairly in the face.” 103. Cf. also his _Note Books_, “In a way the preachers believe what they preach, but it is as men who have taken a bad ten pound note and refuse to look at the evidence that makes for its badness, though, if the note were not theirs, they would see at a glance that it was not a good one.” 190.

[335] _Erewhon Revisited_, 39–40. Panky, who wore his Sunchild suit backward, as a matter of dogma, is supposed to represent the Anglican, and Hanky the Jesuit. The broad church is represented by the far superior Dr. Downie. Butler’s positive philosophy is expressed, though still in the indirect manner, in the account of Ydgrun and the Ydgrunites: _Erewhon_, Chap. XVII.

[336] In _The Duke’s Children_. Cf. _The Small House at Allington_, 498, for remarks on inadequate parents. Perhaps Meredith’s picture in lighter tones, of Harry Richmond and his irresponsible but aspiring father, might be mentioned.

[337] _Way of All Flesh_, 98.

[338] _Ibid._, 125.

[339] By J. L. Hughes, in _Dickens as an Educator_.

[340] _Dombey and Son_, II, 313.

[341] _David Copperfield_, I, 92.

[342] Cf. the beginning of same chapter for the school system generally.

[343] _Crochet Castle_, 115.

[344] _Ibid._, 32.

[345] _Pelham_, 13. Cf. his _Kenelm Chillingly_ for a discussion between Uncle John, the idealistic vicar and Mivers, the utilitarian man of the world, as to educational values. The latter believes the parson’s rêgime would produce “either a pigeon or a ring-dove, a credulous booby or a sentimental milk-sop.” The former makes a thoughtful distinction between the public school, which ripens talent but stifles genius, and the private, which is too enervating, making of the boys either prigs or sissies. It is Mivers who advocates adapting the style of education to the disposition of the individual; and insuring development by putting the youthful mind in contact with the most original and innovating thinkers of the day.

[346] _The Warden_, 151. This is really more unjust to Dickens than the flings at Dr. Pessimist Anti-cant are to Carlyle. It is interesting to note that the very measure meted to Lytton by Dickens is measured to him by Trollope.

[347] _Nightmare Abbey_, 50.

[348] _Pelham_, 301.

[349] _Ixion_, 282.

[350] _One of Our Conquerors_, 10.

[351] _One of Our Conquerors_, 72.

[352] _Ibid._, 228.

[353] _England and the English_, 21.

[354] _Tancred_, 242. It is a race also that “having little imagination, takes refuge in reason, and carefully locks the door when the steed is stolen.” 379. Moreover, the Oriental says of the European what the latter applied in the course of time to the American,--he “talks of progress, because, by an ingenious application of some scientific acquirements, he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.” 227.

[355] _Melincourt_, II, 47.

[356] _Nicholas Nickleby_, I, 415.

[357] In his _Dickens_, 120. he adds, “Dickens does mean it as a deliberate light on Mr. Dombey’s character that he basks with a fatuous calm in the blazing sun of Major Bagstock’s tropical and offensive flattery.”

[358] _Godolphin_, 198.

[359] _Maltravers_, 155.

[360] _My Novel_, 353.

[361] _Felix Holt_, I, 152. Kingsley depicts the same thing in higher life, and takes it more seriously: Lancelot is contemptuous over the vicar,--“He told me, hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a German book in his life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all he knew of him was from a certain review in the _Quarterly_.” _Yeast_, 63.

[362] _Daniel Deronda_, II, 162.

[363] _Maltravers_, 261.

[364] _Last Chronicles_, I, 300.

[365] _Mill on the Floss_, III, 113.

[366] _Middlemarch_, III, 460.

[367] _Diana of the Crossways_, 407.

[368] _The Duke’s Children_, II, 64.

[369] _The Way We Live Now_, II, 104.

[370] _Rhoda Fleming_, 372.

[371] _Ibid._, 46.

[372] _Rhoda Fleming_, 108.

[373] _Ibid._, 307.

[374] _Ibid._, 337.

[375] Dr. David Starr Jordan. As to Thackeray, the analysis made by Trollope is very much to the point,--that he mustered all his dislikes and animosities under that caption. See the Biography, 82.

[376] This character makes a shrewd comment, which indicts English society for being a promoter of snobbishness: “They call me a _parvenu_, and borrow my money. They call our friend the wit, a _parvenu_, and submit to all his insolence * * * provided they can but get him to dinner. They call the best debater in the Parliament of England a _parvenu_, and will entreat him, some day or other, to be prime minister, and ask him for stars and garters. A droll world, and no wonder the _parvenus_ want to upset it.” _My Novel_, II, 130.

[377] _Sense and Sensibility_, II, 85.

[378] This conception of sentimentality has many illustrations, expressed and implied. Chesterton describes the sentimentalist as “the man who wants to eat his cake and have it,” who “has no sense of honour about ideas,” and who keeps a quarreling “intellectual harem.” Crotch, in his _Pageantry of Dickens_, remarks that the English “prefer a plaster of platitudes to the x-rays of investigation.” Meredith in his _Up to Midnight_, observes that liberty is one of the phrases we suck like sweetmeats, and adds, “We read the newspapers daily, and yet we surround ourselves with a description of scenic extravaganza conjured up to displace uncomfortable facts. The image of it is the Florentine Garden established in the midst of the Plague.”

See also Butler’s _Notebooks_, Anatole France’s essay on Dumas, and Bailey’s biography of Meredith.

[379] _Melincourt_, 23.

[380] _North and South_, 9. Cf. Kingsley’s crude and literal handling of the same theme. Anna Maria Heale was always talking of her nerves, “though she had nerves only in the sense wherein a sirloin of beef has them.” _Two Years Ago_, 85.

[381] _Wives and Daughters_, I, 394.

[382] _Ibid._, I, 324. Mrs. Gaskell’s art is shown in making Cynthia a foil to her mother. Like Dr. Gibson and Molly, she sees through that lady’s transparent veiling, but unlike them, she is more frank than polite. Her distressingly literal interpretations of the subtle speeches to which the household is treated, affords a contrast that is lacking, for instance, in the duet of Mrs. Mackenzie and Rosey.

[383] _David Copperfield_, II, 102.

[384] _Dombey and Son_, I, 57.

[385] _Ibid._, 464.

[386] _Adam Bede_, I, 184.

[387] _Romola_, II, 469. Cf. _Two Years Ago_, for a sample of Kingsley’s personally applied, Thackerayan sarcasm on a similar subject,--we young men, “blinded by our self-conceit,” and so on.

[388] _Silas Marner_, 84. Cf. Catherine Arrowpoint’s interpretation of parental piety: “People can easily take the sacred word duty as a name for what they desire any one else to do.” _Daniel Deronda_, I, 370.

[389] _Middlemarch_, II, 61. She also refused to marry Fred Vincy if he took orders, because she “could not love a man who is ridiculous.” He would be so because of the entire absence of the clerical in his nature.

[390] _Sandra Belloni_, 220.

[391] _Ibid._, 4. He enlarges on this result of an effete civilization, hinting that “our sentimentalists are a variety owing their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding. The pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this training. He does. But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of high German romances.”

[392] _Evan Harrington_, 349.

[393] _Sandra Belloni_, 152.

[394] _Rhoda Fleming_, 149. Cf. Victor Radnor, who “intended impressing himself upon the world as a factory of ideas.” Also Sir Willoughby, who can account for Lætitia’s refusal of him only by the reflection,--“There’s a madness comes over women at times, I know.”

[395] He also visualizes himself as a Don Juan, Lothario, Lovelace, and thinks, “Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another?” He is consequently hurt and astonished when, after the event, his disarming confession, “I know I’ve behaved badly,” was met by the unsympathetic agreement, “Well, yes, I’m afraid you have.”

[396] Cf. the whole _motif_ of Rostand’s _Chanticler_.

[397] Sentimentalism is further described as “a happy pastime and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit.” _Richard Feverel_, 220.

[398] In an access of particularly malicious realism, Meredith calls attention to a region that was already “a trifle prominent in the person of the wise youth, and carried, as it were, the flag of his philosophical tenets in front of him.” He is also described as having “an instinct for the majority, and, as the world invariably found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of wise youth was acquiesced in without irony.” Again,--“discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under Adrian’s able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that virtue.”

[399] _Ralph the Heir_, 81. He dissects him a little further,--“How far the real philanthropy of the man may have been marred by an uneasy and fatuous ambition; how far he was carried away by a feeling that it was better to make speeches at the Cheshire Cheese than to apply for payment of money due to his father, it would be very hard for us to decide.”

[400] _Last Chronicles of Barset_, I, 108.

[401] _Ibid._, 449.

[402] _The Way We Live Now_, 1–2. In this connection we are also informed that “She did not fall in love, she did not wilfully flirt, she did not commit herself; but she smiled and whispered, and made confidences and looked out of her own eyes into men’s eyes as though there might be some mysterious bond between her and them--if only mysterious circumstances would permit it. But the end of it all was to induce some one to do something which would cause a publisher to give her good payment for indifferent writing, or an editor to be lenient when, upon the merits of the case, he should have been severe.”

[403] This proves efficacious, since Mr. Booker, though “an Aristides among reviewers,” cannot resist the bait of a favorable notice of his _Tale_, “even though written by the hand of a female literary charlatan, and he would have no compunction as to repaying the service by fulsome praise in _The Literary Chronicle_.”

[404] _Nightmare Abbey_, 78.

[405] _What Will He Do with It?_ Preface to Chap. IV, Bk. VI.

[406] _Sketches and Travels_: in London, 268. Cf. Taine’s comment that Thackeray “does as a novelist what Hobbes does as a philosopher. Almost everywhere, when he describes fine sentiments, he derives them from an ugly source.” _Hist. of Eng. Lit._, IV, 188.

[407] “Of this national disease, this indifference to reality, the main bulk of nineteenth century English fiction has died already or must soon be dead.” Gosse: _Eng. Lit. in the Nineteenth Cent._ 221.

[408] _Letters_, I, 156.

[409] _Godolphin_, 106–7. Cf. _Pelham_, 106 ff. for a long discussion of the novel.

[410] _Autobiography_, 206. But on another page he describes the sense of intimate reality he had of his beloved Barsetshire, and how vivid was the mental map he had made of it.

[411] _Diana of the Crossways_, 275.

[412] _The Egoist_, 2.

[413] _Adam Bede_, I, 268.

[414] _History of English Literature_, V, 140.

[415] _Middlemarch_, II, 275. In this story also occurs the exquisite passage on the theme of the second citation above: “If we had a keen feeling and vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like seeing the grass grow and hearing the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”

[416] _Daniel Deronda_, III, 79.

[417] One of her biographers, G. W. Cooke, evidently holding to the old idea of satire, makes the opposite deduction, that “she is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its follies and its weaknesses. * * * The foibles of the world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist.” Not if this vein be restricted to the Juvenalian and Popeian types, certainly.

[418] _Letters_, II, 535.

[419] A description of this youth concludes with a most significant epigram: “He was one of those who delight to dally with gentleness and faith, * * * but the mere suspicion of coquetry and indifference plunged him into a fury of jealous wrathfulness, and tossed so desirable an image of beauty before him that his mad thirst to embrace it seemed love. By our manner of loving we are known.” _Vittoria_, 378.

[420] _An Amazing Marriage_, 511. He adds, “Character must ever be a mystery, only to be explained in some degree by conduct; and that is very dependent upon accident.”

[421] _The Egoist_, 4. It is in this connection that comedy “watches over sentimentalism with a birch-rod.” And it is at the end of the same story that she is “grave and sisterly” toward Clara and Vernon, though when she regards certain others, “she compresses her lips.”

[422] _Diana_, 429. This is where Meredith and Browning are at one;--not only in the obvious resemblance of a cramped and obscure style, but in the agreement as to a fundamental idea--that the justification of love lies in its intellectual companionship and spiritual inspiration.

[423] _One of Our Conquerors_, 340.

[424] _Evan Harrington_, 343.

[425] The relation between Kenelm and his father is particularly fine, and is reflected in the youth’s remark to a comrade,--“If human beings despise each other for being young and foolish, the sooner we are exterminated by that superior race which is to succeed us on earth, the better it will be.”

[426] Cecil Headlam, in his Introduction to _Selections from the British Satirists_.

[427] _Satire_ I, 85.

[428] One may generalize that the object of satire is deceit as one may call the sky blue. It does not always appear so. Indeed, it shows at times almost every other color.

[429] The motto of _Erewhon Revisited_ is from the _Iliad_: “Him do I hate, even as I hate hell fire, who says one thing, and hides another in his heart.” But while Butler is vehement enough, he is less fervent than this would indicate.

[430] _Middlemarch_, III, 264.

[431] _Ibid._, 271.

[432] _Silas Marner_, 26–27. In the same narrative the author uses the misfortunes of Godfrey to illustrate the truth that “Favorable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. * * * The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.” 91.

[433] _Felix Holt_, I, 6.

[434] _Daniel Deronda_, I, 395.

[435] _Middlemarch_, III, 288.

[436] _Ibid._, 329.

[437] Burton, _Masters of the English Novel_, 290.

[438] _Essay on Comedy_, 21.

[439] Prelude to _The Egoist_.

[440] _Mary Barton_, 6.

[441] _Ibid._, 317.

[442] _Diana of the Crossways_, 48.

[443] _Yeast_, 34.

[444] _Yeast_, 236. He also has a sneer for the patronizing scheme of Vieuxbois, in which “of course the clergy and the gentry were to educate the poor, who were to take down thankfully as much as it was thought proper to give them: and all beyond was ‘self-will’ and ‘private judgment,’ the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, Trades-union strikes, and French Revolutions.” 117.

[445] He reflects, “I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons.” _David Copperfield_, II, 44. The counter argument brought forward to dampen his enthusiasm was that more good was done to the sinecurists than harm to the public,--whose ignorance was its bliss. “Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious, He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them.”

[446] _Put Yourself in his Place_, 401.

[447] _Never too Late to Mend_, 411. In the same story Reade lays great stress on the importance of the inspector’s duty: “Only for this task is required, not the gullibility that characterizes the many, but the sagacity that distinguishes the few.” 360.

It was this sagacity, combined with keen imagination, quick sympathy, and prompt and efficient action, that rendered the chaplain Eden a success under discouraging difficulties. The very foundation of his success was laid when he insisted on experiencing for himself the straight jacket and the solitary confinement, to the unbounded but amused mystification of the jail officials. And the shrewd _coup d’état_ by which he converted one of them revealed the profound truth that “ignorance is the mother of cruelty.”

[448] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 40.

[449] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 7.

[450] _Diana of the Crossways_, 153.

[451] _One of Our Conquerors_, 70. Etymologically, it is only the sarcastic variety which pushes the attack so far.

[452] _Autobiography_, 86. Even the ingenuous Mr. Brooke of Middlemarch had made the subtle discovery that “Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point.” And a century before, satire’s warmest defender, John Brown, had cautioned the wits against degrading her “to a scold.”

[453] _Sense and Sensibility_, 244.

[454] Raleigh: _The English Novel_, 112.

[455] _Middlemarch_, I, 174. Cf. the taunt of the practical young Radical to Esther Lyon, on her choice of literature: “* * * gentlemen like your Rénés, who have no particular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the infinite is the right thing for them.” _Felix Holt_, II, 34.

[456] _Romola_, I, 287.

[457] In his initial pleasure over Wickham, he defies “even Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law,” but later, after reading a letter from Collins, he concludes,--“I cannot help giving him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my son-in-law.”

[458] “God forgive you,” he exclaims to Carrasco, “the injury you have done the whole world, in endeavouring to restore to his senses the most diverting madman in it. Do you not see, sir, that the benefit of his recovery will not counterbalance the pleasure his extravagancies afford?” III, 449.

[459] _Evan Harrington_, 457. Cf. a similar idea in _The Shaving of Shagpat_. The narrator of _The Newcomes_ speaks in the Preface of the “pert little satirical monitor” which sprang up inwardly and upset the fond humbug he was cherishing. It is a curious circumstance that neither Dickens nor Thackeray, with all their humor, could create characters with that quality. Even of Becky it might be said that she never did a foolish thing, nor ever said a wise one.

[460] _Note Books_, 189.

[461] _Evan Harrington_, 368.

[462] _Framley Parsonage_, 306.

[463] _Adam Bede_, II, 37. Cf. Lord Fleetwood’s complaint to Carinthia that she has hit him hard and justly, followed by his acknowledgment,--“Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground--no recovery of it, none!” _An Amazing Marriage_, 439.

[464] _Daniel Deronda_, II, 86.

[465] _The Virginians_, II, 363.

[466] _Melincourt_, II, 14.

[467] _Essay on Comedy_, 62.

[468] _An Amazing Marriage_, 202.

[469] Meredith, in _Patience and Foresight_.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Where appropriate, the original spelling has been retained.

3. Italics are shown as _xxx_.

4. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.