Satire in the Victorian novel

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Title: Satire in the Victorian novel
Author: Russell, Frances Theresa
Language: English
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SATIRE IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

[Illustration]

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

SATIRE IN THE VICTORIAN
NOVEL

BY
FRANCES THERESA RUSSELL, PH.D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920

_All rights reserved_

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1920.

VIRO DOCTISSIMO
DAVID STARR JORDAN

DIS MANIBUS
GUILELMI JAMES

SACRUM
QUI MIHI TEMPORE MEO GRAVISSIMO, NOVA SUPPEDITANTES
OFFICIA NOVAM VITÆ SEMITAM MONSTRAVERUNT

PREFACE

If the following monograph were to be presented from the point of
view of a proponent, the author would be put triply on the defensive
in relation to the theme. For, from one cause or another, the trio of
terms in the title lies under a certain blight of critical opinion.

Satire, being a thistle “pricked from the thorny branches of reproof,”
cannot expect to be cherished in the sensitive human bosom with the
welcome accorded to the fair daffodil or the sweet violet. It must be
content to be admired, if at all, from a safe distance, with the cold
eye of intellectual appraisal.

Victorianism has the distinction of being the only period in literature
whose very name savors of the byword and the reproach. To be an
Elizabethan is to be envied for the gift of youthful exuberance and
an exquisite joy in life. To be a Queen Annian (if the phrase may
be adapted) is to be respected for the accomplishments of mature
manhood,--a dignified mein, ripened judgment, and polished wit. To be
a Victorian--that indeed provokes the question whether ’twere better
to be or not to be. The chronological analogy cannot, however, be
carried out, for the Victorian, whatever the cause of his unfortunate
reputation, can hardly be accused of senility. On the contrary, the
impression prevails that the startled ingenuousness, for instance,
with which he opened his eyes at Darwin, Ibsen, and the iconoclasts in
Higher Criticism; the vehemence with which he opposed and refuted and
fulminated against everything hitherto undreampt of in his philosophy;
the complacency with which he viewed himself and his achievements, were
attributes more appropriate to adolescence than to any later time of
life. Withal there was little of the grace and gayety of youth, and
not much more of the poise and humor of manhood. That the Victorian
was never at ease, in Zion or elsewhere, that he was prone to take
himself and his disjointed times very seriously, without achieving
a proportionate reformation, is a charge from which he never can be
acquitted. To our modern authorities, especially such dictators as
Shaw and Wells, contemplating him from the vantage ground of a higher
rung in the ladder of civilization, the Victorian looks as Wordsworth
did to Lady Blandish, like “a very superior donkey,” protected by the
side-blinders of conventionality, saddled and bridled by authority, and
ridden around in a circle by sentiment (most tyrannical of drivers),
with much cracking of whip and raising of dust, but no real change of
intellectual or spiritual locality. Nor can all the cavorting fun of
Dickens, all the pungent playfulness of Thackeray, all the sardonic
gibes of Carlyle, all the grotesque gesturing of Browning, all the
winged irony of George Eliot and Matthew Arnold, not even all the
quips and cranks in _Punch_ itself, avail to quash the indictment. The
Victorian may be defended, appreciated, exonerated even; he may in time
succeed in living it down. But to live it down is not quite the same as
to have had nothing that had to be lived down.

The Novel has been called the Cinderella of Literature. And it is true
that while she may be useful, indispensable, a secret favorite of the
whole family, no magic wand can give her the real enchantment of a
caste that survives the stroke of twelve. She may act as the drudge
to fetch and carry our theories, or the playmate to amuse our idle
hours, but she must be kept in her place, and her place is with neither
the esthetic aristocracy of poetry nor the didactic patricianism of
philosophy and criticism. She has, indeed, recently been fitted with a
golden slipper, but her Prince hails from the Kingdom of Dollars, and
his rank is recorded in Bradstreet instead of the Peerage.

The indifferent or repellent nature of a subject, even though triple
distilled, has nothing to do, however, with its value as a topic
for investigation. I present this study neither as apologist nor
enthusiast. If we expand Browning’s “development of a soul” to include
the mental as well as the spiritual stages, as the poet himself did
in actual practice, we must agree with him that “little else is worth
study.” So persistent and insistent in the mind of man has been, and
still is, the satiric mood, so devoted has he been from immemorial
ages to the habit of story-telling (and seldom for the mere sake of
the story), so voluminous and emphatic did he become in the nineteenth
century, that no complete account of him can be rendered up until, amid
the infinite variety of his aspects, he has been viewed as a Victorian
satirist, using as his medium the English novel.

Whatever the result of this observation may be, the process has been
one of continual delight, tempered by despair; for one enters as it
were a room of tremendous size not only full of curious and challenging
objects (over-furnished perhaps), but supplied also with numerous
doors opening into other apartments, and these ask an amount of time
and attention which only the span of a Methuselah could place at one’s
disposal.

It must be admitted, though, that it is a happier lot to stand before
open doors, even in dismay at the illimitable vistas, than to confront
closed doors or none at all. And I wish in this connection to offer
my tribute of appreciation and admiration to one who has prëeminently
the scholar’s talisman of Open Sesame into the many and rich realms
of literature. It was my good fortune to prepare this study under the
direction of Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, of Columbia University,
by whose benignly severe criticism so many students have profited, by
whose sure taste and searching wisdom so many have been guided. To
him, to his colleagues in the English Department, and to the other
officers of the University who helped to make my term of residence the
satisfaction it has been, it is a pleasure to express my gratitude. To
my Stanford colleague, Miss Elisabeth Lee Buckingham, I am indebted for
the drudgery of copy-reading, both in manuscript and in proof, and for
many valuable suggestions.

F. T. R.

CONTENTS

_PART I_

PREMISES

CHAPTER I

THE SATIRIC SPIRIT
PAGE

Various interpretations because of various manifestations.
Chief constituents, criticism and humor. Relation of these in
the formula. Testimony of satirists as to the presence of
humor, criticism being taken for granted. The satiric motive;
temperamental cause and ethical intent. Testimony as to both.
Symposium on the discrepancy between prospectus and
performance. The realizable ideal. Objects: empiric data on
vice, folly, and deception. Reason for universal criticism
and ridicule of deception. Criteria of good satire.
Difficulties, limitations, and real function 1

CHAPTER II

THE CONFLUENCE

Relationship between satire and fiction. Ancient but incomplete
and uneven alliance. Union in the nineteenth century. The
Victorian novelists. Their chronology and background.
Classification as satirists. Testimony of the novelists
themselves as to satire 41

_PART II_

METHODS

CHAPTER I

THE ROMANTIC

Possible methodic categories. Reason for present choice.
Proportion of the romantic or fantastic type. Peacock and
Butler. Lytton and Disraeli. Thackeray and Meredith.
Characteristics of this form of satire: wit, invention,
exaggeration, and concentration 59

CHAPTER II

THE REALISTIC

Character of Victorian realism. Nature of realistic satire.
Subdivisions, based on authors’ methods and devices. The direct
or didactic satirists: Lytton, Thackeray, Dickens, Meredith.
Satire in plot or situation: _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Vanity Fair_,
_The Egoist_. Minor episodes. Satire expressed by witty
characters, of various types 84

CHAPTER III

THE IRONIC

Verbal and philosophic irony. Banter and sarcasm. The Irony
of Fate. Relation of irony to satire. Differing opinions.
Distribution of irony among the novelists. Direct or verbal:
present in varying degrees in practically all. Crystallized
and pervasive forms. Irony in circumstance: Trollope, Eliot,
and Meredith. Subdivisions: dramatic irony; the reversed wheel
of fortune, the granted desire; the lost opportunity.
Meredithian irony directed against the ironic interpretation
of life 121

_PART III_

OBJECTS

CHAPTER I

INDIVIDUALS

Personalities the original and primitive element in satire.
Effect of this influence upon the satiric product, and of this
in turn upon the attitude toward satire. Citations. In fiction
no hard and fast line between real and imaginary characters.
Lack of personal satire among the novelists. Its prevalence
limited to the earlier writers: Peacock, Lytton, Disraeli, and
Thackeray before 1850 167

CHAPTER II

INSTITUTIONS

Victorian attitude toward established institutions. Satire
directed against the following: Society, including the home,
woman, marriage; the State, including politics, sociology, law,
charities and corrections, war; the Church, treated both by
partisans on the inside, and pagans on the outside; the School,
signifying education, from the fireside to the college;
Literature and the Press; the English as a nation. Lack of
complementary reconstruction 179

CHAPTER III

TYPES

Impossibility of maintaining fixed classes. Unity and emphasis
secured by artificial devices. Several human traits temptingly
vulnerable, though all some form of deceit. Hypocrisy the
specialty of Dickens, Folly, of Dickens and Meredith,
Snobbishness, of Thackeray, Sentimentality and Egoism, of
Meredith. Scattered fire against vulgarity, fanaticism, and
other targets. Combination and interplay of traits in one
character exemplified by Trollope’s Lady Carbury 229

_PART IV_

CONCLUSIONS

CHAPTER I

RELATIONSHIPS

The various novelists compared as to respective quality,
quantity, and range of satirical element. Discussion of the
merging of satire into cynicism, tragedy, and idealism on the
critical side, and into comedy, wit, and philosophic humor, on
the humorous. Relation to intellect and emotion. Relative
ranking of satirists influenced by these considerations 269

CHAPTER II

THE VICTORIAN CONTRIBUTION

The cumulative inheritance. Recent change in form from heroic
couplet to prose fiction. Progressive change in substance from
hypocritical to sentimental side of deceit. Seen in
institutions as well as in types of character. Science and
democracy the most influential factors. Scientific search for
causes of failure. Democratic sense of social responsibility.
Satire directed against self-deceived inefficiency mistaken for
success. Satiric method concentrated on exposure of motives.
Satiric manner less assertive and more casual and urbane.
Recognition of the paradox in ridicule. Reduction of it to
minor rôle, though staged with more finesse and effectiveness.
Stress shifted from the critical element to the ironically
humorous 288

Bibliographical note 317

Index 329

PART I

PREMISES

Satire in the Victorian Novel

CHAPTER I

THE SATIRIC SPIRIT

“Are ye satirical, sir?” inquired the Ettrick Shepherd, warily
suspicious of the cryptic eulogy just pronounced by his companion on
the minds and manners of the English shopocracy.

“I should be ashamed of myself if I were, James,” was the grieved reply.

We know very well, however, that Christopher North was not ashamed
of himself, at least not with the true contrition that leads to
reformation. On the contrary, we fear that he cherished and cultivated
quite shamelessly his gift of caustic wit. In any case, whether the
disavowal came from ironic whim or from a concession to the popular
attitude toward satire, it illustrates the first difficulty confronting
the student of this indeterminate subject.

To recognize the satirical at sight, to know whether a man is telling
the truth, either when he claims to be a satirist or when he disclaims
the charge, is something of an accomplishment. For the complex and
Protean nature of satire, _varium et mutabile semper_, has naturally
led to much disagreement not only as to its existence in certain cases,
but as to its justification in general. To its eulogist, usually
the satirist himself, satire is an instrument of discipline with a
divine commission,--a Scourge of God. To its apologist, usually the
detached observer, it is a more or less dubious means to a more or less
necessary end. To its disparager, usually the satirized, it is a wanton
mischief-maker, superfluous and intolerable. The personal resentment of
this last may be fortified by the convenient logic which identifies the
agent with the cause. “People who really dread the daring, original,
impulsive character which is the foundation of the satirical,” says
Hannay in one of his lectures on Satire, “ingenuously blame the
satirist for the state of things which he attacks.”

These varieties of attitude toward satire arise not only from
varieties in temperament and satirical experience, but from the
diverse manifestations of satire itself. Take, for instance, those
characters in literature which seem to be an incarnation of the satiric
spirit. Thersites is the dealer in personalities, scoffing and gibing
at the élite with the licensed audacity of the court fool. Reynard
is the satirical rogue who not only perceives the weaknesses of his
fellow citizens but turns them to his own advantage. Alceste is the
misanthrope, “critic,” as Meredith says, “of everybody save himself,”
but lifting his strictures out of the merely personal by attaching them
to a general interpretation of life. The Hebrew _Adversary_ is the
cynic with a scientific zest for experiment. He impugns motives, fleers
at fair appearances, prides himself on his superior penetration, and
questions the price for which a prosperous Job serves God. His loss of
the wager through actual test of his theory has been taken as proof
that such suspicions are unwarranted, and that the trust of the Divine
Idealist in human nature was justified. This conclusion, however, must
be qualified by the admission that the inductive process was conducted
on limited data, and that if Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar had been chosen
for the trial, the result might have been different. As it was, the
final silence of the quenched satirist, and his absence from the happy
ending may be construed as a sign of defeat in one instance that by no
means invalidated his general attitude of doubt and interrogation.

Of all these embodiments, however, the most perfect representation
of the satiric spirit is a product of English genius. The melancholy
Jaques has abundant slings and arrows of his own wherewith to retaliate
for those of outrageous fortune, but he never fails to wing them with
laconic wit and imperturbable humor. He expressly denies being guilty
of personalities.

“What woman in the city do I name,
When that I say the city-woman bears
The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?”

He snubs with careless aplomb the too oratorical Orlando, and cannily
avoids the too loquacious Duke. “I think of as many matters as he,” he
observes, “but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them.” He
reviews the career of man, and sees him proceeding with pretentious
futility through his seven sad ages to an inglorious conclusion. And
yet this philosopher admits his very pessimism to be something of a
pose, and turns his humor reflexively against himself. All satirists
have a fondness for sucking melancholy out of a song as a weasel
sucks eggs; all are prone to rail at the first born of Egypt simply
because they cannot sleep, but few have the honesty to acknowledge it.
Meanwhile, although this courtier claims motley as his only wear, his
companions perceive the genuineness of his humanity and the value of
his protests.

“Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life.”

And thus have diverse manifestations of the satiric spirit appeared
from time to time. Few seem to be visible just at present, but we may
be sure that the Spirit of Satire has not deserted our planet. Still
is he busy walking up and down in the earth and going to and fro in
it. Still does he probe and mock, sometimes with penetrative wisdom,
sometimes in prejudice and error, but always as a challenge not to be
ignored.

Satire has not only embodied itself in certain characters of
literature, but has made and maintained for itself an important place
in that realm. This place may be divided into two fairly distinct
areas. The narrower one is known as formal satire, and has always been
expressed in verse: the Latin hexameter, the Italian _terza rima_, the
French Alexandrine, the English heroic couplet. The larger and less
definite section is formed by surcharging with the satiric tone some
other literary type. Such a combination is found in the Aristophanic
comedy, the dialogues of Lucian, the romances of Rabelais, Cervantes,
and Swift. Such also are _The Rape of the Lock_, _Don Juan_, _The
Bigelow Papers_, _Man and Superman_, and countless others. In addition
to these there is a third estate, the largest and most heterogeneous,
consisting of writings mainly serious, with a more or less pronounced
satiric flavor.

Any study, therefore, which tries to deal with satire as a mode rather
than a form will profit by using the adjective instead of the noun.
Without fully accepting the erasure of the old literary boundaries
advocated by Croce, Spingarn, and the modern school, we may say that
in this particular field at least, the substitution of the descriptive
_satiric_ for the categoric _satire_ shows that discretion which is
the better part of valor. Still, since to avoid the responsibility
of deciding whether or not a given production is a satire, by the
non-committal device of calling it satiric, is only to beg the question
so far as a definition is concerned, it is advisable to produce some
identifying label. Stated in brief, satire is humorous criticism of
human foibles and faults, or of life itself, directed especially
against deception, and expressed with sufficient art to be accounted as
literature.

When we say, however, that satire is a union of those two intangible,
subjective elements, criticism and humor, we do not assume the equation
fully to be expressed by the formula--Antagonism plus Amusement equals
Satire. For neither is all criticism humorous nor all humor critical.
The relation is that of two circles, not coincident but overlapping.

[Illustration]

Confusion has arisen because, while the boundaries of the two separate
circles are fairly distinct in our minds, the circumference made by
their conjunction is merged in their respective planes. Accordingly,
the term satire is sometimes used to denote humorless criticism,--which
is really invective, denunciation, any sort of reprehension; and
sometimes uncritical humor,--which is mere facetiousness and
jocularity. Not every prophet, preacher, or pedagogue is a satirist,
nor yet every merry clown, or exuberant youth, or mild worldly-wise man
enjoying the blunders of innocent naïveté.

Professor Dewey reminds us that the ideal state of mind is “a nice
balance between the playful and the serious.” But in the satiric
circle a nice balance would be found only at the center. Wherever there
are boundaries, there are always some sections of the enclosure nearer
the margin than others. Thus, although satire is a compound, it does
not follow that its fractions stand in a constant uniform ratio. On the
contrary, the proportion ranges all the way from a minimum of humor in
a Juvenal or a Johnson to a minimum of criticism in a Horace, a Gay,
or a Lamb. Either quality may reach the vanishing point, but when it
passes it, the remaining one cannot alone create satire, any more than
oxygen or hydrogen can be transformed into water.

Nor can either quality be defined in other than psychological terms.
The critical sense is rooted in the instincts of attraction and
repulsion, the reaction of an organism to any new stimulus being
_pro_ or _con_ according to the preëstablished harmony or antagonism
between them. As each human being grows to maturity by responding to
experience, he acquires his individual set of opinions and ideals,
largely borrowed from the habits and conventions of his groups, ethnic,
social, and what not, with a small residue of his own originality.
Equipped with this outfit of criteria he looks upon life and finds it
complete or wanting, tests his fellow men and approves or condemns,
examines all created things and calls them good or bad. But he is so
constituted that his acquiescence is likely to be somewhat passive,
and his protests active, his commendation grudging and qualified,
his condemmation sweeping and thorough. Says an eighteenth century
satirist,--[1]

“Broad is the road, nor difficult to find,
Which to the house of Satire leads mankind;
Narrow and unfrequented are the ways,
Scarce found out in an age, which lead to praise.”

The humorous sense is likewise an essence and an index of disposition.
The inadequacy of most definitions of the ludicrous, from Aristotle’s
“innocuous, unexpected incongruity,” to Bergson’s “mechanical
inelasticity,” lies in their concentration on the objective side of
it,--the stimulus to mirth,--whereas the subjective,--the mirthful
person,--deserves the emphasis. Laughter throws a far more illuminating
ray on the laugher than the laughed at, for it indicates not only taste
and mood but the trend of one’s philosophy. In betraying a man’s idea
of the incongruous, it implies his conception of the congruous, and
reveals his whole coördination of life. We may, it is true, define
humor by saying that intellectually it is a contemplation of life from
the angle of amusement, and emotionally, a joyous effervescence over
the absurdities in life ever present to the discerning eye; but we can
never quite capture it, any more than pleasure or tragedy. We can,
however, use these abstractions as refracted definers of character, by
noting what sort of a man it is who regards such and such things as
amusing, or delightful, or unendurable. For not only as a man thinks,
but also as he laughs and exults and censures and suffers, so is he.

That satire is woven from double strands, the blue of rebuke and the
red of wit,--becoming thereby in a chromatic sense the purple patch of
literature,--is testified to by satiric theory as well as practice. The
critical element may of course be taken for granted, but since it has
been sometimes over-emphasized at the expense of the humorous, some
testimony as to the latter must be given.

It is to Horace that we are indebted not only for the first finished
formal satire, but for the first attempt at an analysis of the then
newest literary type. He sketches the history of satire as an exposure
of crime, but insists that this mission may be performed with courtesy
and the light touch, since even weighty matters are sometimes settled
more effectively by a jest than by grim asperity.

“_Ridiculum acri_
_Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res._”[2]

It is interesting to note that his own consistent practice in this
matter is acknowledged by his successor Persius, who says of him,

“Sportive and pleasant round the heart he played,
And wrapt in jests the censure he conveyed.”[3]

When Jonson reintroduced the Aristophanic vehicle of comedy to carry
his satire, though fashioned in a different style, he also re-voiced
the Horatian satiric philosophy, promising realism,--such characters
and actions as comedy would choose,

“When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make ’hem such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they’re ill.
I mean such errors, as you’ll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:”[4]

A writer of the Restoration Period carries on the tradition:

“Some did all folly with just sharpness blame,
Whilst others laughed and scorned them into shame.
But of these two, the last succeeded best,
As men aim rightest when they shoot in jest.”[5]

The spokesman of the eighteenth century on this point is Young.

“No man can converse much in the world but, at what he meets
with, he must either be insensible, or grieve, or be angry, or
smile. Some passion (if we are not impassive) must be moved;
for the general conduct of mankind is by no means a thing
indifferent to a reasonable and virtuous man. Now, to smile at
it, and turn it into ridicule, I think most eligible; as it
hurts ourselves least, and gives Vice and Folly the greatest
offense.

“Laughing at the misconduct of the world will, in a great
measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it.
One passion is more effectually driven out by another than by
reason.”[6]

And about the same time our first satirical novelist was avowing his
own creed and performance:

“If nature hath given me any talents at ridiculing vice and
imposture, I shall not be indolent, nor afraid of exerting
them.”[7]

Again: “I have employed all the wit and humour of which I am
master in the following history; wherein I have endeavoured to
laugh mankind out of their favorite follies and vices.”[8]

The self-conscious nineteenth century is full of comments on this
topic, as on all others, but two or three representative ones will
suffice as examples.

It is not really the great Greek satirist but his modern interpreter
who utters this explanatory sentiment:

“Now, earnestness seems never earnest more
Than when it dons for garb--indifference;
So, there’s much laughing: but, compensative,
When frowning follows laughter, then indeed
Scout innuendo, sarcasm, irony!”[9]

Finally, turning to the encyclopedia for a modern official
pronouncement, we find humor again cited as a _sine qua non_.[10]

“Satire in its literary aspect may be defined as the expression
in adequate terms of the sense of amusement or disgust excited
by the ridiculous or unseemly, provided that humor is a
distinctly recognisable element, and that the utterance is
invested with literary form. Without humor, satire is invective;
without literary form, it is mere clownish jesting. * * * This
feeling of disgust or contempt may be diverted from the failings
of man individual to the feebleness and imperfection of man
universal, and the composition may still be a satire; but if the
element of scorn or sarcasm were entirely eliminated it would
become a sermon.”

The matter of ingredients is more easily disposed of, however, than
that of causation. It is obviously easier to scrutinize a finished
product and see what it is made of than to go back to its origin and
discover why it was made. For the latter process leads us to the
domain of motives, that shadowy realm where the real is often made to
hide behind the assumed or at least the instinctive kept down by the
acquired. In this mental kingdom many an impulsive little prince has
been smothered by a deliberative, ambitious usurper who felt a call to
rule.

In the province of satire the real internal stimulus is temperament. If
a man has a critical disposition, he is bound to criticise. If he has
a keen sense of humor, he will be alive to the absurd. If he possesses
both, he is a natural-born satirist and cannot escape his manifest
destiny,--so long as he is not inarticulate. But the declared motives
are for the most part ethical and altruistic, a lineage much more
presentable and worthy of high command.

This human tendency to justify its instinctive behavior by _ex post
facto_ morality has produced an impressive symposium on the thesis
that satire has a definite purpose and moreover a noble one. Thus while
the satirist admits his malice aforethought, he protests that the
malicious suffers a sea change into the beneficent, for that he must be
cruel only to be kind. The modest and honest confession of Horace[11]
that he wrote satire because he had to write something and was not
equal to epic, was soon supplanted by the Juvenalian declaration of
_saeva indignatio_, and it is from this perennial spring that a
steady flow of eulogy has irrigated the history of satire.

A representative of the Elizabethan group is Marston:[12]

“I would show to be
_Tribunus plebis_, ’gainst the villainy
Of those same Proteans, whose hypocrisy
Doth still abuse our fond credulity.”

Milton manages here as elsewhere to sound a clarion note over the clash
of seventeenth century partisanship:[13]

“A taste for delicate satire cannot be general until refinement
of manners is general likewise; till we are enlightened enough
to comprehend that the legitimate object of satire is not to
humble an individual, but to improve the species. * * * For a
satire as it is born out of a tragedy so it ought to resemble
its parentage, to strike high, to adventure dangerously at the
most eminent vices among the greatest persons.”

Defoe[14] echoes Dryden,[15] both speaking with reasonable consistency;
and even Pope[16] tries to make out a case for himself. But the
completest paean is from the pen of John Brown.[17] His poetic analysis
begins at the beginning:

“In every breast there burns an active flame,
The love of glory, or the dread of shame:
The passion one, though various it appear,
As brighten’d into hope, or dimm’d by fear.

Thus heav’n in pity wakes the friendly flame,
To urge mankind on deeds that merit fame:
But man, vain man, in folly only wise,
Rejects the manna sent him from the skies:”

The climax of this human error is perverted ambition and a snobbish
idea of excellence:

“The daemon _Shame_ paints strong the ridicule,
And whispers close, ‘the world will call you fool!’

Hence Satire’s pow’r: ’tis her corrective part
To calm the wild disorders of the heart.
She points the arduous heights where glory lies,
And teaches mad ambition to be wise:
In the dark bosom wakes the fair desire,
Draws good from ill, a brighter flame from fire;
Strips black Oppression of her gay disguise,
And bids the hag in native horror rise;
Strikes tow’ring pride and lawless rapine dead,
And plants the wreath on Virtue’s awful head.

Nor boasts the Muse a vain imagin’d pow’r,
Though oft she mourns those ills she cannot cure,
The worthy court her, and the worthless fear;
Who shun her piercing eye, that eye revere.
Her awful voice the vain and vile obey,
And every foe to wisdom feels her sway.
Smarts, pedants, as she smiles, no more are vain;
Desponding fops resign the _clouded cane_:
Hush’d at her voice, pert Folly’s self is still,
And Dulness wonders while she drops her quill.”

The author’s optimism mounts even to the disparagement of Force,
Policy, Religion, Mercy, and Justice, in comparison with this puissant
and impeccable goddess, in whose presence the wicked never cease from
trembling,--especially stricken when she draws

“Her magic quill, that like Ithuriel’s spear
Reveals the cloven hoof, or lengthen’d ear;

Drags the vile whisperer from his dark abode,
’Till all the daemon starts up from the toad.”

Feeling perhaps that after all his client’s status is a trifle dubious,
her advocate continues with a caution and a climax:

“Who combats Virtue’s foe is Virtue’s friend;
Then judge of Satire’s merit by her end:
To guilt alone her vengeance stands confin’d,
The object of her love is all mankind.”

The sober eighteenth century brings us back to reality with a
characteristic comment by the best satirist of the period, who admires
his favorite predecessors, “not indeed for that wit and humour
alone which they all so eminently possessed, but because they all
endeavoured, with the utmost force of their wit and humour, to expose
and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly prevailed in their
several countries.”[18]

But Gifford, akin in spirit to the satirist he translated, goes to the
extreme in taking the satiric office seriously:

“To raise a laugh at vice * * * is not the legitimate office
of Satire, which is to hold up the vicious as objects of
reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may be
deterred by their sufferings.”[19]

De Quincey carries the tradition over into the nineteenth century
by reminding us that “the satirist has a reformative as well as a
punitive duty to discharge.” Meredith[20] agrees that “the satirist
is a moral agent, often a social scavenger, working on a storage of
bile.” Symonds[21] affirms that “Without an appeal to conscience the
satirist has no _locus standi_.” Browning has Balaustion say to
Aristophanes:

“Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow
O’ the humorist who castigates his kind,
Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays
On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,
Then vanishes with unvindictive smile
After a moment’s laying black earth bare,
Splendor of wit that springs a thunderball--
Satire--to burn and purify the world,
True aim, fair purpose; just wit justly strikes
Injustice,--right, as rightly quells the wrong,
Finds out in knaves’, fools’, cowards’ armory
The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through,
No damage else, sagacious of true ore.”

And Dawson[22] brings satiric utilitarianism into the present century:

“It is quite beside the mark to say that we do not like satire.
It is equally beside the mark to say that we have never known
such a world as this. The thing to be remembered is that in all
ages the satirist of manners has been of the utmost service to
society in exposing its follies and lashing its vices. It is the
work of a great satirist to apply the caustic to the ulcers of
society; and if we are to let our dislike of satire overrule our
judgment, we shall not only record our votes against a Juvenal
and a Swift, but equally against the whole line of Hebrew
prophets.”

All these citations refer more or less directly to the cause--the
reason or motive for satirical utterance--but have some bearing on the
effect--the tangible result of it,--since the two are to a certain
extent inseparable. They are, however, also distinct, and particularly
so in this case; as cause is a psychological and hidden thing, and
effect is more external and visible. In turning from the first to the
second we pass from deductive argument to inductive. The logic of the
former is an Idol of the Tribe, particularly of the British tribe,
unable to rest until everything has been drafted under the ethic flag
and brought into the moral fold. We pass also from spacious promise to
rather cramped and meager performance. Satiric intent looms as large as
the imposing first appearance of the giant of Destiny, in Maeterlinck’s
_Betrothal_; satiric accomplishment shrinks to the size of his
exit as the babe in arms. And while the assertion of inexorability
and omnipotence is continued bravely to the end, albeit in a voice of
quavering _diminuendo_, a counter voice is also heard, repudiating
extravagant claims.

Both attitudes are expressed in turn by an eighteenth century satirist.
In his _Epistle to William Hogarth_ Churchill exclaims,

“Can Satire want a subject, where Disdain,
By virtue fired, may point her sharpest strain?
Where, clothed in thunder, Truth may roll along,
And Candour justify the rage of song?”

But in _The Candidate_, he announces reform of his former practices, in
a series of rhetorical “Enoughs,” coming to a climax in--

“Enough of Satire--in less hardened times
Great was her force, and mighty were her rhymes.”

In his own degenerate days, however,--

“Satire throws by her arrows on the ground,
And if she cannot cure, she will not wound.
Come, Panegyric,” * * *

In _The Author_ he asks, “Lives there a man whom Satire cannot reach?”
And the author of _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ declares that
vice and folly will--

“More darkly sin, by Satire kept in awe,
And shrink from ridicule, though not from law.”

But Marston and Defoe, already quoted on the other side, have their
dubious moments. Says the former,[23]

“Now, Satire, cease to rub our galled skins,
And to unmask the world’s detested sins;
Thou shalt as soon draw Nilus river dry
As cleanse the world from foul impiety.”

And the latter[24] would be sanguine if he could:

“If my countrymen would take the hint and grow better-natured
from my ill-natured poem, as some call it, I would say this of
it, that though it is far from the best satire that ever was
written, it would do the most good that ever satire did.”

Gifford[25] also, though a believer in the mission of satire, admits
that “to laugh at fools is superfluous, and at the vicious unwise.”

Cowper[26] allows minor accomplishments:

“Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay?
It may correct a foible, may chastise
The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress,
Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch;
But where are its sublimer trophies found?
What vice has it subdu’d? whose heart reclaim’d
By rigour, or whom laugh’d into reform?
Alas! Leviathan is not so tam’d;
Laugh’d at, he laughs again; and, stricken hard,
Turns to the strike his adamantine scales,
That fear no discipline of human hands.”

Young[27] grants it a fighting chance:

“But it is possible that satire may not do much good; men may
rise in their affections to their follies, as they do to their
friends, when they are abused by others. It is much to be feared
that misconduct will never be chased out of the world by satire;
all, therefore, that is to be said for it is, that misconduct
will _certainly_ never be chased out of the world by
satire, if no satires are written. Nor is that term unapplicable
to graver compositions. Ethics, Heathen and Christian, and the
scriptures themselves, are, in a great measure, a satire on the
weakness and iniquity of men; and some part of that satire is in
verse, too. * * * Nay, historians themselves may be considered
as satirists and satirists most severe; since such are most
human actions, that to relate is to expose them.”

The distrust of the moderns is adequately voiced by Sidgwick:[28]

“Satire is the weapon of the man at odds with the world and at
ease with himself. The dissatisfied man--a Juvenal, a Swift,
a youthful Thackeray--belabors the world with vociferous
indignation, like the wind on the traveller’s back, the beating
makes it hug its cloaking sins the tighter. Wrong runs no danger
from such chastisement. * * * Satire is harmless as a moral
weapon. It is an old-fashioned fowling piece, fit for a man of
wit, intelligence, and a certain limited imagination. It runs no
risk of having no quarry; the world to it is one vast covert of
lawful game. It goes a-travelling with wit, because both are in
search of the unworthy.”

Two comments on Aristophanes illustrate the _pro_ and _con_
of satiric accomplishment. Cope, in the Preface to his translation,
remarks:

“He felt it his duty to do all he could to counteract the
increasing influence of Euripides upon the rising generation,
and knowing the power of ridicule, he employs this weapon
constantly and mercilessly; but he is careful not to injure his
own cause by exaggerated caricature, which might have created
sympathy for the object of his censure.”

But White, while warning us against regarding the dramatist as either
“a mere moralist or a mere jester,” judges by record:[29]

“If Aristophanes was working for reform, as a long line of
learned interpreters of the poet have maintained, the result was
lamentably disappointing; he succeeded in effecting not a single
change. He wings the shafts of his incomparable wit at all
the popular leaders of the day--Cleon, Hyperbolus, Peisander,
Cleophon, Agyrrhius, in succession, and is reluctant to unstring
his bow even when they are dead. But he drove no one of them
from power.”

Yet after due deduction has been made, Satire has left to it an asset
of considerable net value; an influence that may be subjective if not
objective, general if not specific, and artistic if not rampantly
ethical. As an instrument of self criticism, whereby a man may be
saved from making a solemn pompous fool of himself, as an antitoxin to
vanity, a solvent of sentimentality, a betrayer of hypocrisy, satire
may find all the mission it needs to be respectable; and if it can also
acquire a degree of grace and comeliness, it may be listed among the
muses.

Now this spirit of humorous criticism, sprung from innate prejudice,
nurtured by penetrating observation, enlisted at least nominally under
the banner of righteousness, and out for conquest, obviously must have
something to conquer;--whether he is a soldier fighting an enemy alien,
or a roving knight, bound to offer combat on chivalric grounds, though
aware in his candid heart that the surpassing loveliness of his lady
is a claim gallantly to be maintained rather than an incontrovertible
fact. In either case, whether he uses archery or artillery, he must
have a target; and a student of his tactics must understand what it is,
even better perhaps than he does himself.

Taken individually, the objects of satiric attack are legion, being no
fewer than all such victims of human displeasure as may suitably come
in for jesting rebuke. Our only chance for any sort of synthesis is to
see first if these individuals may be grouped into classes, and next,
if these classes may be generalized under some principle, discovered to
be under some supreme command.

The grouping is indeed easily discernible. Political parties stand out,
social strata, various professions and institutions and movements. But
to look upon these as ridiculed for themselves is to be satisfied with
a superficial view. The fault is not in themselves but in their stars
that they are underlings. What are these evil stars that seem in their
courses to fight against them?

The terms oftenest on the lips of satirists and historians of satire
are Vice and Folly. But these fine large entities are taken at their
face value and given a conventional interpretation. We are not
enlightened as to what vice and folly are, and can define them only as
those things which seem vicious and foolish to their several opponents.
They also are among the baffling subjectivities.

Juvenal’s conclusion that it is hard not to write satire, from the
premise that the number of fools is infinite, is said by Herford to be
“the fundamental axiom of all satire.” But as a matter of fact, it was
Horace who took the fool for his province, while his sterner successor
rather specialized on the knave. From then on there has been as little
endeavor to disentangle the two strands as to define them.

One of the earliest English satirists[30] emphasised the knavery; and
another[31] includes that and folly in the same indictment. Dryden,[32]
inclined to the serious Juvenalian type, discriminates between positive
and negative attitudes, but not between the two stock objects.

Speaking of the narrowed use of the word _satire_ in French and
English, he adds,

“For amongst the Romans it was not only used for those
discourses which decried vice, or exposed folly, but for others
also where virtue was recommended. But in our modern languages
we apply it only to invective poems, * * * for in English,
to say Satire, is to mean reflection, as we use that word in
its worst sense; or as the French call it, more properly,
_medisance_.”

Defoe[33] adds to the two a third, but in a somewhat casual enumeration:

“Speak, Satire; for there’s none can tell like thee
Whether ’tis folly, pride, or knavery
That makes this discontented land appear
Less happy now in times of peace than war?”

Swift[34] echoes the old duality:

“His vein, ironically grave,
Exposed the fool, and lash’d the knave.”

And Fielding,[35] though he actually finds good game in folly,
evidently considers vice the prime object:

“But while I hold the pen, it will be a maxim with me, that vice
can never be too great to be lashed, nor virtue too obscure to
be commended; in other words, that satire can never rise too
high, nor panegyric stoop too low.”

He also makes the same point in a historical review:[36]

“In ancient Greece, the infant muses’ school,
Where Vice first felt the pen of ridicule,
With honest freedom and impartial blows
The Muse attacked each Vice as it arose:
No grandeur could the mighty villain screen
From the just satire of the comic scene.”

Although vice is now too powerful for such censure, he dares the lion
in his den, and comforts the virtuous with reassurances:

“And while these scenes the conscious knave displease,
Who feels within the criminal he sees,
The uncorrupt and good must smile, to find
No mark for satire in his generous mind.”

The nineteenth century is full of straws still blowing in the direction
of Vice and Folly: such as Taine’s[37] “Satire is the sister of
elegy; if the second pleads for the oppressed, the first combats
the oppressors.” And Lionel Johnson[38] comments that Erasmus “had
something in common with Matthew Arnold: a like satiric yet profoundly
felt impatience with intellectual pedantry and social folly.”

We may, however, see satire as opposition, and moreover opposition to
vice and folly, and still be taking for granted that which demands more
probing. For even if it were so simple a crusade as that, no crusade is
as simple as it looks, and this one is particularly open to suspicion.

It is therefore not wholly superfluous to ask why vice and folly are
the favorite satiric goals. Psychologically it would be sufficient to
say that it is because anything a man disapproves of naturally seems to
him foolish if not actually vicious. But socialized man cannot admit
that his reaction to anything is based on mere temperamental prejudice.
Condemnation of vice and folly is of course its own justification, and
humor is its own reward. Unfortunately, however, humorous condemnation
is not always applicable to these offenders against taste and morality.
Folly is sometimes too artless to be censured, and vice is often too
serious to be ridiculed. Evidently then, yet another solution is
needed, a least common denominator that will go into both, even if it
does leave a remainder.

Now it happens that a body of explicit testimony, substantiated by
a review of satiric practice, does indicate the existence of this
unifying bond, this thing which, when present, makes both vice and
folly criticizably absurd; and its generic name is deception.

This fraudulent family has two main branches: the intentional type,
including hypocrisy and humbug; and the unconscious, represented
by sentimentality and other forms of self-befoolment; besides a
half-conscious variety, whence come vanity, snobbishness, superstition,
vulgarity, and other children of perverted ambition and false
reasoning. All these give plenty of scope to the satirist, even when we
subtract some possibilities by the important qualification that not all
that deceives is ludicrous; deception being sometimes too innocent and
even altruistic and sometimes too tragic and cruel.[39]

According to this test, anything which assumes a virtue when it has it
not may draw satiric fire. It is the assumption itself, the pose, that
furnishes the shining mark loved by the satirist.

On this point we again have Horatian testimony:[40]

“_Quid, cum est Lucilius ausus_
_Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem,_
_Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora_
_Cederet, introrsum turpis_, * * *”

Gascoigne[41] symbolised by his steel glass that which reflected the
beholders as they were, not flattered as by the plated mirror; and said
his effort was to “sing a verse to make them see themselves.” He also
identified the root of all evil with hypocrisy;--“So that they seem,
and covet not to be.”

Cervantes[42] spoke of his “Herculean labor” as being “nothing more nor
less than to banish mediocrity from the realm of Spanish poetry, and to
sweep from its sacred precincts, which had become as foul as an Augean
stable, all shams, lies, hypocrisies, and vulgar baseness whatsoever.”

But the first to stress this idea with discriminating analysis was,
quite appropriately, the first in his own satirical field:[43]

“The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me)
is affectation. * * * Now affectation proceeds from one of
these two causes, vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us
on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause;
so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid censure, by
concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite
virtues. * * *

“From the discovery of this affectation arises the Ridiculous;
* * * I might observe, that our Ben Jonson, who of all men
understood the Ridiculous the best, hath chiefly used the
hypocritical affectation.”

He remarks that this is more amusing than vanity, from the sharper
contrast with reality, and adds:

“Now, from affectation only, the misfortunes and calamities of
life, or the imperfections of nature, may become the objects of
ridicule. * * *

“The poet carries this very far:

‘None are for being what they are in fault,
But for not being what they would be thought.’”

He concludes:

“Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller
faults of our pity; but affectation appears to me the only true
source of the Ridiculous.”

Fielding’s comment on Jonson is in turn applied to him by a modern
critic:[44]

“All Fielding’s evil characters, it may be remarked, are
accomplished hypocrites; on pure vanity or silliness he spends
very few of his shafts.”

Taine[45] would find both easy to account for, on racial grounds:

“The first-fruits of English society is hypocrisy. It ripens
here under the double breath of religion and morality; we know
their popularity and sway across the channel. * * * This vice is
therefore English. Mr. Pecksniff is not found in France. * * *
Since Voltaire, Tartuffe is impossible.”

Landor[46] has Lucian say:

“I have ridiculed the puppets of all features, all colours, all
sizes, by which an impudent and audacious set of impostors have
been gaining an easy livelihood these two thousand years. * * *

“The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison
with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole
man, throughout life.”

Meredith’s portrait of The Comic Spirit is applicable to satire,
for throughout the essay he gives to the term comic the connotation
generally allowed to the term satiric:

“Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty
and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out
of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical,
hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it
sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in
idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities,
planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are
at variance with their professions, * * * whenever they offend
sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with
conceit, * * * they are detected and ridiculed.”

Meredith[47] also reiterates the distinction made by Swift and Fielding
in regard to misfortune:

“Poverty, says the satirist, has nothing harder in itself than
that it makes men ridiculous. But poverty is never ridiculous to
Comic perception until it attempts to make its rags conceal its
bareness in a forlorn attempt at decency, or foolishly to rival
ostentation.”

And he remarks of Molière:

“He strips Folly to the skin, displays the imposture of the
creature, and is content to offer her better clothing.”

Of the two forms of affectation, Fielding chooses hypocrisy as better
satirical game, but Bergson[48] votes for the other:

“In this respect it might be said that the specific remedy for
vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially
laughable is vanity.”

Fuess[49] makes for the last great poetic satirist the familiar
conventional claim:

“Byron is attacking not virtue, but false sentiment, false
idealism, and false faith. His satiric spirit is engaged in * *
* tearing down what is sham and pretence and fraud.”

Previté-Orton[50] applies the test to politics:

“Finally, there is another service political satires render,
which is peculiarly necessary to a government based on
discussion. One of the greatest evils in such a state is
the presence of mere words and phrases, and of the vague
Pecksniffian virtues. Now to satire cant and humbug are
proper game. It brings fine professions down to fact, points
the contrast between the commonplace reality and its tinsel
dress, and by the dread of ridicule raises the standard of
plain-dealing. Other means of criticism as well act as a check
on more opprobrious faults in public life. But satire is the
best agent to keep us free from taking words for substance.”

Apparently, then, we may conclude that deception in some form is, so
far as any one thing can be, the basic object of satire, or at least is
so considered by those who reflect upon it. But we must admit here as
elsewhere that to recognise a phenomenon is easier than to account for
it.

Not that it is difficult to account for the deception itself. No
instinct is more fundamental and irresistible than that of concealment.
The primary fear of molestation or harm in which it originates becomes,
in a social state of sophistication and artifice, fear of exposure.
With increased development, such complex and opposing factors as pride
and shame, avarice and generosity, ostentation and modesty, lead us
to hide things. We hide all sorts of things, good and bad; faults,
virtues, deficiencies, accomplishments, hoardings, and charities. We
hide from ourselves as well as from others. The left hand is as a rule
not on terms of confiding intimacy with the right, whether it is
scattering seeds of kindness or getting into mischief. In the mental
realm the same trick of camouflage prevails. Out of spiritual cowardice
we conceal from ourselves the disturbing facts of life, and purchase
optimism at the easy price of sentimentalism.

But just why this ubiquitous habit should be the peculiar province of
the satirist, is another psychological problem; and as such, is best
reached through a psychological solution. Why is there about deception
something inherently repugnant and at the same time automatically
amusing? Why is our incorrigible human predilection for belonging
to the Great Order of Shams equalled only by our incorrigible human
predilection for joyous exposure of others? The game seems to be mutual
and perpetual, and the honors about even.

The repugnance undoubtedly comes less from a noble devotion to truth
than from the dislike we all have of being deceived. Nothing do we
discover with more exasperation, and admit with more reluctance than
the fact that we have been fooled or hoodwinked. It is an experience
that fosters present irritation and future distrust; but one which,
from its very nature, demands the retort ironic rather than the lofty
indignation accorded to an open injury. Most emphatically “We all hate
fustian and affectation,” and any knavish trickery, especially in
others.

The amusement arises from the triumph of frustrating this attempt at
deceptive concealment, intensified by the pleasure in perceiving an
incongruity--in this case, between the assumed and the actual--which
is the essence of humor.[51] The zest lies in the endless sport of
hide and seek, veiling and unveiling, blowing bubbles and pricking
them, which is exhilarating through the play of wits and the fun of
outwitting.[52]

This would perhaps be a sufficient account were it not for a certain
left-handed yet inseparable connection of the psychology of the
question with its ethics. Whether or not an intruder, the latter has
entered in and firmly entrenched herself. When therefore she maintains
that her satiric discontent is divine, she must be given a respectful
hearing; though after it we seem unable to concede more than the
possibility.

A lively enthusiasm for showing up the ingenuous sentimentalist or
the crafty hypocrite may or may not argue a freedom on the exposer’s
part from these or other modes of hiding or distorting the truth; or
a disinterested love for truth itself. It does go without saying that
real respect and admiration for honesty and sincerity is a fundamental
human trait, as witness the glowing encomiums bestowed on those
guileless virtues, and it might follow that our unmoral impulses are
half consciously focussed through a moral function. We must have a sin
offering; and deceit is in the most eligible. Thus the satirist may,
deliberately or unthinkingly, read deception into his disapproved,
in order to have an excuse for laughter, just as he may read vice
and folly into his disliked, in order to condemn. Nevertheless it
is possible to enjoy the process of unmasking without making it a
corollary that masking is wrong and therefore deserving of exposure.

Some observers are more impressed with the resemblances among the
members of the great human family, and some more sensitive to the
differences. When a consciousness of this variance is dissolved in a
humorous solution, it precipitates a satire. The satirist is not always
a victorious Saint George, and the satirized a downed and disgraced
Dragon. Still, if the Saint could be secularized to the extent of a
mocking light in his eye, and a taunting finger pointing at a removed
disguise under which the Dragon had been masquerading, we might take
the picture as a symbol of an ideal relationship between them, both
ethically and artistically.

For there is an ideal in this as in all things that have variation and
flexibility; and, as in them all, the question of quality is the most
important one. Without some sort of criterion we can form no judgments
as to value. The points we have been considering,--what satire is made
of, why and how made, against what directed, and in what effective, all
lead to the final one,--what is the highest type?

The trend of testimony seems to converge on three requirements for
that satire which would disarm criticism while indulging in it: purity
of purpose, kindliness of temper, and discrimination as to objects of
ridicule.

The first is not to be confused with the reformatory motive.
It means simply freedom from the very affectation censured in
others. What it rules out is not so much the railing to gratify
one’s spleen, as the pose of altruism while doing it; the grieved
this-hurts-me-more-than-it-does-you attitude so particularly annoying
to the castigated. It also discounts the selfish vanity which courts
applause for wit, regardless of the means by which it is won.

On this point Horace[53] again heads the list. He denies the
accusation that the satirist is spiteful, and continues:

“_Liberius si_
_Dixero quid, si forte jocosius, hoc mihi juris_
_Cum venia dabis._”

From the nature of English satire up to the eighteenth century, we do
not expect, nor do we find, much interest in this phase of it. Then
comes Young,[54] reviving the Horatian caution:

“Who, for the poor renown of being smart,
Would leave a sting within a brother’s heart?”

And Cowper[55] completes the portrait:

“Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame;
He hides behind a magisterial air
His own offenses, and strips others bare;
Affects, indeed, a most humane concern,
That men, if gently tutor’d, will not learn;
That mulish folly, not to be reclaimed
By softer methods, must be made ashamed;”

De Quincey[56] uses Pope as a horrible example of this failing,
contrasting him with the indignant Juvenal:

“Pope, having no such internal principle of wrath boiling in his
breast, * * * was unavoidably a hypocrite of the first magnitude
when he affected (or sometimes really conceited himself) to be
in a dreadful passion with offenders as a body. It provokes
fits of laughter * * * to watch him in the process of brewing
the storm that spontaneously will not come; whistling, like a
mariner, for a wind to fill his satiric sails; and pumping up
into his face hideous grimaces in order to appear convulsed with
histrionic rage. * * * As it is, the short puffs of anger, the
uneasy snorts of fury in Pope’s satires, give one painfully the
feeling of a locomotive-engine with unsound lungs.”

Whether these strictures are just or not, the principle back of them is
sound; and more pithily summed up by Landor’s[57] “Nobody but an honest
man has a right to scoff at anything.”

Browning[58] carries the idea a step farther, and sounds a warning to
dwellers in glass houses:

“Have you essayed attacking ignorance,
Convicting folly, by their opposites,
Knowledge and wisdom? Not by yours for ours,
Fresh ignorance and folly, new for old,
Greater for less, your crime for our mistake!”

The demand for kindliness of temper may seem paradoxical, but for
that very reason it is the more insistent. Being under suspicion of
unkindness, vindictive spite, retaliation, satire must either admit the
charge or prove the contrary, for the real paradox lies in the highest
moral claim being made for the literary _genre_ of the greatest
immoral possibilities.

However, until the modern humanitarian cult came in, it seemed content
to admit the charge. After Horace, with a few isolated exceptions, as
Swift[59] and Cowper,[60] satire seemed rather to cherish malice and
glory in rudeness, often mistaking peevish scolding for noble scorn.
Its keynote was “A flash of that satiric rage,” or, according to Hall,

“The Satire should be like the porcupine,
That shoots sharp quills out in each angry line.”

Byron was the last example of both the professional, concentrated form
and the truculent mood. Tennyson[61] voices the new spirit of his
century:

“I loathe it: he had never kindly heart,
Nor ever cared to better his own kind,
Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it.”

Birrell,[62] less caustic than De Quincey about Pope, still uses him as
an instance of how not to do it:

“Dr. Johnson is more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope,
for in satire character tells more than in any other form of
verse. We want a personality behind--a strong, gloomy, brooding
personality; soured and savage, if you will * * * but spiteful
never.”

Even the traits of gloom and savagery might be dispensed with, and room
made for an infusion of sweetness and light. This is implied in the
condition laid down by Lionel Johnson:[63]

“To tilt at superstition, to shoot at folly, is seldom a
grateful or a gratifying pursuit, if there be no depth of
purpose in it, nothing but pleasure in the consciousness of
destructive power, no feeling of sympathetic pity, no tenderness
somewhere in the heart, no cordiality sweetening the work of
overthrow.”

And Garnett[64] concludes:

“Satirists have met with much ignorant and invidious
depreciation, as though a talent for ridicule was necessarily
the index of an unkindly nature. The truth is just the reverse.”

Discrimination as to objects of satire has reference not to their
nature, as foolish, vicious, deceitful, but to their legitimacy as
objects. It is a matter of taste and justice on the part of the
satirist.

The first definite reproof of heedlessness on this score is given in
the memorial tribute to Pope:[65]

“Dart not on Folly an indignant eye:
Whoe’er discharged artillery on a fly?
Deride not Vice: absurd the thought and vain,
To bind the tyger in so weak a chain.

* * * * *

The Muse’s labour then success shall crown,
When Folly feels her smile, and Vice her frown.

* * * * *

Let SATIRE then her proper object know,
And ere she strikes, be sure she strikes a foe.
Nor fondly deem the real fool confest,
Because blind _Ridicule_ conceives a jest.”

Another critic[66] of that time utters a similar caution:

“A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and make
a due discrimination between those who are, and those who are
not the proper objects of it.”

The best modern expression[67] of this idea happens to be an
interpretation of a pioneer satirist. And it is distinctly modern
in its recognition that while the real object of satire must be an
abstraction,--the sin not the sinner--it must, to be artistic, have
a concrete embodiment,--the sinner rather than the sin. The Greek
dramatist explains:

“Yet spiteless in a sort, considered well,
Since I pursued my warfare till each wound
Went through the mere man, reached the principle
Worth purging from Athenai. Lamachos?
No, I attacked war’s representative;
Kleon? No, flattery of the populace;
Sokrates? No, but that pernicious seed
Of sophists whereby hopeful youth is taught
To jabber argument, chop logic, pore
On sun and moon, and worship Whirligig.”

But while the good satirist must have these assets, it does not follow
that the possession of them will guarantee good satire. It can only
be said that without them he cannot be ranked high, though, having
them, he may not be ranked at all. It may be difficult for a Juvenal
not to write satire, but it is difficult for anyone to produce a fine
example of this, as of any other form of art. No more than any art is
it exempt from a recognition of truth[68] and even beauty, though its
connection with them is the paradoxical one of drawing attention to
their opposites. It is a truism that many things are best understood
and appreciated by a portrayal of contrasts. In this case it is a
perception of the congruous that is particularly concerned, and it is
implied in the satirist’s keen sense of the incongruous.

The satirist has not only these normal obligations, but some peculiar
dangers. He is in as perilous a position as Sir Guyon in his voyage
to the realm of Acrasia: threatened by the didacticism that besets
the critic, the vulgarity and rudeness that prey upon the jester, the
prejudice and injustice that warp the opponent, the smugness that
undermines the reformer. Moreover, he has his hampering limitations. He
is forever confined to the middle plane of life, shut out alike from
its sublime heights and tragic depths.

Added to this restriction in range is another in quantity. The nature
of satire makes it better adapted for the trimming than the whole
cloth. Its rôle in the _dramatis personæ_ of literature is
restricted to the minor parts, but this subordination in place does
not mean a negligible rank. The untrimmed garment, the all-star cast,
these are not desirable even when possible. For the accessory there
is also an ideal whose attainment is quite as important as though it
pertained to the main substance. In the case of satire such a standard
would call for censure that is candid and just, wit that is spontaneous
and refined, both actuated by sincere motives, and directed against
certain failings of humanity rather than against the human individuals
themselves, though these must body forth the abstractions otherwise
intangible,--the combination producing an effect essentially truthful
and artistic. That all this can come only from one who is more than a
mere satirist is axiomatic, and indeed so fundamentally true that it
might be said that the more of a satirist a man is in quantity, the
less is his chance for fine quality.

The modern author has conquered these requirements and obstacles, not
by taking arms against his sea of troubles, but by the less intrepid
and more diplomatic method of disowning his title. The satirist is
obsolete, but the satiric writer, or even better, the writer with a
satiric touch, is more in evidence than ever. It is perhaps too much
of a challenge to say that Shakespeare is a greater satirist than
Aristophanes, Jonson, or Molière; but no one would deny the superior
quality of his smaller amount. The aroma of his delicate spice and
lemon extract has not only lasted longer than their pepper and vinegar,
but is better relished by the modern palate. The nineteenth century
had no Shakespeare to “stoop from the height of a serene intelligence
to sport with satire,” but its best satire came from those who took it
least seriously and insinuated it with least pomp and circumstance. And
so far from being the most conspicuous in the satiric field, these who
are greatest in this matter are also greatest and best known for other
than satiric gifts and accomplishments.

While these humorous critics would be more content than their
forerunners with the early dictum that satire was “invented for the
purging of our minds,”[69] rather than for the practical consequences
sometimes claimed for it, yet they would not adopt the succeeding
phrase of the definition,--“in which human vices, ignorance and errors,
* * * are severely reprehended;” for they would qualify more carefully
the objects, and abstain from severity in their reprehension.

This dividing line among objects would make, however, a scientific
rather than an ethical bisection. The “stolidly conscientious
performance” of confining the practice of satire to a moral issue,
does indeed, as Dr. Alden points out,[70] argue a “deficiency in wit”
that marks the Anglo-Saxon mind. But as the Englishman became more
cosmopolitan, he learned to disguise such of his innate solemnity
as he could not shed. That he has absorbed more completely the more
easily assimilated Hebrew and Roman traits, has not prevented him from
acquiring some also from the Greek and the French. The Victorian is
naturally a multiplex compound, and in him we see all these elements in
various stages of conflict and combination.

CHAPTER II

THE CONFLUENCE

Our present study is concerned with the union of two ancient streams of
literature as they come together on the fertile plain of the nineteenth
century. This marriage of a satiric Medway and a fictional Thames is
a happy English event, though by no means the first alliance between
these historic families. In their long careers they are found sometimes
entirely separate, but very often united. The latter course works for
a decided mutual advantage, with a preponderance of gain accruing to
satire, as fiction can live without satire far better than satire
without fiction.

A narrative of entire gravity may be a gracious and splendid thing;
indeed, pure tragedy is perhaps the highest form of art. But when
satire is divorced from fiction it must dispense with fiction’s
great contribution, the garment of warm imagination and colorful
concreteness; and be content with the severe raiment of bald
didacticism and chill abstraction. In truth, satire has always been
not only the greater beneficiary but the more dependent partner,
though what it has in turn supplied is of unquestionable value. It is
like an entertaining but unequipaged traveler, always asking for a
ride. Even when it apparently had an establishment of its own and was
recognized as a literary _genre_, it was not independent with
the independence of the lyric, the drama, or the treatise, but was
constantly borrowing furniture from them all.

Hence when satire invaded Victorian fiction,--or was adopted by
it,--the conjunction brought its benefits to both. The former profited
qualitatively from the antidote furnished by creative construction to
destructive censure, and quantitatively by the improvement resulting
from diminution,--that subordination which is the secret of success
with all seasoning, trimming, and such accessories. The latter gained,
not so much by the mere infusion of pleasantry, for that refreshing
element has a deplorable tendency to degenerate into ill bred pertness,
as by the toning up of the criticism inseparable from the realistic
novel, and by the pungent and dramatic turn given to its didacticism.
“Som mirthe or som doctryne” has ever been the demand of the
Englishman, and he has relished them best in that happy unison supplied
by satire.

Hence also the combination was but a new and more consequential
celebration of an old, traditional connection. From the Greek Menippean
mixture and the Milesian tale the line extends, with innumerable
ramifications into fabliaux, burlesques, allegories, letters, and
characters, in prose and verse, to the perfected eighteenth-century
product, whence the increasingly perfected product of the nineteenth
century immediately is derived.

Like all such associations, this one is neither accidental on the
one hand nor consciously intentional on the other, but is the result
of many forces and influences set in operation by circumstances, and
available for great effectiveness if rightly comprehended and wisely
used. In this Victorian situation we are confronted with the dual
factors: a literary form raised to tremendous prestige by a rich
inheritance and an especial _rapprochement_ with its own times;
and a prevailing temper of humorous criticism which could not fail
to thrive under the double stimulus of a fermenting environment about
which there were endless things to be said, and a general liberation
from external control which allowed these seething utterances free and
full play of expression.

Thus have all things worked together for the good of the Victorian
novel. It was fortunate alike in its endowment, its alliances, and
its surroundings. A period of such upheaval, such introspection, such
anxious responsibility, and withal such zest of life, all diffused
through a democratic atmosphere, could best be interpreted by a form of
literature which, besides being in itself thoroughly democratic, gives
large scope for the author’s comments and conclusions.

The drama is an excellent reflector, but necessarily impersonal;
a dilemma that is dodged rather than solved by the Shavian device
of Prefaces. The lyric, on the contrary, is too personal to be
representative. And concentrated exposition is admittedly strong meat
for the intellectual babes who constitute the vast majority, or even,
as a steady diet, for children of a larger growth. This does not mean,
of course, that the novel is a childish product or plaything; but that
its union of the dramatic and didactic, the emotional and rational,
the picturesque and significant, the merry and sad, together with its
absolutely unrestricted range in material, makes it ideal as a popular
type in the best sense of the word.

A critic of the time half ironically remarks,--[71]

“The future historians of literature * * * will no doubt analyze
the spirit of the age and explain how the novelists, more or
less unconsciously, reflected the dominant ideas which were
agitating the social organism. * * * The novelists were occupied
in constructing a most elaborate panorama of the manners and
customs of their own times with a minuteness and psychological
analysis not known to their predecessors. Their work is, of
course, an implicit criticism of life.”

With all the encouragement bestowed upon them the Victorian novelists
could indeed do no less than live up to their opportunities. Not _ad
astra per aspera_ lay their destiny. Nothing more was asked of them
than to refrain from burying their talents, and to this admonition they
were zealously obedient.

The writers themselves supply striking inductive data as to the
general diffusion both of fiction and satire. A list of the dozen most
prominent Victorian novelists shows that no one of them was wholly
devoid of interest in public affairs, and none was entirely lacking in
the satiric touch. On the other hand, every one of them saw more on
his horizon than current events, and all were something more than mere
critics or humorists or even both.

They were themselves of the Victorian Age. Each one might say _Pars
fui_, if not _magna_. None therefore had a detached point of
view, nor a long perspective. But though their vision was microscopic
rather than telescopic, it was searching and enthusiastic, and the
report it made was honest if not always dispassionate. It could hardly
be otherwise for those who were alive and awake at a time when new
information was creating new ideas, and these in turn were becoming
dynamic in new movements, political, religious, educational, social.
All these things were too tremendous and important to be taken
otherwise than seriously. The dominant feeling was grave and earnest,
as one of its interpreters has said:[72]

“In the Victorian era, which we have found so neglectful of
literary standards, Literature has been of greater social and
ethical stimulus than ever before. * * * It throbs with a new
sympathy for those who toil unceasingly in poverty, and a new
bewilderment upon the realization that the world which is
changing so rapidly is still so full of misery and hopelessness.
* * * But, as the world went, the main impulse and the main
characteristic of Victorian Literature became this great sense
of pity for things as they are and of an imperious duty to make
them better.”

But the sense of pity was sometimes voiced with wit, and one of the
sharpest weapons at the service of duty was the shaft of ridicule. With
nothing to satirize, society would be a paradise. With no satirists,
it would be rather a dull inferno. But it is our human world that is
purgatorial.

Since the purpose of our present study is to discover the proportion
and nature of the satiric element in Victorian fiction, to note its
relation to the rest of the work, and to reach some conclusion as to
the total effect of its presence and use, it might aid in clearness to
subjoin a table of names and dates of the novelists with whom we are
concerned.

_Name_ _Birth_ _Period of Publication_[73] _Death_

Peacock 1785 1816–1861 1866
Lytton 1803 1827–1873 1873
Disraeli 1804 1826–1880 1881
Gaskell 1810 1848–1865 1865
Thackeray 1811 1844–1862 1863
Dickens 1812 1837–1870 1870
Reade 1814 1853–1884 1884
Trollope 1815 1855–1880 1882
Brontë 1816 1847–1853 1855
Kingsley 1819 1848–1871 1875
Eliot 1819 1859–1876 1880
Meredith 1828 1859–1895 1909
Butler 1835 1872–1901 1902

This list, reaching from Scott to Hardy, not inclusive, has been
reckoned as a round dozen, but it actually numbers a baker’s dozen.[74]
The noteworthy thing about it is that it would probably be agreed upon
as the preëminent list on any count; so that those who are excluded
on the score of being too consistently serious or romantic, as Yonge,
Collins, Blackmore, Henry Kingsley, MacDonald, would hardly be included
on the score of quality, although some of them might rival some of the
least among those chosen as members of the satirico-realistic group.

A glance at the preceding table reveals an obvious chronological
division into five parts; although the first and the two last consist
of one man each. The second contains only two names; and their
separation from the main group occurs at the beginning rather than at
the end, for Lytton’s race ran beyond five of those who started later,
and Disraeli’s beyond seven. Of those, only Reade published novels
after 1880.

This main group is one of those remarkable concentrations in which
destiny seems to delight. When the second decade of the century gave
to the world eight great names in this field alone, and some equally
distinguished ones in others, it surely filled its quota toward the
advance of civilization.

Meredith comes enough later than this outpouring of God’s plenty to be
classed by himself chronologically, especially as he must be by the
character of his work also, in spite of the fact that his first novel
belongs to the same prolific year as the first of George Eliot’s.

The middle of the century is thus also the center of a circle of
activity whose radius extends for about two decades on either side,
passing thence into thinner aired intermediate zones,--transition
periods from the eighteenth and to the twentieth centuries, seasons
whose energies are potential, or spent, rather than vigorously kinetic.

But this central period, something more than a generation, and
less than a half century, is dynamic enough. It has frequently
been described, and its activities--Chartism, the Oxford Movement,
Utilitarianism, Positivism, the Industrial Revolution, Christian
Socialism, Darwinism, Pre-Raphaeliteism--are an oft-told tale. It is
only to be remembered that this was the atmosphere breathed by the
majority of our novelists, and these the vital interests which would
concern them in so far as they were concerned with the public affairs
of their time.

A review of the satiric strain in literature gives an interesting clew
both to the fact and the significance of the relation of satire to the
total literary product.

Nor can one be estimated independently of the other. There is, of
course, no such thing as a pure, or mere, satirist. Even a saturated
solution involves two elements. The dissolved substance must have a
medium to be dissolved in. Starting from this point, we may classify
the most conspicuous names according to this relationship.

There are first the completely surcharged. But the important matter is
whether the container is itself large,--Aristophanes, Juvenal, Swift,
Voltaire,--or of smaller mold and less capacity,--Dunbar, Skelton,
Smollett, Churchill, Gifford. To this class come no recruits from the
nineteenth century. _Sæva indignatio_, no longer makes verses,
even when witticized, having been put out of fashion by the autonomic
humor which informs the sophisticated critic that of all incongruous
things the most incongruous and absurd is the satirist who takes
himself seriously.

Next come those whose absolute amount of satire may be equal to that
of the preceding, but whose versatile interests make it relatively
smaller. It is neither of their life a thing apart, nor yet their whole
existence. Such are Horace, Cervantes, Jonson, Dryden, Boileau, Pope,
Fielding, Burns, Byron. This class on a smaller scale is represented by
Gascoigne, Wyatt, Hall, Donne, Lodge, Addison, Goldsmith, Hood, Moore,
Mark Twain. Among these we find about half of our novelists,--Peacock
and Butler, Dickens and Trollope, Thackeray and Meredith.

In the third division satire is measured still more by the law of
diminishing returns. It is composed of those who are never thought of
as satirists, not even as satirical, and yet are very far from being
innocent. Such are the Hebrew Prophets and the author of _Job_,
Euripides, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton (in his prose), Johnson,
Scott, Shelley, Browning. Similar but of lesser magnitude are Erasmus,
More, Defoe, Young, Cowper, Blake, De Quincey. Here are found the other
half of the novelists,--Lytton, Disraeli, Gaskell, Reade, Brontë,
Kingsley. The impression given by these is not so much a solution at
all as of separate and distinguishable particles: of elements native
and yet not integral,--like fish in water. They might be taken away,
and though the total effect would be very much changed, the real
character of the liquid would not.

Quite the opposite of this is the condition of the fourth estate.
Here the process of amalgamation is carried to an extreme, one might
say, paradoxically, to the vanishing point. It resembles the first
class in that the satire is pervasive, and the third in that it is of
relatively small quantity; so small that it hardly seems worth taking
into account, yet it could not be abstracted. If it could, it would
leave a scarcely diminished but almost unrecognizable remainder. It is
not revealed so much as betrayed. It seldom indulges in anything so
bald as overt satire, or so conscious even as covert innuendo. It is
the tone of a personality. It is not Aristotle nor Virgil nor Wyclif
nor Wordsworth nor Tennyson. It is Homer, Plato, Lucretius, Dante,
Langland, Burton, Gibbon, Sterne, Austen, Arnold, Carlyle, Hardy,
Anatole France. Among the Victorian novelists it is George Eliot.

To this matter of quantity there is a fairly definite relation of
quality. The fact that the largest quantity is now a discarded type
indicates that relation to be one of inverse proportion. The second and
third divisions evince hilarity, sarcasm, shoddy flippancy, or profound
wit, according to the temperaments of the writers. Therein lies the
greatest variety. The fourth occupies the great field of irony. It
is the _siccum lumen_, occasionally flashing, usually lambent,
smouldering, gravely glowing.

Amid these differences in kind and degree, the Victorian novelists had
a sort of unity in possessing a certain sense of satire, more or less
consciously realized, and of themselves as satirists. This is not only
discernible in the general air they have of intending to do it, but
is made visible by remarks in the nature of Confessions of a Satirist
voiced by about half their number.

“Let those who cannot nicely and with certainty discern,” says
Charlotte Brontë in _Shirley_, “the difference between the tones of
hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest
they have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and
commit impiety when they think they are achieving wit.”

Thackeray,[75] the “cynic”, is the one to reiterate most strongly the
Pauline creed that love of mankind is the root of all good. He remarks
that humor means more than laughter, and adds:

“The humorous writer professes to awaken your love, your
pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension,
imposture--your tenderness for the weak, the oppressed, the
unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all
the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon
himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly,
as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard
him, esteem him--sometimes love him.”

Trollope[76] agrees as to the lay-clerical office:

“I have always thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and
my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable
to my audience.”

Dickens[77] also claims the intent of speaking the truth in love:

“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away, by showing Spain its
impossible and wild absurdity. It was my attempt, in my humble
and far-distant sphere, to dim the false glitter surrounding
something which really did exist, by showing it in its
unattractive and repulsive truth.”

The greatest unanimity is as to objects. Peacock[78] and Trollope[79]
in conventional imitation of the old school speak of castigating vice,
but they also in other places join the universal chorus against folly,
and folly as an impostor.

Disraeli[80] comes in on this:

“Teach us that pretension is a bore. * * * Catch the fleeting
colors of that sly chameleon, Cant, and show what excessive
trouble we are ever taking to make ourselves miserable and
silly.”

Reade[81] adds a word:

“Self-deception will probably cease with the first blast of the
archangel’s trumpet; but what human heart will part with it till
then?”

Thackeray[82] emphasizes it in his description of that little world in
which he had an almost unholy interest:

“Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all
sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the
moralist * * * professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but
only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation
is arrayed; yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as
far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a
shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in
the course of such an undertaking.”

Later[83] he takes it out on Becky and her kind:

“Such people there are living and flourishing in the
world--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless; let us have at them,
dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very
successful, too, mere quacks and fools; and it was to combat and
expose such as these, no doubt, that laughter was made.”

Dickens[84] puts it more abstractly:

“Lest there should be any well-intentioned persons who do
not perceive the difference between religion and the cant of
religion, piety and the pretense of piety, a humble reverence
for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and
offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the
commonest dissensions and meanest affairs of life, to the
extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds, let them understand
that it is always the latter, and never the former, which is
satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized
as being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the
former, impossible of union with it, and one of the most evil
and mischievous falsehoods existent in society.”

The theme of _The Tragic Comedians_ is that “The laughter of the gods
is the lightning of death’s irony over mortals. Can they have,” adds
Meredith, “a finer subject than a giant gone fool?” But it is in the
_Ode to the Comic Spirit_ rather than in stray observations in the
novels or even in the _Essay on Comedy_ that the Meredithian satiric
philosophy is most pithily set forth. For in the myth of Momus and the
Olympians, the mirthful satirist and the self-satisfied divinities
who paid a heavy price for their resentment of his incandescent
frankness, we have a symbol of what satire might do if permitted, and
if not permitted, what penalties may descend. The Comic Spirit is
apostrophized as the “Sword of Common Sense,” whose service and sport
it is

“This shifty heart of ours to hunt.”

Since man is a deceiver and a self-deceiver,

“Naming his appetites his needs,
Behind a decorative cloak,”

it is obvious that the only cure for his ailment is the simple but
drastic one of removing the cloak. So long indeed as there are masks,
there will be fingers that itch to pluck them off. The time may
come,--we can scarcely affirm that it now is,--when masks shall have
vanished from the faces of a seraphic race. But in the nineteenth
century they were very much in evidence; and quite as palpably in
evidence were the spying eyes and the encroaching fingers of the
nineteenth-century satirists.

PART II

METHODS

CHAPTER I

THE ROMANTIC

The implication behind that sage instruction, “First catch your hare,”
is that after the catching the rest will be easy. But, admitting that
the second step cannot antedate the first, we are still confronted by
the fact that the achievement of the first must be followed by the
second in order to be rendered efficacious. “How serve him up?” is the
next question.

It is the question of method, the problem of ways and means, and a most
important one it is in the case of satire, for it is here that the
element of humor finds its field of operations. In its cause and effect
satire is serious, nominally at least. In the connecting link, the
means reaching from design to end, it must use wit or humor.

A certain object is perceived by a certain observer to be ridiculous.
How is he to make it seem ridiculous to other observers, whose unaided
perception may not equal his? He is able to do it by drawing upon the
common fund of human experience and idea in regard to humor. If the
satirist can subsume his object under one of the universally recognized
categories, he makes it _ipso facto_ absurd. So automatic is this
effect that only the analytic spectator will stop to question the
justice of the classification. Socrates dangling in a basket, Volpone
caught in his own trap, Hudibras gawkily playing the Cavalier, Atticus
monopolizing the throne but fearful of pretenders, Southey routing
infernal legions by the mere offer to read aloud his poem, Ichabod
Crane fleeing when only Brom Bones pursued,--these are ludicrous to the
imagination, whether or not the sentence is ratified by the intellect.

Humoristic devices are so numerous as to call for some classification,
the choice of any one being made at the expense of other possibilities.
The traditional cleavage between the Horatian and the Juvenalian types
is characteristically described by Saintsbury:[85]

“From Horace and Persius downward there have been two satiric
manners:--one that of the easy well-bred or would be well-bred
man of the world who suspends everything on the adunc nose and
occasionally scratches with still more adunc claws, the other
that of the indignant moralist reproving the corruptions of the
times.”

But by the nineteenth century the indignant moralist was considerably
subdued, even in England, and his reproof more likely to be acidulous
than acrid. For this reason some other antithesis would seem more
useful to our present study; and from the fact that our satiric vehicle
is made on the two general models known as romantic and realistic, the
same division appears most workable to apply to the satiric methods
used in fiction. Both terms, however, are too nebulous to be used
without the precaution of stating the sense in which they are at
present used. As to the former, this statement by Stoddard sums up the
situation:[86]

“To give an exact definition of what one means by romanticism,
to give anything more than a vague idea of the notion one
intends to convey when he uses the word romantic, to give a
single definite conception to a reader by the use of the word
romance, is impossible.”

The difficulty about realism is not so much ambiguity as the question
of its very existence. This, however, need not concern us here, as
there is no question of its nonexistence in Victorian fiction. Whether
or not pure unadulterated realism is a myth was to the Victorians a
postulate of no moment, for they had no use for it in any case. No
stage of theirs would ever be set for a _Madame Bovary_ or an
_Old Wives’ Tale_. But while they looked upon their art as akin
to painting rather than photography, they prided themselves on their
fidelity to human character and the great truths of human life. To them
the romantic meant the fantastic and incredible, while the realistic
signified the sane and sober, the possible if not the actual; and in
this sense we use the terms.

To these two divisions, it is necessary to add a third as a sort of
_tertium quid_, for the ironic method is important enough to
deserve some special treatment, although not correlative with the
others. It is conscious indeed of its aristocratic superiority to them,
although it cannot maintain itself independently but must be allied to
one or the other.

Of the dozen names on the roll of Victorian satiric novelists about
half are found in the list of the romantico-satirical. They seem to
come in pairs, and for the sake of symmetry and clearness may be so
grouped. The first pair are the most distinguished contributors to
this section,--Peacock and Butler, standing at the two chronological
extremes. The second pair furnish a medium amount, and are themselves
forerunners to the main group, though their fantastic productions
are forty years apart,--Lytton and Disraeli. The third pair are of
least account here, but are of especial importance in the realistic
field,--Thackeray and Meredith.

Altogether this half dozen men produced nearly two dozen items of
the romantico-satiric order, none of which could be called novels in
the strict sense, yet all of which are worthy of being included in
this list, because of the light they throw on the characteristics of
the romantic method in satire. The largest amount, both actually and
relatively, is supplied by Peacock, for his seven tales represent the
bulk of his own output. The smallest is Lytton’s, represented by only
one, and that an aftermath of a prolific and versatile energy. Disraeli
threw off three skits, like Thackeray’s half dozen and Meredith’s two,
in being preliminary to later and more substantial work. Butler’s two,
on the contrary, though forming only a fraction of his stops of various
quills, are the most inevitably associated with his name, the pair
indeed whereby his name is known.

The list covers a period of eighty-five years, though it is prolonged
over a half century only by the interval of thirty years between
_Erewhon_ and its sequel. The rest are fairly compact, except for
Peacock’s Rip Van Winkle sleep between _Crochet Castle_ and _Gryll
Grange_. A dated table is appended for the convenience of a bird’s-eye
view.[87]

Returning now to our first parallel, Peacock and Butler, we find the
parallelism to be rather complete, manifesting itself in character,
destiny, and product.

The destiny of both lay in a mean that was not golden. Their annals
were the long and simple of the fairly well to do. Neither knew the
exhilaration that comes from prosperity and downright good luck;
neither, the depression of bitter struggle or disaster. The current of
Peacock’s progress was retarded by the comparative poverty that, like
Tennyson’s, postponed his marriage; and that of Butler was obstructed
by his family’s opposition to his unpardonable preference for a secular
career. If the son of a clergyman and the grandson of a bishop could
not see his clerical duty and do it, there was no help for it, he must
go to New Zealand. But to banish a youthful radical was only to set him
free; and to allow him a perspective and a fresh viewpoint was to bring
down upon orthodoxy an infinite deal of mischief. “It was the England
that he saw with new eyes,” says his biographer Harris, “after his
return, that awakened his restless, satiric vigour. He reacted to the
English scene as no one else in his century had reacted before.”[88]

By temperament Peacock and Butler were both solitary, pervaded
by a gentle melancholy, and permeated with love of classic lore.
But Peacock’s sadness could take the ironic Jonsonian turn. Quite
appropriately did he choose “Your true melancholy breeds your perfect
fine wit,” as the motto for _Nightmare Abbey_. Butler’s persiflage,
however, covers a more real and permanent pessimism, perhaps because
it is directed against the spectacle of the wilfully blind leading the
born blind, rather than against a lot of “sentimentalists, chasers
after novelty, bilious malcontents.”[89]

As was natural, neither was acclaimed by the populace, and neither
cared. Peacock had little concern for the British public, which might
like him or not, as it pleased; and Butler was content to write for the
coming generation, in whose appreciation he placed a not unjustified
confidence. Both could afford to publish at their own expense and were
willing to do so.

But in spite of their apparent detachment from local affairs, and
preoccupation with the past, perhaps indeed for that very reason, these
two thoughtful scholars were able to observe their environment keenly
and judge it shrewdly. It was the total environment that interested
each one, his own _Zeitgeist_, of which neither approved. Peacock
rebelled against the futile ferment and restless experimenting of
the first half of the century; Butler protested against the torpid
acquiescence and smug complacency of the second.

These attitudes represent the chief contrast between them. Peacock was
a calm soul, caught in a vortex. He could not be expected to like it.
Butler was a speculative one, pent in a self-satisfied halcyon. He
could not like that. What each would have been if exchanged in time
with the other, it were idle to guess. But it was no irony of fate that
made it the congenial mission of one to banter his age into calming
down, and of the other to prick his into waking up.

An additional difference, and the main one, is that Butler is the
bigger man in every way more searching and earnest, more constructive,
more versatile, more profound. An additional resemblance is that their
fiction is so entirely in the romantic field[90] that they alone of all
on this list will not come up for consideration when we reach the other.

Peacock’s novels[91] form probably the most monomorphic little group
to be found in literature. His seven fantasies have the strong family
resemblance of the seven vestal maidens in _Gryll Grange_. Six of the
Pleiades appeared in a compact series within a fifteen-year period; and
the apparently lost sister joined the constellation thirty years later
than the latest preceding one.

Two of them, _Maid Marian_ and _The Misfortunes of Elphin_, are in
historic costume, and thus afford a chance for the inverted satire that
comes from a contrast between past and present, not to the advantage of
the latter. The other five are all domiciled in contemporary English
house parties; in Hall, Court, Abbey, Castle, or Grange. These are
not, however, the habitations of the conventional citizen. They are
“Headlong,” “Nightmare,” “Crochet.” They harbor all sorts of whimsies
and fads. Those assembled dine, drink, and talk. Between meals they
have a few adventures, not recounted for their own sake, but that of
the additional talk they will bring forth.[92] Though the repartee of
these dramatized Imaginary Conversations is always at concert pitch,
it harmonizes with the whimsically theatrical setting; and the _toute
ensemble_ edifies while it sparkles, like a set of fireworks displaying
maxims of intellectual wit as they explode.

The characters themselves wear their very names as satiric labels. Mr.
Feathernest, Mr. Dross, Mrs. Pinmoney, the Honorable Mr. Listless, Sir
Oliver Oilcake, the Reverends Gaster, Grovelgrub, Vorax, are ticketed
after the fashion inherited from the Morality Plays, a device that
distills a quaint mediæval odor on the nineteenth-century air, and
persists only in some of Trollope’s minor characters.

Of all these people exploiting all their “humours” Peacock is the
ever amused spectator. He speaks ironically through the voice of the
artlessly ambitious Squire Crochet:[93]

“The sentimental against the rational, the intuitive against
the inductive, the ornamental against the useful, the intense
against the tranquil, the romantic against the classical; these
are great and interesting controversies, which I should like,
before I die, to see satisfactorily settled.”

It is because of this effect of inconsequent raillery, doubtless,
that Peacock appears to lack humanity,[94] and to laugh without
responsibility.[95] But one feels that such criticisms would not have
ruffled the twinkling serenity of his placid spirit; that he would not
have deplored the loss of power nor demurred at the penalty. He was a
born sportsman. The hunting was good. Pleasure to him was in pursuit
more than possession. Having had the fun, he would willingly give away
his bag of game before he went home.

One turns with an especial interest to the belated _Gryll Grange_
to see what change there may be thirty years after, but finds little
more than the natural mellowing influence of time. He is indeed
“satirist to the last,” albeit he is disposed to use “more oil and less
vinegar.”[96]

If Peacock is Horatian, without the Roman’s sense of realism, Butler
is more of a Juvenal, as the latter might have been, perhaps, had he
lived under Victoria instead of Domitian. The wind of invective is now
tempered, not to the shorn lamb, but to the modern prejudice against
the rudeness of tempests unmitigated by sunshine.

Butler’s publications, beginning two years after Peacock’s had
ended,[97] extended through the next half century, _The Way of All
Flesh_ and _Notebooks_ being posthumous. But the three decades
bracketed by the two Erewhons were the fertile ones. Through them
flowed steadily a stream of many currents; satiric, scientific
(mainly controversial), classic, critical, descriptive, expository,
musical, and artistic. Of all these volumes only three can be classed
as fiction, and one of those falls in the other group. Our present
interest centers upon _Erewhon_ and its sequel.

There is no more effective satiric machinery than that of the Foreign
State, or Adventures among Strange People. It may take the form of a
serious though perhaps fantastic conception with incidental satire,
as in _Utopia_, _New Atlantis_, _The Coming Race_, _Modern Utopia_;
or a travesty of these, an inverted pyramid, made grotesque by the
dominating satire, though none the less freighted with serious intent,
as _Gulliver_, _Journey from This World to the Next_, _Erewhon_.

From the fact that _The Coming Race_ and _Erewhon_ may be cited as
examples of the same literary genus, though of different species, comes
the suggestion that the real complement of Butler is Lytton. It does
happen that they furnish the only two instances on our list of the
exercise of this particular kind of creative fancy.[98] Lytton’s tale
pictures a positive ideal, which satirizes our inadequate reality by
acting as a foil to it. Butler’s narrative portrays a supposed reality,
of which the visitor does not approve; and his comments satirize our
accepted reality by a subtle, indirect reflection. Our race placed
beside the “coming” one merely looks small, inferior, incomplete, yet
all it needs is growth. But if the barrier could be leveled between
our country and the one Over the Range, the two would confront each
other and see their own images, not as in a glass darkly but as in a
brilliant yet tricky and distorting mirror. Our actual beliefs and
practices, shorn of the verbal illusions we have spun around them, and
pushed to their logical conclusions, would become the naked _reductio
ad absurdum_ we view in the Erewhonian philosophy of illness, crime,
science, religion, life, and death.[99]

In _Erewhon Revisited_ we see a mental sequence even more interesting
than the dramatic sequel. _Erewhon_ was followed the very next year by
_The Fair Haven_. The former supplies the stage setting, the latter the
central idea, whose combination makes the Revisit a seemingly artless
but really astounding _tour de force_, an uncanny offspring of logic
and fancy.

Given the original situation and the climax that closes the Erewhonian
adventure, given considerable study and meditation on the strange,
enshrouded origin of the religion which possessed the author’s part of
the world, given a speculative dream as to what might have happened in
his fabricated autobiography after the event, given the Butlerian mind,
patient to track and quick to spring, and the result is as inevitable
as a theorem. One scent, and the proficient hound is off, literally hot
on the trail, nor does he halt till Hanky and Panky, the credulous
mob, Sunchildism itself, are fairly run down and given a good fright,
though finally let off with a shaking that leaves them limp.

The dramatic canvas on which this satiric design is drawn is worthy
a Cervantes, a Swift, or a Defoe; a beautiful example of the “grave,
impossible, great lie,” absorbing if not convincing. Butler’s stories,
more than any in this group, show constructive art; length that is
enough and not too much, sufficient swiftness, coherence, and climax.
They are fantastic but not flimsy. The imagination is captivated, as
always, by the introduction to a strange, new land; the intellect is
aroused by the significance of the panorama rapidly unfolding; the imp
of mischief that dwells in all normal human hearts is delighted at the
deft overthrow of certain conventional idols, now shown to be ugly,
inane, and clay from the feet up; and all this through a concrete,
realistic medium that can be visualized and lived in. We share the
excitement of finding and crossing the range, of the capture and
imprisonment of the “foreign devil” who is at least a dare-devil, of
his later success, and astounding elopement. We sympathize with Mr.
Nosnibor, voluntarily fined and flogged; and we feel quite at home in
the Musical Banks and the Law Courts.

In the sequel we renew old acquaintances and make some new ones. We
admire the executive ability of Yram, seconded by that of her able son
George. We participate in the suspense at the Dedication Ceremony, are
relieved after the dinner table council, and finally well satisfied
when the Bridgeport schemers are discomfited but nobody Blue-Pooled.

It is the business of the _raconteur_, romantic as well as realistic,
to beguile his audience into acquiescence even of the incredible. But
the romancing satirist has the anomalous task of creating a story good
enough to be its own reward and then not allowing it to be. It must
have all the air of being an end in itself the while it is being made
the means to another end. This adroit manipulation whereby the idea
appears subordinate to the plot, although the reverse is the case, is a
point in which Butler surpasses the others on our list and ranks with
the highest at large.[100]

But the idea itself was a premature blossom, and the winds of March,
though late Victorian, were ruthless. About that time, however, it was
the much more massive figure of Ibsen that happened to stand in the
main current of the blasts, and Butler was merely blown aside and left
until Shaw and the Twentieth Century came along and picked him up. One
of his recent biographers has a serious time trying to establish him as
the laws of chronology would dictate, and finally decides it cannot be
done:[101]

“How is it possible to fit a man like Butler, * * * into any
system, * * * how are we to classify one who, above all others,
belonged to no school, was traceable, it may fairly be said, to
no influence at all _direct_ in character, looking back to, and
fitting in with, none of those particular habits of thought at
any rate in the age just preceding and merging into his own? On
an external view, of course, it might be maintained that Butler
harmonized with the solid, scientific background of Victorian
thought--harmonized with it, yet was not of it. Again * * * one
might quite easily say that Samuel Butler stood outside the
Victorian system. And this would be the truest description of
him.”

The parallel noted above between the next two on the list, Lytton and
Disraeli, is more applicable to their work in the realistic field than
in this, for the reason already stated, that Lytton’s one contribution,
_The Coming Race_, is more akin to Butler’s, both in date and design.

Accident rather than enterprise led to the discovery of Lytton’s
Utopian people, the Vrilya, for they inhabit the concave inner surface
of our own planet, and are to be reached only through a subterranean
chasm leading down from the depths of a mine. The citizens of this
highly cultivated nation regard the English intruder as a primitive
barbarian, and despise him for his ignorance and his crude, carnivorous
habits. Deciding, however, to spare his life and risk his presence
until proved contaminating and pernicious, they proceed to educate him
by means of the Vril Trance, a sort of telepathic radio-activity. The
process is mutual, except that they accomplish more,--“partly because
my language was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of
complex ideas; and partly because their organization was, by hereditary
culture, much more ductile, and more readily capable of acquiring
knowledge than mine.”[102]

Being adopted, the invader is treated with indulgent condescension,
nicknamed _Tish_, a froglet, (in allusion to the Great Batrachian
Theory, that humans sprang from frogs, or, according to one branch
of the school, degenerated from them), and allowed to roam around
with a child, who is about his equal in intellect. All goes well
until the politely tolerated guest has the temerity to fall in love
with a native maiden. This means death, by the painless Vril method
(a marvelous application of electricity), in order to prevent the
disgrace of so uneugenic an alliance; and the calamity is averted only
by the skill and resourcefulness of the lady herself, who manages to
return the unwelcome wooer to his native outer clime. This is made
possible through the use of wings, another invention of this advanced
people.[103]

The story has considerable picturesqueness, nor does it fail in
point. The _Modern Utopia_ of Wells is anticipated in the emphasis on
sanitation and material welfare. As in _Looking Backward_, crime is
eliminated through the elimination of poverty and disease. The dramatic
conclusion is that this underground people are to be the coming race,
against whom we must be prepared if we would not by them be conquered
and exterminated. The philosophical conclusion, however, is the old
paradox, the inescapable dilemma of stagnant perfection.[104]

Disraeli’s _Popanilla_ was a _jeu d’esprit_ of his youth, and develops
an opposite situation from that of the preceding. Instead of the
Britisher abroad, he pictures the foreigner in England, thus affording
us a chance to see ourselves as others see us.[105]

The mechanism by which this new scrutiny is brought to bear upon our
old establishments is well worn and familiar, but has some novelty in
the application. A sailor’s chest is washed ashore on a remote island,
and found by one of the aborigines, Popanilla, who becomes inoculated
with ambition through perusal of some documents discovered therein. He
immediately organizes a proselyting campaign, but encounters too much
opposition from a recalcitrant public to make much headway. The people
are well content with their present peaceful existence, and quite
averse to receiving the serpent of aspiration in their idyllic though
socially sophisticated Garden of Eden. They are provokingly obtuse even
to the argument that “they might reasonably expect to be the terror
and astonishment of the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation
of any consequence.”[106] Finally to settle the trouble caused by the
convert’s tactless propaganda, which has had the lamentable effect of
inducing the young men to desert society for politics, the king orders
the disturber of the peace to be set adrift, and bids him farewell with
this encouraging prophecy:[107]

“As the axiom of your school seems to be that everything can
be made perfect at once, without time, without experience,
without practice, and without preparation, I have no doubt, with
the aid of a treatise or two, you will make a consummate naval
commander, although you have never been at sea in the whole
course of your life.”

This is not exactly the destiny of the involuntary voyager, but his
luck is good. In due time he lands on the shores of Vraibleusia, and
forthwith meets Mr. Skindeep, an instantaneous guide and friend, if not
a philosopher, whom he accompanies with implicit trust, “for, having
now known him nearly half a day, his confidence in his honour and
integrity was naturally unbounded.”[108]

As Popanilla becomes introduced to the best people of Hubbadub, the
capital, the resources of his own country arouse interest, and an
expedition of vast commercial enterprise is headed for the Isle of
Fantaisie. Failure to find it precipitates a panic and leads to the
imprisonment of its representative, for exciting hopes under false
pretenses. However, a happy ending is secured by a legal _coup d’état_,
and a solution of all problems announced by Mr. Flummery Flam, who has
discovered that “it was the great object of a nation not to be the most
powerful, or the richest, or the best, or the wisest, but to be the
most Flummery-Flammistical.”[109]

In Disraeli’s two little classical burlesques, published five years
after _Popanilla_, still another device is used. There is neither an
Englishman in Italy, nor an Italian in England, but the ancient stage
of Greek mythology is made the background for a thinly disguised modern
satiric drama. Familiar characters and incidents are seen masquerading
in equally familiar costumes and scenes, but the former are local and
current, and the latter revived from a far past.

There is none of Browning’s seriousness in Disraeli’s interpretation
of Ixion. His story is utilized because it offers tempting chances for
saucy, allusive comment on mundane affairs. A journey through space
inevitably suggests the humor of proportion; but Ixion and Mercury give
us not the grave irony of Byron’s Cain and Lucifer, nor the rollicking
yet pensive mirth of Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield. They are content
with clever jocularity.

For instance, as they graze a certain star, Ixion inquires who live
there. “Some low people who are trying to shine into notice,” is the
haughty reply. “’Tis a parvenu planet, and only sprung into space
within this century. We do not visit them.”[110]

During his brief but splendid sojourn on Olympus the guest is postured
as a complacent, insolent, Barry Lyndon sort of rascal, who makes
himself perfectly at home in the divine dining and drawing rooms (which
are, of course, conducted according to the British code of etiquette),
fulfills Cupid’s prediction that he will write in Minerva’s album,
though he does manage to escape her “Platonic man-trap,” carries on his
intrigue with the Queen of Heaven in the Don Juan manner, and meets
his detection and punishment with supercilious assurance and a final
triumphant taunt.

The Infernal Marriage of Proserpine to Pluto introduces a disturbing
element into the _ancien régime_ of Hades. The new and influential
bride stirs up a terrible political turmoil by interfering in
the matter of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the consequence is quite
disastrous. The conservative Fates and Furies are so incensed that
they neglect their disciplinary duties, whereby the radical Sisyphus,
Tantalus, and Ixion obtain a respite from torture and a dangerous
opportunity to talk politics. The phrases “Ministry Out,” “Formation
of New Cabinet,” are bandied about. Finally a change of scene is
prescribed for the Queen. Her departure is celebrated by an elaborate
banquet and a magnificent procession,[111] and we left to infer that
the future belongs to the reactionaries.

We, however, follow the fortunes of Proserpine, who dwells for a
season in Elysium, after a visit _en route_ to the dethroned Saturn,
who discusses with her The Spirit of the Age. Elysian society is of
course the English of Disraeli’s set; gay, graceful, complacent, and
malicious. The finest gentleman there is Achilles; the worst cad is
Æneas, who would fain make up with the now popular Dido, but being
repulsed, must content himself with becoming head of the Elysian saints
and president of a society to induce Gnomes[112] to drink only water.

In form these last two productions belong to the general division of
burlesque. There are also touches of travesty in Peacock.[113] But
the main instances of this type of the grotesque are found in the
two writers who filled in this line the interval between the last of
Disraeli’s, in 1833, and the last of Peacock’s, in 1861. During the
forties and first half of the fifties stood Thackeray, monopolist of
parody and caricature. Immediately following came the two contributions
of Meredith to satiric persiflage. In both cases this fantastic stuff
formed the preliminary to the real work, being merely the romantic
avenue by which two of the greatest realistic satirists came into their
own kingdom.

It happens, therefore, that though the quantity of this early product
is sizable enough, its rank is comparatively low. It is overshadowed
by the others on the list because in it the fun and nonsense is
predominant and the critical element so slight as to be negligible; and
it is overshadowed still more by the more mature genius of the authors
themselves.

It is natural that the burlesque should have been a favorite satiric
mode from Aristophanes to Rostand and Shaw. The wit it requires is
imitative rather than creative, and its appeal is instantaneous.

It is also natural that it should manifest itself at the beginning of
a writer’s career, and form a prelude to greater achievement. This is
the case for good and sufficient psychological reasons. In youth the
exuberant and undisciplined spirit, not yet checked by the reins of
reality, riots in the glory of extravagance; the inventive faculty
is awake but unfurnished by experience with material for original
creation; the critical scent is keen but unpracticed, and impatient
of sober, qualified judgment.[114] Such a condition is prime for
the production of a _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, a _Joseph Andrews_, a
_Northanger Abbey_, a _Pickwick_, a _Barry Lyndon_, a _Shaving of
Shagpat_; to be followed by _Twelfth Night_, _Tom Jones_, _Emma_,
_David Copperfield_, _Vanity Fair_, _The Egoist_.

Thackeray’s apprenticeship at this desk was rather unduly prolonged,
covering about half the period of his literary activity; and its output
is difficult to segregate on account of the ambiguous description of
much of his early work. But from the large mass of sketches, essays,
skits, stories, perhaps half a dozen may be selected as being fairly
within the limits of satirico-romance.

Two of them, the _Hoggarty Diamond_ and the _Yellowplush Papers_, are
on the border line, included here only because too exaggerated and
irresponsible to be otherwise classed. The same might be said of _Barry
Lyndon_, which is not far from being a real novel. Yet perhaps none
of these are more “grotesque” than some phases of legitimate fiction.
Much of their humor comes from the dramatic monologue device. Five are
roughly definable as burlesques: three--_Catherine_, _A Legend of the
Rhine_, and _The Rose and the Ring_, of types; the other two, _Novels
by Eminent Hands_, and _Rebecca and Rowena_, of individuals; yet here
again, classification is misleading, as these latter are versus the
_forms_ of certain productions rather than their _authors_.

Meredith’s _Farina_ is an interesting companion piece to Thackeray’s
Rhine Legend, both having a Teutonic and chivalric background, and
one might perhaps find a closer parallel there than in the one chosen
by Moffat, who traces “reminiscences of Peacock in the fantastic
element which occasionally crops up,” in Meredith, and points out
that the idea underlying _Farina_ and _Maid Marian_ is “substantially
the same--an attempt to reproduce with gentle satire, the medieval
romance of sentiment and gay adventure.” It is true, however, that _A
Legend of the Rhine_ differs from both these in its mocking parade of
anachronisms and telescoped chronology. It was “many, many hundred
thousand years ago” that Thackeray’s German knight was pricking o’er
the plain, but it was in the time of Richard the Lion-Hearted, and “on
the cold and rainy evening of Thursday, the twenty-sixth of October.”
In addition to his full armor he was equipped with an oiled silk
umbrella and a bag with a brazen padlock.

On a subsequent adventure he halts at a wayside shrine covered with
“odoriferous cactuses and silvery magnolias,” and recites “a censer, an
ave, and a couple of acolytes before it.” A victim of his mighty lance
wishes for a notary-public to take down his dying deposition. And a
lost champion is advertised for in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_.

_The Shaving of Shagpat_ out-Herods Herod in Arabian Nightism, and
is not devoid of satiric pith, but we are expressly forbidden by the
author himself to allegorize his geyser of ebullient mirth. The humor
is Rabelaisian--or American--in its pure love of size; it floats in a
gigantic, inflated balloon, to which a small basket of mental cargo is
attached. In this, however, is wrapped up the very important secret
that continuous laughter releases one from enchantment and restores
one’s true form.

The romantic satirist must have, like any other compound, certain more
or less inconsistent traits. There must be the inventive wit of romance
plus the shrewd logic of satire. Yet this rare combination does not
insure the best satiric results. Indeed the contrary is more likely to
be the case, as the union at best is somewhat adventitious.

Then, too, there must be a degree of exaggeration, with the strain on
our credulity so evenly distributed that it is not felt. The sound
sense that satire calls for[115] must maintain her operations, the
while she is masquerading as arrant nonsense.

Finally there is the dilemma encountered by the dramatist,--the
necessity of concentrating high lights as life never does, yet
preserving sufficient effect of dullness and vapid inanity to simulate
reality as we know it.

The various kinds of artifice employed in this artificial process
are all found in the examples on our list. Remoteness of time lends
illusion to _Maid Marian_, _Legend of the Rhine_, _Farina_; remoteness
of place, to _The Coming Race_, and the _Erewhons_; non-human
characters, to _Melincourt_, _Ixion_, _The Shaving of Shagpat_;
anomalous situations, to _Misfortunes of Elphin_ and _Popanilla_. Some
are able to combine them all, notably Lytton and Butler.[116] Some, on
the other hand, manage to create a maximum impression with a minimum
use of the spectacular.

Peacock, for instance, never leaves England nor gives us any but
English characters, quiet if not actually subdued, and usually
unexceptionable in behavior. Disraeli is really as circumscribed. He
apparently transports us to Heaven, Hades, some unsuspected isle in the
far seas, but he actually conveys all these to the isle where he was
born. Thackeray and even Meredith keep strictly to _terra firma_.

If it were desirable to make comparisons with a view to determining
whether any particular ingredient made for success in this sort, we
might observe the connection between originality and exaggeration
in their relation to effectiveness. Evidence from the data seems to
indicate that satiric value, estimated by weight and pertinence of
ideas, is in direct proportion to the amount of inventive wit; but in
irregular or even inverse ratio to extravaganza or caricature.

For example, the general order of both satiric and constructive
excellence, is approximately as follows,--listed in an ascending
series: Meredith, Thackeray, Lytton, Disraeli, Peacock, Butler. But to
reach a climax of pure fantasy we would pass from Thackeray through
Peacock, Disraeli, Butler, and Lytton, to Meredith. Exaggeration does
not seem, therefore, to inhere in satire though it may enhance it.

The chief advantage of the fantastic is that it gives unfettered play
to whatever fancy the mind is endowed with; and it enlists a naturally
too serious Criticism under the brilliant banner of Wit. That its
attractions are many is proved by its distinguished history; for
enrolled among the members of this versatile society are such names
as _Reynard the Fox_, _Romance of the Rose_, _Piers Plowman_, _Don
Quixote_, _Dunciad_, _Gulliver_, _Don Juan_.

Few on our list deserve comparison with these; none perhaps except
_Erewhon_. Peacock’s name might have a place, not for any one tale
but for the _toute ensemble_. What one of Disraeli’s biographers[117]
says of _Popanilla_, that it is “a work of the same kind as Swift’s
_Gulliver’s Travels_” is true enough, but would be more to the point
if the Travels had been confined to Laputa.

Not only are our modern instances comparatively light in quality, but
restricted in range. The fable, for example, is not represented at
all, nor the allegory, though both forms have had a sort of revival
in even more recent times. These deficiencies, if such they are, are
easily accounted for by the fact that in the nineteenth century realism
(in the liberal sense) was having its day, that it had taken especial
possession of the Victorian novel, particularly in its satiric aspect,
so that such scattered fantasies as we have may be regarded as the
crumbs from an opulent table.

The marks of the satiric extravaganza are wit, invention, and
exaggeration. In a general way the opposites of these may be called
respectively humor, interpretation, and exposure; and it may be
premised that these last will be found the characteristics of satiric
realism.

Another contrast that may be anticipated is that when romance is used
as a satiric vehicle it is built expressly for that purpose and carries
its passenger in solitary state; while realism is a public carry-all,
in which this fare is allowed a place along with the others.

Whether further generalization as to relative effectiveness is possible
is a question that must be deferred until after the discussion of the
complementary type.

CHAPTER II

THE REALISTIC

Realism in Victorian fiction, as we need only to be reminded, means not
strictly that which is, but liberally that which might be. Its field is
nominally the Actual but it encroaches unhesitatingly on the domain of
the Probable, laps over into the Improbable, and barely halts at the
Impossible. These expansive habits make it not incompatible with the
Romantic, which indeed, in its soberer aspects, is a constant factor in
the English novel up to and including this period.

Romanticism is reduced to a minimum by Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen,
Mrs. Gaskell, and Anthony Trollope,[118] but the majority of our
novelists have not been thus content to present life in its everyday
garb, neat and prosperous enough, it may be, but neutral, inane,
diffuse, inconclusive. They have insisted in the name of decorum and
dignity on the dress costume and company manners which in civilized
society are a prerequisite to public appearance and conspicuous
position. Life is still life and not an impostor, even when robed in
its best with some artifice of color and ornament and some evidence of
decisive purposefulness in mien and bearing.

But however romantic in effect, the nineteenth-century novel was
realistic in intent, and we may in a measure take the will for the
deed. Of this devotion to reality we have several testimonies, from
such important witnesses as Trollope, Dickens, Thackeray; but two are
of especial interest as they come from two of the most undeniable
romanticists, Lytton and Brontë.

In her Preface to the belated edition of _The Professor_, Charlotte
Brontë declared her own preference for a depiction of a normal and
unadorned existence to be thwarted by the lack of editorial enthusiasm.
After stating the condition of things she adds--

“* * * the publishers in general scarcely approved of this
system, but would have liked something more imaginative and
poetical--something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy,
with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated,
unworldly. Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of
a manuscript of this kind he can never know what stores of
romance and sensibility lie hidden in breasts he would not have
suspected of casketing such treasures.”

An accurate description of Victorianism is contained in this ironic
indictment, and perhaps also an explanation of the romantic trend of
its realism on the ground of the law of supply and demand as well as
that of natural propensity.

Lytton prided himself prodigiously on his true rendering of life,
though of his two dozen novels, _The Caxtons_ alone approaches the
realistic type, and pictures in one of his heroes[119] a phase at least
of his artistic ideal:

“The humblest alley in a crowded town had something poetical
for him; he was ever ready to mix in a crowd, if it were only
gathered round a barrel-organ or a dog fight, and listen to all
that was said, and notice all that was done. And this I take to
be the true poetical temperament essential to every artist who
aspires to be something more than a scene-painter.”

That the satirical element in this romantico-realistic form of fiction
should be characterized by humor, exposure, and comparative rarity,
instead of wit, exaggeration, and ubiquity, is inevitable, since the
former qualities accord not only with realism but with one another.

Humor is the comic sense which is amused by things as they are, whereas
wit either creates the absurdity or ferrets it out of obscurity. Hence
the former is allied to the actual more than to the fanciful, and
uses the method of simple disclosure rather than caricature. While
therefore the imaginative energy of wit is dynamic, that of humor
is more quiescent, being sufficiently exercised by its function of
interpretation, of showing wherein lurks the spirit of the laughable,
however grave and solemn the appearance to the unseeing eye.

Where the quality of the satire is of this realistic order, the
quantity must necessarily be restricted and more or less incidental
rather than dominant; subdued, not rampant. For the true satirical
humorist, seeing life steadily and whole, observes that while certain
parts of it are unquestionably absurd, whether flauntingly or subtly
so, these ludicrous shreds and patches, absolutely integral and
ineradicable as they are, are nevertheless only a portion and not so
large a one, of the stupendous whole.

Neither that astigmatic visualizer, the cynic, who regards life
itself as a huge joke on its victims, nor that myopic spectator, the
misanthrope, who conceives humanity as an unmitigated jest on creation,
was a Victorian favorite. Both are blind to certain phenomena,--beauty,
power, exquisite delicacy, tremendous strength,--which also exist,
which even the pessimist grants to be compensatory, and which, when
genuine, are utterly beyond the reach of any ridicule that pretends
to sanity or justice. Such then,--humorously truthful and suitably
proportioned,--is the general character of the satiric stratum which
runs, widening and narrowing, through the great vein of Victorian
fiction.

In the legitimate novel there are two main devices of revealing the
ludicrous; the direct, whereby the author in his own reflections and
comments points it out; and the dramatic, whereby he shows it by means
of incident and character. The latter method is again subdivisible into
two modes, by the use of the two contrasting types of actors, humorous
and humorists. The first are allowed to betray themselves, their very
unconsciousness adding to the piquancy of the situation. For this the
favorite technical tool is the dramatic monologue. The second are the
witty protagonists. They stand _in loco scriptoris_ and express
that detection of absurdity for which the humorless humorous furnish
the occasion.[120]

When we consult our original list, we find the two extremes have
been cut off, as Peacock and Butler belong entirely to the other
department. The remaining eleven have produced about one hundred
twenty novels in the stricter sense, not including short stories,
tales, sketches, or burlesques. It must be noted that this restriction
rules out some items important as literature, and in certain cases
as satire,--_Cranford_, _Pickwick_, _Peg Woffington_, _Scenes from
Clerical Life_.

Of the grand total, approximately one-quarter is eliminated as being
essentially and thoroughly serious. Here again are found some notable
names,--_Last Days of Pompeii_, _Mary Barton_, _Henry Esmond_, _Tale
of Two Cities_, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, _Jane Eyre_, _Hypatia_.
Three-fourths is a large majority, from which one might deduce that the
novel of this period was prevailingly satirical. But the other extreme,
those so strongly saturated as to deserve the name of satires, are
far fewer than the unsatirical. _Vanity Fair_, _Martin Chuzzlewit_,
_The Egoist_, possibly _Barchester Towers_, and _Beauchamp’s Career_,
practically exhaust the list. This leaves about four score of novels in
which the spirit of satire exists, manifesting itself showily, coyly,
in wide range and diversity.

When an author uses the direct method for the conveyance of
satirical ideas, he becomes for the nonce a didactic, though
humor-flavored, philosopher. Over against the artistic liabilities
incurred,--interruption of the narrative, intrusion of more or less
irrelevant matter, may be placed the intellectual assets,--presentation
of opinions and conclusions, and frank expression of personality.

Whether approved of or not, this discursive habit must be accepted as
an old inheritance. From the beginning, the English novel has been a
hybrid, the drama grafted on the treatise. Even the medieval mind,
with its insatiable relish for the pageantry of life, had an uneasy
feeling that the Merry Tale should not be entirely its own reward, and
accordingly found for it a moral justification, whereby pleasure and
profit were joined in a most complacent alliance. And ever since, the
prevailing purpose has been not only to portray life but to exhibit
this or that deduction about life.

In the eighteenth century this tendency took definite shape and
substance, for then it became notably true that the division between
narrative and essay was not coincident with a division between
narrators and essayists. Swift, Addison, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne,
were both. And it was their mantle and not that of romance writers,
Gothic or Historical, that best fitted Victorian shoulders. Of the
many testimonies to this, direct and indirect, the following from a
characteristic Victorian pen may be cited as evidence:[121]

“The reader of a novel--who had doubtless taken the volume up
simply for amusement, and who would probably lay it down did he
suspect that instruction, like a snake-in-the-grass, like physic
beneath the sugar, was to be imposed upon him--requires from his
author chiefly this, that he shall be amused by a narrative in
which elevated sentiment prevails, and gratified by being made
to feel that the elevated sentiments described are exactly his
own.”

He then goes on to show that this morality is best served by realism,
in spite of the superior attractions of heroes and villains:[122]

“But for one Harry Esmond, there are fifty Ralph Newtons--five
hundred and fifty of them; and the very youth whose bosom glows
with admiration as he reads of Harry--who exults in the idea
that as Harry did, so would he have done--lives as Ralph lived,
is less noble, less persistent, less of a man even than was
Ralph Newton.

“It is the test of a novel-writer’s art that he conceals his
snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is
always there. * * * In writing novels, we novelists preach to
you from our pulpits, and are keenly anxious that our sermons
shall not be inefficacious. * * * Nevertheless, the faults of a
Ralph Newton, and not the vices of a Varney or a Barry Lyndon,
are the evils against which men should in these days be taught
to guard themselves--which women also should be made to hate.
Such is the writer’s apology for his very indifferent hero,
Ralph the Heir.”

In another volume[123] the same writer confesses,--

“Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely
muse. I would as lief have to do with a giant in my book--a real
giant, such as Goliath--as with a murdering monk with a scowling
eye. The age for such delights is, I think, gone. We may say
historically of Mrs. Radcliffe’s time that there were mysterious
sorrows in those days. They are now as much out of date as the
giants.”

Victorianism of course had her own sorrows, patent and unmysterious as
they were. At no time could she have been mistaken for Elizabethanism.
But she grew gradually in strength and sobriety, and cast a heavier
shadow in the afternoon of the century. In its mid-morning Disraeli
could compliment his own _Young Duke_ with the subtitle, “a moral tale
though gay.” And the chief ambition of the young writers up to the
early forties seems to have been to produce tales that were gay though
moral.

Of this tendency Lytton is the most conspicuous example. Innately
serious and thoroughly sentimental, he nevertheless dared not be as
solemn as he could. He must live up to the requirement for ironic wit
and the light touch of _savior faire_, even though, lacking native
exuberance and somewhat deficient in taste, he often fell into the
slough of facetiousness, or at least lapsed into childish jocularity.

To quote him at his best, however, we take a few excerpts from the
last of his trilogy of domestic novels. In the second of the series,
_My Novel_, he had adapted the prefatory device of _Tom Jones_, using
the remarks of the Caxton family as a sort of introductory (or more
properly, retrospective) chorus to each book. In _What Will He Do
with It_, the idea is carried out on a smaller scale, in expository
paragraphs preliminary to chapters. The following will be sufficient to
indicate the tone:

Book I

Chapter XII

“In which it is shown that a man does this or declines to do
that for reasons best known to himself--a reserve which is
extremely conducive to the social interests of a community;
since the conjecture into the origin and nature of those reasons
stimulates the inquiring faculties, and furnishes the staple
of modern conversation. And as it is not to be denied that, if
their neighbors left them nothing to guess at, three fourths
of civilized humankind, male or female, would have nothing to
talk about; so we cannot too gratefully encourage that needful
curiosity, termed by the inconsiderate tittle-tattle or scandal,
which saves the vast majority of our species from being reduced
to the degraded condition of dumb animals.”

Chapter XV

“The historian records the attachment to public business which
distinguishes the British Legislator--Touching instance of the
regret which ever in patriotic bosoms attends the neglect of a
public duty.”

Chapter XVII

“* * * It also showeth, for the instruction of Men and States,
the connection between democratic opinion and wounded
self-love; so that, if some Liberal statesman desire to rouse
against an aristocracy the class just below it, he has only to
persuade a fine lady to be exceedingly civil ‘to that sort of
people.’”

Book IV

Chapter IX

“* * * The aboriginal Man-Eater, or Pocket Cannibal, is
susceptible to the refining influences of Civilization. He
decorates his lair with the skins of his victims; he adorns his
person with the spoils of those whom he devours.”

Of the nine remaining names on the list, the real Victorians according
to chronology, it happens that two-thirds are almost negative examples
of direct satire. Reade, Trollope, and Kingsley take their own
moralizing for the most part seriously, as do also the three women,
Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. Such instances to the
contrary as there are only serve in the usual capacity of exceptions.
It is the remaining third, Thackeray, Dickens, and Meredith, who are
prominent in this matter as in most others.

Thackeray usually trusts to the metaphorical and allusive to secure
a humorous effect. Vanity Fair is itself a symbolic term, elaborated
upon in the Introduction and harped upon constantly throughout the
story. The account, for instance, of the Sedley sale is prefaced by
a description of a similar conclusion to the career of the late Lord
Dives, the chapter beginning as follows:[124]

“If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire
and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light
on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful; where you
may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect
propriety; it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of
which are advertised every day in the last page of the ‘Times’
newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to
preside with so much dignity.”

And again:[125]

“This is a species of dignity in which the high-bred British
female reigns supreme. To watch the behavior of a fine lady
to other and humbler women, is a very good sport for a
philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.”

He delights in whimsical classic comparisons:[126]

“Is this case a rare one? and don’t we see every day in the
world many an honest Hercules at the apron-strings of Omphale,
and great whiskered Samsons prostrate in Delilah’s lap?”

Sometimes the classical is mingled in with the Scriptural:[127]

“A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia’s
husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in a different
way.”

Sometimes we have a scientific simile, as the comment on Becky’s
ambition to be presented at Court.[128]

“If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she
desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no
lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until
she has put on a train and feathers, and has been presented to
her Sovereign at court. From that august interview they come
out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them
a certificate of virtue. And as dubious goods or letters are
passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic
vinegar, and then pronounced clean--many a lady whose reputation
would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes
through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal Presence, and issues
from it free from all taint.”

In his later novels Thackeray used in greater proportion the more
artistic indirect method, although he could more easily have plucked
out his eye and cast it from him than to have performed the same
operation on his habit of moralizing, which most frequently took the
form of a semi-whimsical but wholly homiletic exhortation to his dear
readers to make a personal application of the lessons involved in the
story.[129]

Of these later instances, one illustrates the use of literary allusion,
neatly combined with the commercial.[130]

“Though, no doubt, in these matters, when Lovelace is tired
of Clarissa (or the contrary), it is best for both parties to
break at once, * * * yet our self-love, or our pity, or our
sense of decency, does not like that sudden bankruptcy. Before
we announce to the world that our firm of Lovelace and Co.
can’t meet its engagements, we try to make compromises; we have
mournful meetings of partners; we delay the putting up of the
shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure. It must
come: but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little
longer.”

Dickens is included with this “didactic” trio, not so much because he
belongs with them as because he does not belong with the others. He
cannot be classed as a negative example, but his positive contributions
are relatively small. His artistic superiority to Thackeray in this
respect comes, however, not from a greater knowledge of artistry, and
even less from greater care for it, but through the happy accident of a
vivid, dramatic temperament. He refrains from much moralizing not, we
are sure, because he loves moralizing less but because he loves people
and actions more. His overwhelming interest in these, his affection and
respect for the doings and sayings of his characters, is too intense
to allow of their being interrupted by anything. He is thus something
of an artist unaware. He does not work out his own salvation by taking
thought or by deliberating over ways and means; but through a fortunate
preoccupation, an absorbing engagement with the concrete, he almost
unconsciously dispenses with the abstract, or expresses it in terms of
the specific.

It is true also that he segregates a good deal of his reflection in
his Prefaces; but it crops up too often in the course of the narrative
to be disregarded. One of the first showings occurs in connection with
Mr. Bumble’s relinquishment of the beadle’s costume together with that
office, and his pensive cogitations thereupon.[131]

“There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the
more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and
dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them.

A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a
counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat. Strip the
bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are
they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes,
are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people
imagine.”

In his next novel, Dickens has a word for those “who pamper their
compassion and need high stimulants to rouse it,” and indicates the
cause of hysterical zeal on the one hand or dull indifference on the
other, equally misplaced:[132]

“In short, charity must have its romance, as the novelist
or playwright must have his. A thief in fustian is a vulgar
character, scarcely to be thought of by persons of refinement;
but dress him in green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and
change the scene of his operations, from a thickly peopled city,
to a mountain road, and you shall find in him the very soul of
poetry and adventure.”

The romance of the picturesque is one of our weaknesses; that of the
mysterious is another. The latter is discussed with reference to the
machinations of the Gordon Riot:[133]

“To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with
an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and
power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False
priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false
prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceeding in mystery,
have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the
popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to
that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand
of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half dozen items in the
whole catalogue of imposture.”

Toward the legal profession the attitude of Dickens is never ambiguous,
and ever and anon, as in the following instance, he expresses it with
concise clarity:[134]

“The one great principle of the English law is, to make business
for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly,
and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.
Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the
monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once
clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business
for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to
grumble.”

No less favored with warmth of feeling is the famous Circumlocution
Office, to which much eloquence is devoted in a chapter “containing the
whole science of government.” There are pages of satirical description,
the keynote of which is found in an early paragraph:[135]

“This glorious establishment had been early in the field,
when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art
of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to
statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation,
and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the
official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the
Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public
departments in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.”

It is recognized as something of an anomaly that Meredith should
have begun publishing fiction along with George Eliot, and fifteen
years before Hardy and Butler, for he belongs with the latter as
post-Victorian in art and character. He represents at once the maturity
of the nineteenth century and the embryonic promise of the twentieth,
whose new currents were already meeting and clashing with the old
full tide. About him there could be nothing artless or naïve, nothing
unconscious or preoccupied. Ripeness of judgment, deliberation in
method, are stamped on every line, giving an effect of purposefulness
without dogmatism, and profundity without owlishness. Whatever he does
is done intentionally,[136] and if some lack of spontaneity is the
result, it is amply compensated for by the strength and sureness that
come from a man’s command of himself and his material. In so far as
he is obscure, involved, compactly sententious, his malice is, like
Browning’s, aforethought. Not in ignorance nor indifference does it
arise, but from independent choice and a certain scorn of any other
procedure.

Accordingly while direct satire is not wanting in his novels, it is
restrained in amount and sophisticated in nature. It does not take the
shape of facile application of obvious conditions, nor of flamboyant
portraiture, but of concentrated analyses of phases of life, from a
scientific point of view, rather than ethical, and presented with calm
detachment.

Meredith is quite capable of telling pure story, as in _Vittoria_ and
_Harry Richmond_, but he is also capable of putting in some personal
seasoning, particularly evinced in the openings of _Beauchamp’s
Career_, and _An Amazing Marriage_, and throughout _The Egoist_.

Of these two discursive introductions, the former is more amenable to
quotation. It deals with the situation incident to a rumor of French
invasion, and personifies Panic as a sleepy old spinster roused into
brief hysteria, and lapsing back into comfortable stupor.[137]

“This being apprehended, by the aid of our own shortness of
figures and the agitated images of the red-breeched only
waiting the signal to jump and be at us, there ensued a curious
exhibition that would be termed, in simple language, writing
to the newspapers, for it took the outward form of letters: in
reality, it was the deliberate saddling of our ancient nightmare
of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, and trotting her
along the highroad with a winding horn to rouse old Panic. * *
* She did a little mischief by dropping on the stock-markets;
in other respects she was harmless, and, inasmuch as she
established a subject for conversation, useful.

“Then, lest she should have been taken too seriously, the
Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguish her with the
formidable engines called leading articles, which fling fire or
water, as the occasion may require. * * *

“Then the people, rather ashamed, abused the Press for
unreasonably disturbing them. The Press attacked old Panic and
stripped her naked. Panic, with a desolate scream, arraigned
the Parliamentary Opposition for having inflated her to serve
base party purposes. The Opposition challenged the allegations
of Government, * * * and proclaimed itself the watch-dog of the
country.”

At about this juncture the enemy himself stepped in and announced there
never had been any need for the dog to bark at all:

“So, then, Panic, or what remained of her, was put to bed
again. The Opposition retired into its kennel growling. The
People coughed like a man of two minds, doubting whether he
has been divinely inspired or has cut a ridiculous figure. The
Press interpreted the cough as a warning to Government; and
Government launched a big ship with hurrahs, and ordered the
recruiting-sergeant to be seen conspicuously.”

All this would seem sufficient, but it appears that the real sting
after these preliminary pricks, is in the tail. The picture concludes
with the bulky figure of the Tax-Payer looming in the background; he is
pointed out with the laconic comment:[138]

“Will you not own that the working of the system for scaring him
and bleeding him is very ingenious? But whether the ingenuity
comes of native sagacity, as it is averred by some, or whether
it shows an instinct laboring to supply the deficiencies of
stupidity, according to others, I cannot express an opinion.”

The satiric parentheses in _The Egoist_ are naturally concerned not
with politics but with individual men and women, chiefly in their
relationships to one another. A few instances will serve.

Referring to the selfish folly of the masculine demand for feminine
delicacy rather than strength, Meredith says of women:[139]

“Are they not of a nature warriors, like men?--men’s mates to
bear them heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male
Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought polished pure-metal
precious vessels, fresh from the hands of the artificer, for him
to walk away with hugging, call all his own, drink of, and fill
and drink of, and forget that he stole them.”

Again, apropos of that “adoring female’s worship,” destined only for
the strong, “who maintain the crown by holding divinely independent of
the great emotion they have sown,” he says:[140]

“In the one hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume
of the Book of Egoism, it is written: _Possession without
obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity_.”

When we turn to plot or situation as a vehicle of satire, we find an
almost exact parallel, as to proportionate amount, to the reflective
type just discussed. More than half of the novelists on our list have
no examples worthy of special mention. A few insert amusing episodes,
not especially germane to the main plot. And the three notable
instances, where the satiric situation is a feature of importance,
where it influences the whole trend of the movement, affects the
leading characters, and plays a part in the climax, occur in the three
real satires, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Vanity Fair_, and _The Egoist_; so
that Dickens, Thackeray, and Meredith are again our main theme.

Situation or action is of course merely the dramatization of character,
and not to be distinguished from it except as actual expression
is distinguished from the capacity for it. Individuals speak for
themselves instead of being spoken for, although they often convey more
than they mean to, and much that they would not. Since this form of
art has its own medium in the drama, it is there that we look for the
most perfect and concentrated expression, and expect to find it in the
novel only in the latter’s dramatic moments, which may be few and far
between. But as the _dénouement_ of the drama usually turns on
some phase of poetic justice, either in its tragic or its comic aspect,
so also does this dramatic element in fiction. Satire in situation
is therefore concerned with the comedy of poetic justice, and is
successful in so far as that sense is appealed to and satisfied.

In their respective stories, Pecksniff, Becky Sharp, and Sir Willoughby
Patterne are the people of most importance, if not the heroes; and in
each case the climax of the career is a ludicrous anticlimax, with
circumstances appropriate in every instance to the character.

The unveiling of Pecksniff is a public and demonstrative affair, in
accordance with the public and demonstrative nature of his previous
life, and also, one may add, with the Dickensian theory of the fitness
of humorous retribution. In spite of the crude melodrama of the
scene, there is fundamental truth in the most important item in it,
the behavior of the one toward whom all eyes are turned in hostile
contempt. He needed no loyal, anxious mother to beg him to “be ’umble,”
for his humility was not as the Heeps’. It was a superior article,
self-possessed and patronizing, not servile and ingratiating, and it
was therefore impregnable. Uriah might be discomfited when his mask was
publicly torn away, but the Pecksniffian duplicity was no mere flimsy
detachable mask. It was the very skin of his face; indeed, it was more
than skin deep; it was the stuff of his soul. He could therefore be
imperturbable, though felled to the floor, a dignified martyr, grieved
but gracious under calumny, unquelled by those who had assembled to do
him dishonor.

This impressiveness serves Pecksniff, as her wit serves Becky,
to mitigate the absurdity which threatens him. It is not in this
heightened moment that his comicality is apparent; it is in the
retrospective picture we get of him through the revelation of Martin
Chuzzlewit, whereby he is seen not only as the biter bit, but as the
calf, the bland, assured, shrewd yet unsuspecting calf, that, being
given plenty of rope, promptly hanged himself.

In the downfall of Becky there is less of the comic and more of
the tragic, though Thackeray does not choose to invest her with
enough dignity for tragedy. She is less absurd than Pecksniff or Sir
Willoughby for several reasons. She is more human and has the claim of
normal humanity on our sympathy; she is the product of circumstances,
clearly shown to be largely responsible for her failure both in
aspiration and achievement, whereas theirs is gratuitous and without
excuse; and she is herself too much of a jester to be patronized by the
ridicule of others. She too can keep up appearances to the last, not
by reinforcing her hypocrisy but by being able to dispense with it,
when it no longer serves, and to mock at it along with everything else.
The only real joke she is the victim of comes comparatively early,
when she discovers she might become Lady Crawley were she not already
daughter-in-law of the coveted and forfeited title.

This theme of a vaulting ambition o’erleaping itself is a favorite with
Thackeray, and he did some good apprentice work on it in _The Fatal
Boots_, and _Yellowplush Memoirs_. In the former the unwelcome wedding
present comes as a delightful bit of comic nemesis. But the outcome of
the latter, with an accomplished swindler outwitted by his own father,
and a helpless woman ruthlessly sacrificed, savors too much of tragedy
to be amusing.

Sir Willoughby is only an egoist, not a hypocrite nor a sycophant; and
being a gentleman can suffer naught but a gentlemanly humiliation. Such
a one is not to be knocked down and taunted in the presence of his
little world; he is merely made a subject of gossip and speculation:
nor is he to be reduced to sordid material scheming; his intrigues
are all on the spiritual plane. A destiny that seemed kind but proved
cruel created him the central sun to his own solar system. His only
sin was the desire to maintain that position by exerting a strong but
legitimate centripetal force upon his satellites: if any centrifugal
force should become stronger, they must simply drop off into space.
His mate he conceived of as the fairest star of all, gladly answering
an imperious summons to disregard even the laws of gravitation, to
surrender even the personality of a satellite, to rush headlong to
a union that secured enlargement of the sun by the quenching and
absorption of the star. And for this, his only punishment was the
refusal, incredible, presumptuous, on the part of a succession of
chosen stars to surrender, to rush, to be absorbed. His utmost penalty
was the decree that he must be content with the indifferent attendance
of a weary moon whose own light had grown cold and who avowed an
allegiance at the most, dutiful, quite disillusioned, and granted
because of a pressure that amounted to compulsion.

Externally his situation is prosperous and respectable. He remains an
aristocrat of wealth and station, “the humour of whom,” as his own
author says,[141] “scarcely dimples the surface and is distinguishable
but by very penetrative, very wicked imps, whose fits of roaring below
at some generally imperceptible stroke of his quality, have first made
the mild literary angels aware of something comic in him,” and whose
figure therefore never becomes palpably absurd. Only by the “detective
vision” of the imps is he seen poised on the pinnacle of absurdity,
while the Pecksniffs and Becky Sharps of the world cluster around its
base.

The poetic justice of this comedy in narrative is perfect because the
pit the victim falls into is one of his own digging and the digging
is of his own volition (popularly speaking, without reference to the
metaphysics of determinism). From the first moment of Sir Willoughby’s
philandering with Lætitia Dale to the last unlucky turning of the
key in young Crossjay’s room, all was spontaneous, a long list of
self-indulgences that turned into self-avengers. It was not essential
that he should play upon the sentimental romanticism of his adoring
feminine neighbor; nor that he should protest so emphatically to Clara
that he never could by any possibility bring himself to marry Lætitia;
nor that he should himself provide a witness to his overcoming of
that boasted impossibility,--and make the sacrifice for nothing after
all,--when the absence of a witness would have saved the day for him.
But having done all these things he had to pay the price, though it
rendered him bankrupt in vanity, and for him that was bankruptcy indeed.

Yet for all that he is food for mirth, one must yield to a lurking
sympathy for the unhappy Patterne. A wound is a wound and may cause
exquisite pain, even if inflicted only on self-love. A Pecksniff and
a Becky are invulnerable; he is protected from pelting rain by his
own oiliness, she by her inimitable faculty for borrowing umbrellas.
Lætitia was indeed finally secured as Sir Willoughby’s umbrella, but
not before he had been alarmingly threatened if not actually soaked.

If we measured our laughter by the real feelings of its object instead
of our conception of the frivolity or sacredness of those feelings,
we should undoubtedly find it much diminished. We could not enjoy the
predicament of Sir Willoughby or Sir John Falstaff or Malvolio or any
of the notable company of the Mighty Fallen. Whereas we do enjoy them
with unrestrained relish on the supposition that their fall is not that
of a Cæsar or a Napoleon. Yet these also were egoists, and those would
fain have been conquering heroes. Meredith testifies to this in his
preliminary analysis:[142]

“The Egoist surely inspires pity. He who would desire to clothe
himself at everybody’s expense, and is of that desire condemned
to strip himself stark naked, he, if pathos ever had a form,
might be taken for the actual person.”

In addition to these instances where the continual and final absurdity
of the situation is made the _motif_ of the novel, there are
several cases of minor episodes, quite as suggestive though on a
smaller scale.

Dickens is, as might be supposed, the most fertile in these scenes of
comic retribution. Aside from Pecksniff and Uriah Heep, he is most
successful with the Lammles, Mr. Dorrit, and Silas Wegg.

The Veneering Dinner, which introduces _Our Mutual Friend_, is
only an understudy to the Veneering Breakfast, which celebrates the
marriage of two of the Veneerings’ oldest friends.

“But, there is another time to come, and it comes in about a
fortnight, and it comes to Mr. and Mrs. Lammle on the sands at
Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lammle have walked for some time on the Shanklin
sands, and one may see by their foot-prints that they have not
walked arm-in-arm, and that they have not walked in a straight
track, and that they have walked in a moody humour; for, the
lady has prodded little spirting holes in the damp sand before
her with her parasol, and the gentleman has trailed his stick
after him. As if he were of the Mephistopheles family indeed,
and had walked with a drooping tail.”[143]

It is not an angelic council that follows, though it has the virtues of
candor, contrition, and a judicious conclusion, proposed by the Belial
of the conference, to make the best of a bad bargain by forming a union
of intrigue against the world in general and the diabolical Veneerings
in particular. Thus mutual in greed, in gullibility, in consequent
remorse, and in unholy alliance, this pair of frauds form the real
mutuality of Dickens’ Vanity Fair.

Silas Wegg and William Dorrit stand at the two extremes, for one is
farcical and the other tragic, yet they meet on a common ground, the
comedy of exposure. The farcical villain may be dismissed with the
comment that his dramatic exit, though richly done, bears some marks
of the childishness and vulgarity that his author could not always
avoid. The tragic comedian, on the other hand, stands before us in
an unconscious self-betrayal no less impressive and startling in its
way than that of the sleep-walking Lady Macbeth. Nowhere in English
literature, indeed, is there a picture more awful in its simple
inevitability than the eloquent speech addressed to the guests at
Mrs. Merdle’s dinner table by the affable, patronizing Father of the
Marshalsea.

Such ironic penalizings as these are satires of circumstances, sport
which beguiles the ennuied Immortals. Immeasurably lower in the scale
is the practical joke indulged in by mortals; yet in such deeds we
may reckon Mistresses Ford and Page, Sir Toby and Maria, as human
deputies acting for a requiting destiny. Perhaps our best example of
this obvious but joyous kind of satire is one found in almost the first
novel of almost the first name on our list, Lytton’s _Pelham_. It
is the Parisian incident of the amorous M. Margot and the clever Mrs.
Green, wherein the conceit and credulity of the former is played upon
by the shrewd and merry malice of the latter, until he finds himself
distressingly suspended in a basket from her lofty window late in a
chilly night, to the great amusement of divers spectators previously
invited there for that purpose.

Much more subtle and hence much more intellectually satisfying is the
trap in which another amorous gentleman, the Reverend Mr. Slope, is
caught by another clever lady, Signora Neroni.[144]

“Mr. Slope was madly in love, but hardly knew it. The signora
spitted him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she
might enjoy the energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew
very well what she was doing.”

In their memorable interview the accomplished Phoedria led this poor
Cymochles into a fearful, tangled web, there to struggle and flounder
until she released him with mocking scorn, having illustrated perfectly
Meredith’s remark about another and more famous egoist:[145]

“A lover pretending too much by one foot’s length of pretense,
will have that foot caught in her trap.”

Even then, however, fate had not done her worst, for the cockchafer
was literally to be slapped in the face by the more direct and active
Eleanor Bold. The comment on this latter scene may be cited as an
example of the mock-heroic vein occasionally used in the service of
satire from Swift and Fielding on.[146]

“But how shall I sing the divine wrath of Mr. Slope, or how
invoke the tragic muse to describe the rage which swelled the
celestial bosom of the bishop’s chaplain? Such an undertaking
by no means befits the low-heeled buskin of modern fiction.
The painter put a veil over Agamemnon’s face when called on
to depict the father’s grief at the early doom of his devoted
daughter. The god, when he resolved to punish the rebellious
winds, abstained from mouthing empty threats. We will not
attempt to tell with what mighty surgings of the inner heart Mr.
Slope swore to revenge himself on the woman who had disgraced
him, nor will we vainly strive to depict his deep agony of soul.

“There he is, however, alone in the garden-walk, and we must
contrive to bring him out of it. * * * He stood motionless,
undecided, glaring with his eyes, thinking of the pains and
penalties of Hades, and meditating how he might best devote
his enemy to the infernal gods with all the passion of his
accustomed eloquence. He longed in his heart to be preaching at
her. ’Twas thus that he was ordinarily avenged of sinning mortal
men and women. Could he at once have ascended his Sunday rostrum
and fulminated at her such denunciations as his spirit delighted
in, his bosom would have been greatly eased.”

The routing of this clergyman is balanced by the triumph of another,
in a later volume of the series, though in an entirely different
cause.[147] None of our novelists has given us a more delectable
scene than the one which marked the culmination of those triangular
interviews with which Bishop Proudie’s study was so familiar. Here
Mrs. Proudie, that mighty Amazon, is brought low, and that, through
a dastardly blow of fate, by a foe unworthy of her steel, albeit she
had not considered him unworthy of her persecution. She is now made
to endure two kinds of anguish, both new and both terrible. The first
is being ignored. The second is being talked back to and then left
before she can reply. It is a glorious moment for all but the defeated
when one weary badgered opponent thunders at her, “Peace, Woman!” and
adds that she would better be minding her distaff; and another weary
badgered opponent, her sleek and pampered husband, jumps from his chair
at the sound, not in anger at the unchivalrous Mr. Crawley but in
admiration of his incredible courage and astounding victory.

Of these various roads open to the writer of satirical intent, those
just indicated, by direct reflection and by dramatic scenes, are in
the nature of by-ways. They are for the most part occasional and
incidental; valuable chiefly as securing the piquant and diversified
effect necessary to the literature that aims to amuse, even when the
amusement itself is secondary in the real design.

The main highway is that of character. By the kind of characters he can
create and by his attitude toward them shall the novelist be known.
There are the idealized, the respected, the beloved, the censured,
the anathematized. The group selected for our especial concern in
this study is formed of those pilloried by the rebuke humorous. Such,
however,--the comic and therefore the ridiculed,--are objects of satire
and accordingly more suitably considered in the following section. It
is the opposite class that constitutes a factor in satiric method. This
phase of the discussion will therefore be confined to the wits, those
who may be called satirists in their own right, and so used by the
author as a dramatic means to his satiric end.

Wit is the diamond of the intellectual world, precious on account
of its rarity, its brilliancy, and the sense of infinite time,
matter, and compression that have gone into its transformation from
common charcoal. Brevity is indeed an element of it; but its soul is
perception, a vision at once quick and penetrating, the radio-activity
of the mind.

Being such, it has the infrequence that marks all excellence, both in
life and its mirrored reflection. There is much of an unsatiric and
subintellectual order, the kind that comes from ingenuity and cunning,
and takes the shape of pranks and jests for the fun of them; manifest
in Diccon, Autolycus, and the Court Fools,--though these last often
have much meat in them. Then there is the clever befooling for a
purpose, as seen in Portia, getting her own ring by a subterfuge; or
Kate Hardcastle, stooping to conquer. There is also the bitter temper
which animates a Katherina, checkmated only by a Petruchio; this
produces too a Thersites to be the cheese and digestion of Achilles;
and Cleopatra, gibing at “the married woman.”

Wit, however, is something more than merriment or malice; and short
is the list of its worthy examples. Lysistrata is not only a vigorous
feminist but pungent on the theme. Pertelote and the Wife of Bath
illumine masculine superstition and conservatism. Benedict and Beatrice
sparkle by mutual concussion. The melancholy Jaques and the melancholy
Dane are the finest of satiric philosophers. Subtle the Alchemist
enjoys with a huge private relish the gullibility he exploits. Fra
Lippo Lippi graces with gayety the professional pretense and policy he
exposes. These compose a distinctive and exclusive company, and few
there are who may be added unto them.

Within the novel the proportion is almost as small. The most noteworthy
prototypes to Victorian fiction are Matthew Bramble and, in a girlish
fashion, Evelina. (Lady Emily, in Susan Ferrier’s _Marriage_,
might be included). But these, through the thin guise of letters, are
Smollett and Burney as completely as Gulliver and Shandy are Swift
and Sterne through the thinner guise of the dramatic monologue. More
objective are Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet and his daughter Elizabeth. The
former particularly is a satiric soloist acting as Greek chorus to the
follies of his wife, daughters, and certain young men.

This delightful relationship between father and daughter, a sort
of satiric defensive alliance against the besieging army of silly
exactions and vexations, finds a clear if fainter echo in that of
Dr. Gibson and Molly (in Mrs. Gaskell’s _Wives and Daughters_),
who plan in the temporary absence of the elegant stepmother to do
“everything that is unrefined and ungenteel.”

The exponents of satiric wit in the Victorian novel may be thrown for
convenience into three or four divisions.

There is the native or rustic type, whose shrewd observations are
condensed into homely but poignant epigrams. That such characters have
always existed is evident from the existence of a whole literature
of proverbial philosophy, of anonymous origin, like ballads and
fabliaux. Conspicuous in the van of the few who have been lifted from
this obscure anonymity is the redoubtable Mrs. Poyser. It is no valid
discount to George Eliot’s achievement to say she produced only one
Mrs. Poyser. Indeed, it might add something to her luster to note that
no other novelist has produced even one.

The only other deserving of mention is a countryman in Lytton’s _What
Will He Do with It_, chosen in this case also because he illustrates
the generic class of stage-drivers, whose brightest light is the
American Yuba Bill. This one is described in the chapter heading[148]
as “a charioteer, to whom an experience of British Laws suggests
an ingenious mode of arresting the progress of Roman Papacy.” He
discourses to his passenger:[149]

“My wife’s grandfather was put into Chancery just as he was
growing up, and never grew afterwards--never got out o’ it.
Nout ever does. There’s our church warden comes to me with a
petition to sign agin the Pope. Says I, ‘that old Pope is always
in trouble--what’s he bin doin’ now?’ Says he, ‘Spreading! He’s
agot into Parlyment, and now he’s got a colledge, and we pays
for it. I doesn’t know how to stop him.’ Says I, ‘Put the Pope
into Chancery along with wife’s grandfather, and he’ll never
spread agin.’”

The urban counterpart of this type is the child of the city streets, of
which we have specimens in the sophisticated gamins, the Artful Dodger
and Dick Swiveller. In this Dickens has a monopoly, such as it is.

Coming up from the ranks, we reach the intellectual aristocrat, whose
culture enables him to add polish to his satiric pith and point. It
happens that the two most representative characters of this type are
furnished by the two authors who stand at chronological extremes,
though the volumes in which they occur are only three years apart.[150]

Kenelm Chillingly is the melancholy Victorian. After the initial lapse
into a bit of grotesque caricature in the account of his babyhood,--a
thing that would have been avoided by a writer of more restrained
taste,--the author paints his portrait with skill, distinction, and
truth. His Coming of Age speech to the assembled tenants and guests on
that joyful occasion is truly startling, but far from incredible. The
audacious youngster, with his grave, serene, matter of fact pessimism,
exposes in a searching analysis the discrepancy between the supposed
reality they were felicitating themselves and him upon and an ideal
which is quite beyond their comprehension. Yet it is an unquestionably
practical ideal, and it breaks like a slow, cold, somber light through
the shallow sentiment that had been screening some disconcerting depths.

It is true, he says, that the Chillinglys come from a remote race, but
length of tenure has meant only so much more inanity.[151]

“They were born to eat as long as they could eat, and when they
could eat no longer they died. Not that in this respect they
were a whit less insignificant than the generality of their
fellow creatures.”

He reminds his gaping, rural audience that man merely represents a
stage in the course of evolution.[152]

“The probability is that, some day or other, we shall be
exterminated by a new development of species.”

He goes on ruthlessly to assert that, contrary to the popular belief,
his father was not a good landlord, because he was too indulgent to
the individual and too heedless of national welfare, ignoring the
highest duty of the employer, maximum production through competitive
examination. As to his own college record:[153]

“Some of the most useless persons--especially narrow-minded and
bigoted--have acquired far higher honours at the university than
have fallen to my lot.”

And then, after a brilliant Schopenhauerish conclusion, he drinks to
their very good healths.

Thus launched, the meditative young man continues in a career of ironic
candor, although he learns later the wisdom of being candid only with
oneself at times, and less communicative to others; as for instance
when he soliloquizes on a request by farmer Saunderson:[154]

“One can’t wonder why every small man thinks it so pleasant to
let down a big one, when a father asks a stranger to let down
his own son for even fancying that he is not small beer. It
is upon that principle in human nature that criticism wisely
relinquishes its pretensions as an analytical science, and
becomes a lucrative profession. It relies on the pleasure its
readers find in letting a man down.”

Dr. Shrapnel is a sad and tragic figure, bowed by an altruistic grief
at the state of human affairs, yet over his clouded sky play some sharp
lightning flashes; witness his vivid simile describing the Tories, thus
reported:[155]

“He compares them to geese claiming possession of the whole
common, and hissing at every foot of ground they have to yield.
They’re always having to retire and always hissing. ‘Retreat and
menace,’ that’s the motto for them.”

There are a few characters remaining who cannot be omitted from this
group of witty satirists, who do not quite belong to any of the above
classes, and who do have a common bond, though only the artificial one
of femininity. They must therefore be mentioned as Women; Mrs. Poyser
being summoned for a second enrollment, and Mrs. Cadwallader added.
It is true that their animadversions are largely directed against
some faults in the prevailing system of courtship, marriage, and a
masculine-managed universe, but not exclusively so, nor are they the
only critics of those subjects.

Two others besides George Eliot have made a single but notable
contribution to this list, Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë. Rebecca
Sharp is too well known to need more than appreciative mention. Shirley
Keeldar is interesting as being what the author’s “sister Emily
might have been.” She is a spicily sweet, lovable character, clearly
presented both in action and in such touches of description as,[156]

“* * * ever ready to satirize her own or any other person’s
enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a
chance of rendering good service.”

She converses with her friend Caroline about literature:[157]

“Milton was great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was
his heart? * * * Milton tried to see the first woman; but, Cary,
he saw her not. * * * It was his cook that he saw; or it was
Mrs. Gill, * * * preparing a cold collation for the rectors. * *
* I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were
Titans, and that Eve was their mother.”

In a spirited speech to Uncle Sympson, who craved to get rid of the
exasperating minx by disposing of her in respectable matrimony, she
baits and badgers him until his feeble intellect is nearly shattered,
ideas outraged, temper twisted beyond repair. No Victorian young niece
should say to an elderly conventional guardian:[158]

“Your god, sir, is the World. * * * Your great Bel, your
fish-tailed Dagon. * * * See him busied at the work he likes
best--making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the
strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius
and fetters the dead to the living.”

The novelist most admittedly generous to women is Meredith, and we have
him to thank for Margaret Lovell, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, Diana
Warwick, and Clara Middleton, with Mrs. Berry as a sort of compromise
between Mrs. Poyser and Mrs. Tulliver. Yet they do not any more than
live up to their boasted reputations, as dainty rogues in porcelain,
famous epigrammatists, the quoted astonishment of drawing-rooms.[159]

The real Victorian Shakespeare in the matter of women is Trollope. Not
entirely unworthy of the sisterhood of Beatrice, Viola, and Portia, are
Miss Dunstable, Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, and Violet Effingham; Madeline
Stanhope might be added as a village Cleopatra.

Lily Dale is plaintively sympathetic on the subject of the sorrows of
men through the vexations of their amusements:[160]

“Women must amuse themselves, except for an annual treat or
two. But the catering for men’s sport is never ending, and is
always paramount to everything else. And yet the pet game of the
day never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges
are wild and won’t come to be killed. In hunting time, the
foxes won’t run straight,--the wretches. They show no spirit,
and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a
nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always
rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for
salmon,--when the summer comes round I do really believe that
they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I am sure they never
catch any. So they go back to their clubs and their cards, and
abuse their cooks and blackball their friends.”

As to the adorable, captivating kind, she is not too sanguine:[161]

“The Apollos of the world * * * who are so full of feeling, so
soft-natured, so kind, who never say a cross word, who never get
out of bed on the wrong side in the morning,--it so often turns
out that they won’t wash.”

Of Lucy Robarts Trollope himself speaks with justifiable pride, and
says he does not see “how any character could be more natural than
she.” She is indeed a sunny, breezy, English maid, endowed with charm,
enterprise, and a resourcefulness that could outwit with dignity the
titled dowager who did not want to be her mother-in-law. But her chief
distinction, in which she is more unusual than “natural,” is the
possession of that kind of humor defined by Howells as “the cry of
pain of a well-bred man.” When her pride is wounded, her love baffled,
her happiness apparently shipwrecked, her course of action made most
difficult, she is able to say to her sister:[162]

“Fanny, you have no idea what an absolute fool I am, what an
unutterable ass. The soft words of which I tell you were of the
kind which he speaks to you when he asks you how the cow gets
on which he sent you from Ireland, or to Mark about Ponto’s
shoulder. * * *

“He is no hero. There is nothing on earth wonderful about him. I
never heard him say a single word of wisdom, or utter a thought
that was akin to poetry. He devotes all his energies to riding
after a fox or killing poor birds, and I never heard of his
doing a single great action in my life. And yet * * *”

In tears and breathless excitement she admits the strength and reality
of her love, and continues with the diagnosis:

“I’ll tell you what he has: he has fine straight legs, and a
smooth forehead, and a good-humoured eye, and white teeth. Was
it possible to see such a catalogue of perfections, and not fall
down, stricken to the very bone? But it was not that that did it
all, Fanny. I could have stood against that, I think I could, at
least. It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a
lord before.”

But she is also obliged to acknowledge that she has done some injustice
to her own romance and to the sincerity of Lord Lufton:[163]

“Well, it was not a dream. Here, standing here, on this very
spot--on that flower of the carpet--he begged me a dozen times
to be his wife. I wonder whether you and Mark would let me cut
it out and keep it.”

No solution to her matrimonial problem being offered, she suggests
one:[164]

“‘And what shall I do next?’ said Lucy, still speaking in a tone
that was half tragic and half jeering.

“‘Do?’ said Mrs. Robarts.

“‘Yes, something must be done. If I were a man I could go to
Switzerland, of course; or, as the case is a bad one, perhaps
as far as Hungary. What is it that girls do? they don’t die
now-a-days, I believe. * * * I have got a piece of sackcloth,
and I mean to wear that, when I have made it up.’”

We are relieved to hear later that no such drastic action was
necessary, as she became Lady Lufton and was able to be happy without
overworking her sense of humor.

These instances may serve to indicate the general method and effect of
so-called realism applied to satiric intent, so long as allowance is
made for the unreal and distorted nature of all incomplete and isolated
cases, butchered to make an analytic holiday.

CHAPTER III

THE IRONIC

The science of Esthetics is a tribute to our zeal in attempting to
define the indefinable word beauty. Nearly as elusive of categoric
bondage is _irony_; but for its capture no formal scientific crusade
has as yet been organized. It is, however, whether in spite of its
vagueness or because of it, a term of great and increasing popularity.
No phrase is at present more of a general favorite than “The Irony
of Fate,” no exclamation more frequent than “How ironic!” In this
expressive and impressive utterance there is as much individual
variation of meaning as in “How beautiful!” And it coexists with as
much possibility of a standardized conception. What the latter may be,
it is the business of the student of the subject to try to determine.

The etymology and early usage of the word are familiar enough.
Generically, to the ancient Greeks, irony meant dissimulation in
speech; specifically, that form of dissimulation used by Socrates for
the confusion of his dialectic opponent, consisting on the part of the
wise man of an assumption of ignorance which longed for enlightenment.
On this bated hook were caught the unwary who pretended to wisdom
the while they had it not, lured by flattering inquiry to a fatal
communicativeness.

In its present status the term has two fairly distinct divisions,
characterized by Bishop Thirwall, in his essay on the Irony of
Sophocles, as the _verbal_ and the _practical_. The former is the
rhetorical device whereby a certain idea or circumstance is implied by
its statement in terms to the contrary or to the opposite effect. The
latter is the contrast between the real and apparent state of things,
or between the expected and the eventual, commonly described as the
Irony of Fate. A third form, the kind known as dramatic irony, might
be mentioned, though it is really a subdivision of cosmic irony.[165]
For the actor makes his blunders and gets into his predicaments through
ignorance; and this discrepancy between his notion of things and their
actuality adds zest to the enjoyment of the spectator, who is in the
secret. So the great unseen Spectator is conceived to observe the stage
of the world, and derive the amusement of superior knowledge from that

“Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth himself contrive, enact, behold.”

Among these varieties, and between all of them and the original
meaning, there must be enough common ground to account for the
persistence of the terminology through the centuries, allowing for
the divergence natural to a slow and half conscious evolution. This
common ground of denotation is of course dissimulation, whether in the
restricted field of knowledge, or the complete reversal of statement
and intention, or the specious show of things whereby we are deluded
into an erroneous supposition or a false sense of security. But this
simple matter of deception is enveloped in an atmosphere of connotation
that is charged with complication and subtlety.

The ironic habit of speech is a sign of a mind imaginative and averse
to the obvious. Its indulgence indicates a love of concealment,
from æsthetic motives, and a corresponding abhorrence of flat, naïve
exposure. The ironist has taken the veil of covertness to protect
himself from the garish overt day.[166] Its reception, on the other
hand, is an equally sure indicator of disposition. For it is beloved
of its own kin, deep answering unto deep, and distrusted by the alien
with a repulsion as strong as that of the subtle for the simple. To
understand or not to understand the ironic is an acid test of the
literal mind. An apposite reference to this fact is found in a comment
on one of our novelists.[167]

“Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature,
by the ironical method; and tell the humourist, with an air of
moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or
in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Mr. Disraeli’s novels
must be a standing offense, for it is his most characteristic
peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other is
imperceptible.”

Another reason for the prejudice against ironic language may be that it
is popularly supposed to emanate from a caustic soul, with leanings
toward cynicism; an error due to a narrow identification of irony with
its extreme right wing,--sarcasm, which is indeed, as its etymology
would signify, a flesh-tearing, or at least heart-rending, performance,
belonging, as Bishop Hall would say, to the toothed division of satire.

But on the extreme left sits banter, entirely amiable and even
affectionate. “You scamp, you rascal, you young villain!” is a favorite
way of expressing parental pride and tenderness. Reticent youth
apostrophizes his cherished friend as an “old fraud.” “Philosophic
irony,” says Anatole France, “is indulgent and gentle.”[168] And
Symonds[169] describes Ariosto as watching “the doings of humanity
with a genial half smile, an all pervasive irony that had no sting
in it.” Ranging thus from the playful to the ferocious, irony is at
its best when not too near either margin, having in itself more point
than banter and more polish than sarcasm. “They are all,” says another
critic,[170] “with others of the family, in the regular service of
Satire.”

The metaphor of service may be allowed, in that satire, being the
largest and most general type, includes the others. The relationship
may be stated more literally by saying that irony is the form of
humorous criticism which is expressed through innuendo, partly because
of preference for verbal inversion, and partly in recognition of the
topsy-turvydom of life. All irony is therefore satirical, though not
all satire is ironical. The ironist conveys his own point of view by
stating another’s, condemning by appearing to approve, or _vice
versa_. Boisterousness and didacticism are foreign to irony and not
to be feared so long as it is dominant. Perfection in its employment
indicates that complete self-control which is supposed to be a
patrician trait.

This does not mean, however, that ironic usage or attitude has been
confined to the upper social stratum as its special prerogative.
Nietzsche may indeed exclaim, “We should look upon the needs of the
masses with ironic compassion: they want something which we have
got--Ah!” But these compassionated masses have themselves been capable
of the retort ironic, and have had also their spokesmen, from Lucian
to Galsworthy. In _The Cock_, Lucian gives an ironic enumeration of
the dangers and troubles of the rich and powerful, and displays the
advantage of being poor and obscure. In _The Ferry_, Mycellus, the
cobbler, voices an ironic lament on leaving life, and parodies the
regrets of the wealthy:[171]

“Oh, dear, dear! My shoe-soles! Oh! My old boots! Oh! What
will become of my rotten sandals? Alas, poor wretch that I am,
I shall no longer go without food from early morning until
evening, nor in winter time walk barefoot and half naked, my
teeth chattering from the cold. Ah, me! Who, forsooth, is going
to have my shoemaker’s knife and my awl?”

As manner of speech is but a reflection of manner of thought, it is
evident that the ironist is not sufficiently accounted for as a devotee
of a certain verbal device. This, on the contrary, is only an external
manifestation of something more subjective and permanent,--a mood or
an attitude which may enlarge into a definite interpretation of life.
Of this interpretation the keynote is that Fate is ironical. In its
unmitigated form this philosophy declares that there is a deviltry
that misshapes our ends, construct them how we will. It is more often
found, however, in a modified creed which admits that the presence of
this perverse element in existence does not prove that all life is of
the same piece; that the mad pranks are those of destiny’s underlings,
dressed in a little brief authority, and not perpetrated by the ruler
of the universe.

Such speculations lead into the realm of religion, and religion has
had to provide a place in its pantheon for this spirit of disastrous
caprice. There it lurks under various guises. Baal may fall asleep or
go on a journey at a time most inauspicious for his followers. The
behavior of the Olympians quite justifies the debate between Timocles
and Damis, reported by Lucian, as to the theocratic mismanagement
of the world. Setebos slays and saves with an eye single to the
bewilderment of the human puppets. The presiding goddess in The House
of Fame rewards and punishes with a similar unaccountability. “The
gods,” says Smollett[172] “not yet tired with sporting with the farce
of human government, were still resolved to show by what inconsiderable
springs a mighty empire may be moved.” Sport is a need also of the
President of the Immortals, and where so agreeably found as in
undermining the patient structure of poor little Tess, and bringing it
to the ground with a splendid crash?

The essence of an ironic circumstance lies in its apparently wanton
thwarting by a narrow margin of a normal sequence in itself logical and
desirable, or in an imposition of calamity on the same exasperating
terms. Either it frustrates not merely what might have been but
what almost was, or it brings to pass the disaster that was almost
averted. It might come under the simpler caption of bad luck, except
that not all bad luck is ironic; only a particular brand of it. Irony
is the obverse side of that happy concatenation of events which we
approvingly designate as Providential. The favoring and therefore the
rational and commendable happening is an act of special providence.
The contrary comes from the malicious mischief of the Aristophanes of
Heaven.

In literature the ironic temper has acquitted itself with distinguished
success. Among its contributions one recalls _The Dinner of
Trimalchio_, _The Golden Ass_ (and the medieval Burnellus), _Letters
of Obscure Men_, _Praise of Folly_, _Gargantua_, _Don Quixote_, _The
Gull’s Hornbook_, _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, _A Modest Proposal_,
_The Shortest Way with Dissenters_, _Candide_, _Jonathan Wild_, _Murder
as a Fine Art_, _Castle Rackrent_, _Northanger Abbey_, _The Fair
Haven_. A glance at the list shows the versatile nature of irony both
as to form and idea, though its history taken as a whole has shown
more predilection for the romantic than for the realistic method. It
is an ingredient in all burlesque and caricature, and is on the other
hand least necessary to an explicit presentation of reality, however
full this last may be of implicit irony. Its consistent practice is
to deceive, and this can more easily be accomplished through fantasy
and symbolism. When, however, it is accomplished by more demure and
disarming means, the deception is more thorough just because of taking
the reader unaware. One is on guard against any form of the symbolic,
knowing that some suspicious thing is therein concealed. But who would
think of questioning a collection of letters, an essay or a treatise?
Yet these are the culprits guilty of ruthlessly hoodwinking the
trusting literal mind.

Ulrich von Hutten’s _Epistolæ_ were edited by Maittaire, and the
edition reviewed by Steele (whom we should not expect to be caught
napping), both taking them seriously. Defoe’s pilloried renown is
well known. Butler’s work “in Defense of the Miraculous Element in Our
Lord’s Ministry upon Earth,” was solemnly greeted by the reviewers as a
champion of orthodoxy, and sent by Canon Ainger to a friend he wished
to convert. Swift and De Quincey have been condemned for abuse of
children and encouragement of crime.

Misunderstanding of this sort is a triumph for irony, a test of
success. But there are also signs of a misapprehension of the ironic
disposition, especially as related to the satiric. Of this conception
two modern critics afford examples. In the Introduction to his
_Defoe_, Masefield remarks,--

“An ironical writer has always nobility of soul; a satirist has
seldom any quality save greater baseness than his subject. An
ironical writer knows the good; a satirist need only know the
evil.”

The superb eulogy of the first statement may be dismissed as a bit
of rhetoric, but the doom pronounced in its corollary, is based on
a double confusion; first between the ironist and the humorist, and
second between the satirist and the misanthrope. In a recent discussion
the same fallacy is promulgated at greater length:[173]

“The satirist is the aggressive lawyer, fastening upon
particular people and particular qualities. But irony is no more
personal than the sun that sends his flaming darts into the
world. The satirist is a purely practical man, with a business
instinct, bent on the main chance and the definite object. He is
often brutal, and always overbearing; the ironist, never. Irony
may wound from the very fineness and delicacy of the attack, but
the wounding is incidental. The sole purpose of the satirist and
the burlesquer is to wound; and they test their success by the
deepness of the wound. But irony tests its own by the amount of
generous light and air it has set flowing through an idea or
a personality, and the broad significance it has revealed in
neglected things.”

The only pertinent reply to such eloquence is one that may seem
impertinent, namely, to refer the special pleader to a useful principle
in argument greatly favored by a certain canny Greek dialectician, and
quaintly restated in the eighteenth century:[174]

“If once it was expected by the Public that Authors should
strictly _define_ their Subjects, it would instantly cheque
an Innundation of Scribbling. The _desultory_ Manner of
Writing would be absolutely exploded; and Accuracy and Precision
would be necessarily introduced upon every Subject. * * * If
Definitions had been constantly expected from Authors there
would not have appeared one hundredth Part of the present Books,
and yet every Subject had been better ascertained.”

Irony, it is true, is defined by the essayist as “the science of
comparative experience,” but this attempt to fit a philosophic giant to
the bed of his smaller ironic brother meets with the usual Procrustian
result. As for the tribute to irony, a far more impressive one is paid
in the almost casual utterance of Lamb, who makes it the climax of his
enumeration of the blessings vouchsafed to mortality,--“and _irony
itself_--do these things go out with life?”

In Victorian fiction the presence of this element is found very much as
it is in life, unobstrusive but easily detectable. What Saintsbury says
of Jane Austen would apply in varying degrees to her successors:[175]

“Precisely to what extent the attractive quality of this art is
enhanced by the pervading irony of the treatment would be a very
difficult problem to work out. It is scarcely hazardous to say
that irony is the very salt of the novel; and that just as you
put salt even in a cake, so it is not wise to neglect it wholly
even in a romance. Life itself, as soon as it gets beyond mere
vegetation, is notoriously full of irony; and no imitation of it
which dispenses with the seasoning can be worth much.”

This vital importance of what might be called negative value is
suggested by the juvenile’s definition of salt as “what makes your
potato taste bad if there isn’t any on it.” It is just this fact,
however, that allows the ironic to defy analysis. By itself one
spoonful of salt is very much like another. The whole secret is in the
combination. Its presence or absence gives one the immediate feeling of
the little more and how much it is, the little less and how far away.
But to segregate it for scrutiny is to destroy the charm of the savor.

Since such segregation must nevertheless be attempted for the
sake of the information it may yield, it seems advisable to keep
to the division already noted, and distinguish between verbal and
philosophical irony as they exist in the novel. These correspond in a
general way to the direct and the dramatic methods used in the larger
field of satire.

Of ironic language we find practically none in Reade, very little in
Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë, more frequent flashes in
Lytton and Disraeli, increasing still more in Dickens and Trollope. In
Peacock, Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Butler, it is more pervasive,
even when less in quantity, and representative of a consistent attitude.

As Mrs. Kirkpatrick-Gibson is Mrs. Gaskell’s favorite game, she
constantly exposes her to ironic self-betrayal, and finally allows
her disciplined husband the luxury of an ironic retort,--not in the
lady’s presence, of course, but by way of reply to his daughter Molly’s
anticipation of an orgy of freedom in her absence.[176]

“The doctor’s eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was
perfectly grave. ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and
labour I’ve reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be
pulled down again.’”

Kingsley and Brontë are both incapable of this quiet banter, and can
produce from their earnest souls only an awkward and angry sarcasm.

The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely are asking whether Shirley’s
expressive manner of singing can be proper.[177]

“Was it proper? * * * Decidedly not: it was strange, it was
unusual. What was _strange_ must be _wrong_; what was
_unusual_ must be _improper_. Shirley was judged.”

Alton Locke says of his own aspiration,[178]

“No doubt it was very self-willed and ambitious of me to do that
which rich men’s sons are flogged for not doing, and rewarded
with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships, for doing.”

But in the midst of his bitterness he stops to remark,

“I really do not mean to be flippant or sneering. I have seen
the evil of it as much as any man, in myself and in my own
class.”

The description in _Yeast_ of the fight between the squire’s retainers
and the London poachers, which results in the death of faithful old
Harry Verney, concludes with this comment,--characteristic in that it
breathes the spirit of irony but lacks its complete form.[179]

“And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim
and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and
the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept
quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his
wing. Oh! if the pheasants had but understanding, how they would
split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies
which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious
sake!”

That Lytton should gain in poise and subtlety in the forty-five years
intervening between _Pelham_ and _Kenelm Chillingly_ is to be expected,
although the progression is by no means a steady one. Some of his most
absurd sarcastic moralizing is found in _My Novel_, about midway in
time,--particularly on the March of Enlightenment, with a smart sketch
of half a dozen typical Marchers; and on liberal notions generally. And
in the youthful volume are some very good touches, as this concerning
his country uncle:[180]

“He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man: built
schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his
farmers’ rents; indeed, on account of these and similar
eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by
others.”

This pales perceptibly, however, by the side of Peacock’s firm and
vivid treatment of the same subject, embodied in Squire Crochet:[181]

“He could not become, like a true-born English squire, part
and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he could not find
in game-bagging, poacher-shooting, trespasser-pounding,
footpath-stopping, common-enclosing, rack-renting, and all
the other liberal pursuits and pastimes which make a country
gentleman an ornament to the world, and a blessing to the poor;
he could not find in these valuable and amiable occupations,
and in a corresponding range of ideas, nearly commensurate with
that of the great king Nebuchadnezzer, when he was turned out to
grass; he could not find in this great variety of useful action,
and vast field of comprehensive thought, modes of filling up his
time that accorded with his Caledonian instinct.”

This in turn is quite equaled by Kenelm’s coming-of-age speech, though
his indictment of the genus squire is couched in unironical satire. Not
that the youth was unacquainted with the uses of irony. At the age of
nine he had had occasion to send a letter to a schoolmate, conveying
his conviction of that lad’s lack of intelligence. He had heard his
father remark that a certain neighbor was an ass, and that he was
going to write and tell him so. He made inquiries into the matter of
phrasing such information. He received the following reply,--by which
he profited most effectively in his own correspondence:[182]

“But you can not learn too early this fact, that irony is to
the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one
gentleman thinks another gentleman is an ass, he does not say it
point-blank--he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.”

This principle is applied on a national scale in the discourse of the
intruder among the Vrilya, whose situation resembles that of Gulliver
eulogizing to the king of the Brobdingnagians the Institutions of
England, except that Lytton does not blunt his irony by relapsing into
plain terms, as Swift does in the “pernicious race of little odious
vermin.” The visitor waxes eloquent about America:[183]

“Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors
the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though
indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of
Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and
prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic,
in which Europe enviously sees its model and tremblingly
foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life
of the United States that city in which progress advances at
the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the
moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my
listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had
anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of
democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness
by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused
such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the
exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowest
citizens in point of property, education, and character.”

This is the ironic version of Matthew Arnold’s polished dubiety about
majorities in _Numbers_; and of the robustious satire of Dickens. If we
feel that Lytton excels the latter in pithy conciseness and allusive
point, we have to remember that he was at this time more than twice the
age of Dickens when _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was written, and that in the
intervening quarter century some improving changes had taken place in
their common object of satire.

Disraeli’s irony is less tangible and quotable. His favorite method is
to hint at the implication in a burlesque comparison; as in the opening
sentence of _The Young Duke_:[184]

“George Augustus Frederick, Duke of Saint James, completed
his twenty-first year, an event which created almost as great
a sensation among the aristocracy of England as the Norman
Conquest.”

Later his toilette is described in terms of a campaign, concluding,[185]

“He assumes the look, the air that befit the occasion: cordial,
but dignified; sublime, but sweet. He descends like a deity from
Olympus to a banquet of illustrious mortals.”

_Tancred_ is introduced by an epic of the _chefs_. Prevost is
discoursing to Leander (who will take no engagements but with crowned
heads), of their profession and of Adrien, a neophyte:[186]

“‘It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ added Prevost,
with the grand air of the Imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been for
Waterloo, I should have had the cross. But the Bourbons and the
cooks of the Empire never could understand each other. * * *

“‘He is too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his
head on the third day. I entrusted the souffles to him, and, but
for the most desperate personal exertions all would have been
lost. It was an affair of the bridge of Areola. * * * Ah! _mon
Dieu!_ those are moments!’”

Later the same functionary is scandalized at the diners’ neglect of his
colleague (shown in the failure to present him with tokens of esteem)
when he had surpassed himself in a superb dinner:[187]

“How can he compose when he is not appreciated? Had he
been appreciated he would today not only have repeated the
_escalopes a la Bellamont_, but perhaps even invented
what might have outdone it. * * * These things in themselves
are nothing; but they prove to a man of genius that he is
understood. Had Leander been in the Imperial kitchen, or even
with the emperor of Russia, he would have been decorated!”

It transpires, however, that the artist’s wounded feelings were soothed
by a belated acknowledgment, accompanied by a tactful hint that he
suffered in a good cause, and that as an esthetic missionary he should
be lenient to the social delinquencies of the barbarians he ministered
unto:[188]

“Was it nothing, by this development of taste, to assist in
supporting that aristocratic influence which he wished to
cherish, and which can alone encourage art?”

It is not to be supposed that this indicates the range of Disraeli’s
ideas, merely the subject on which he chiefly expends his ironic
persiflage. A representative example of his more serious sarcasm is
found in the second volume of his Young England Trilogy, the one most
alive with social sympathy:[189]

“Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in
England as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance
which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.”

In Dickens and Trollope irony is a substantial though not exactly an
integral element; more substantial in the former than the latter. We
find ironic comment both direct, by the writer, and indirect, through
ironic characters; and the still more indirect, in the betraying
speech that relates facts true in a different sense from that meant by
the speaker, thus conveying a reverse effect from the one intended.

A text for the first kind is furnished by Noah Claypole, the sordid
bully and snob, prompt to retaliate on one still lower in the scale of
circumstance than himself:[190]

“This affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us
what a charming thing human nature may be made to be; and how
impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the
finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.”

Another is the Chuzzlewit Family, introduced by a long prologue of
ironic symbolism. Specifically there is the eulogy of the head of the
present branch of it:[191]

“Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always
telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but these were
his enemies; the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.”

Later in his illustrious career, he is upheld in his holy horror at the
mercenary diplomacy of a landlady. Mr. Pecksniff rebukes,--

“Oh, Baal, Baal! Oh my friend, Mrs. Todgers! To barter away
that precious jewel, self-esteem, and cringe to any mortal
creature--for eighteen shillings a week!”

And Dickens echoes,[192]

“Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, they censure,
upright Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star,
or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man’s smile, a seat in
parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword; a
place, a party, or a thriving lie, or eighteen thousand pounds,
or even eighteen hundred,--but to worship the golden calf for
eighteen shillings a week! Oh pitiful, pitiful!”

Two more characteristic instances may be cited. The first is concerning
the failure of the firm of Dombey and Son.[193]

“The world was very busy now, forsooth, and had a deal to say.
It was an innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was
a world in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever.
There were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide
on rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There
was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on
which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay great
sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings
anywhere, in anything but money. The world was very angry
indeed; and the people especially who, in a worse world, might
have been supposed to be bankrupt traders themselves in shows
and pretenses, were observed to be mightily indignant.”

The second is anent the Whelp, Tom Gradgrind.[194]

“It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been
brought up under the continuous system of unnatural restraint,
should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom.
It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been
left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should
be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with
Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman
whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be
still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling
sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.”

In character we have a range from the vulgar, vigorous sarcasm of
Mr. Panks[195] to the languid patrician banter of Sir John Chester,
exercised on the uncomprehending Sim Tappertit and Gabriel Varden.
There are also ironic touches in the two heroes, Martin Chuzzlewit and
David Copperfield.

The most delightful pictures of those who entertain irony unaware are
Mr. Bumble, Mr. Squeers, Mr. Turveydrop, Mrs. Skewton, Mrs. Nickleby,
and Mrs. Pardiggle.

Entrenched in wisdom, these philosophers all enunciate profound truths
about life.

The beadle discovers the illimitable vistas of human desires, together
with the unreasonable expectation of having them gratified. He laments
the ingratitude of the pauper who, in antiparochial weather, having
been granted bread and cheese, has the audacity to ask for a bit of
fuel.[196]

“That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give ’em a apron full
of coals today, and they’ll come back for another, the day after
tomorrow, as brazen as alabaster.”

The pedagogue learns that parental prejudice sometimes extends to
an extravagant pampering of offspring, even carried so far as an
absurd opposition to wholesome discipline. Summoned to London on some
bothering law business for what was called the neglect of a boy, he
explains to the sympathetic Ralph Nickleby that the lad had as good
grazing as there was to be had.[197]

“When a boy gets weak and ill and don’t relish his meals, we
give him a change of diet--turn him out, for an hour or so
every day, into a neighbor’s turnip-field, or sometimes, if
it’s a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots
alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t
better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and
yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and
then his friends brings a lawsuit against _me_!”

The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts,
inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a
_succes d’estime_, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of
a stupid public.[198]

“It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some
years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness,
the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing
my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine
building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know
him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are
little matters of anecdote--the general property, ma’am,--still
repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”

The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather
than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware
of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly
star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her
son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.[199]

“But that was always the way with your poor dear papa,--just his
way--always wandering, never able to fix his thoughts on any
one subject for two minutes together. I think I see him now! *
* * looking at me while I was talking to him about his affairs,
just as if his ideas were in a state of perfect conglomeration!
Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed
I was confusing and distracting him instead of making things
plainer; upon my word they would.”

Mrs. Skewton and Mrs. Pardiggle have solved the secret of a happy
life, but by different ways. The former perceives it to spring from
scholarship vivified by enthusiasm for the fascinating perspectives of
history.[200]

“Those darling bygone times, Mr. Carker, * * * with their
delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their
delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances,
and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that
makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated. *
* * We have no faith in the dear old barons, who were the most
delightful creatures--or in the dear old priests, who were the
most warlike of men--or even in the days of that inestimable
Queen Bess, which were so extremely golden! Dear creature! She
was all heart! And that charming father of hers! I hope you dote
on Henry the Eighth!”

The latter, on the other hand, lives in the present, is attuned to the
_carpe diem_ idea, and realizes the joy of self-expression and the
exhilaration of labor.[201]

“I freely admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I
enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed
and inured to hard work, that I don’t know what fatigue is. * *
* This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds.
If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I
tell that person directly, ‘I am incapable of fatigue, my good
friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on till I have done.’
It answers admirably!”

In contrast to the various methods of Dickens, Trollope practically
confines himself to direct comment. His favorite topics are politics
and society. As to the former, radical iconoclasm is described in the
person of Mr. Turnbull.[202]

“Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with
generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called
upon either to study details or to master even great facts. * *
* Mr. Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms
of that inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition.”

The always useful ironic device of simply delineating one’s objects
with brushes and colors of their own, of presenting them as they see
themselves, is used in one episode both on an institution and an
individual. The Press reacts to the appointment of a scoundrel to the
Cabinet.[203]

“The _Jupiter_, with withering scorn, had asked whether vice
of every kind was to be considered, in these days of Queen
Victoria, as a passport to the cabinet. Adverse members of both
Houses had arrayed themselves in a pure panoply of morality, and
thundered forth their sarcasms with the indignant virtue and
keen discontent of political Juvenals.”

Nevertheless, the new incumbent enjoys his emoluments.[204]

“Now, as he stood smiling on the hearthrug of his official
fireplace, it was quite pleasant to see the kind, patronizing
smile which lighted up his features. He delighted to stand
there, with his hands in his trousers pocket, the great man of
the place, conscious of his lordship, and feeling himself every
inch a minister.”

With reference to what was then a new policy of administration, he
employs ironic exhortation.[205]

“Let every place in which a man can hold up his head be the
reward of some antagonistic struggle, of some grand competitive
examination. Let us get rid of the fault of past ages. With
us, let the race be ever to the swift, and victory always to
the strong. And let us always be racing, so that the swift and
strong shall ever be known among us. But what, then, for those
who are not swift, not strong? _Væ victis_! Let them go to
the wall. They can hew wood, probably; or, at any rate, draw
water.”

The thing in society which Trollope apparently finds most open to
ironic treatment is the commercializing of marriage. In one place this
takes the form of sage advice.[206]

“There is no doubt but that the privilege of matrimony offers
opportunities to money loving young men which ought not to be
lightly abused. Too many young men marry without giving any
consideration to the matter whatever. * * * A man can be young
but once, and, except in cases of a special interposition of
Providence, can marry but once. The chance, once thrown away,
may be said to be irrecoverable. * * * Half that trouble, half
that care, a tithe of that circumspection would, in early youth,
have probably secured to them the enduring comforts of a wife’s
wealth. * * * There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable
as that of matrimony; that is, of course, provided that the
aspirant declines the slow course of honest work.”

However, in default of golden attractions, a wife may have other
assets. Griselda Grantly had neither houses nor land, neither title nor
position. But Lord Dumbello had all these, and needed only a lay figure
for lovely clothes to grace his establishment; the more icily regular
and splendidly null, the better.[207]

“But a handsome woman at the head of your table, who knows
how to dress and how to sit, and how to get in and out of her
carriage--who will not disgrace her lord by her ignorance, or
fret him by her coquetry, or disparage him by her talent--how
beautiful a thing it is! For my own part I think that Griselda
Grantly was born to be the wife of a great English peer.”

It is comforting to know that in the midst of these lofty circles the
daughter of the archdeacon did not lose the virtue of humility; for we
read in a subsequent narrative:[208]

“But, now and again, since her august marriage, she had laid her
coronated head upon one of the old rectory pillows for a night
or two, and on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been
loud in praise of her condescension.”

The difference between the novelists just discussed and the remaining
half of the list, in the use of irony, is more easily perceived than
defined. It can only be suggested by metaphor. Confectionery may be
flavored, for instance with citron in lumps or liquid peppermint.
It is evident that the former is more visible and detachable, but
that the latter affects more pervasively the quality of the product.
In the concoctions already mentioned, from Lytton to Trollope, it
is easy enough to stick in one’s thumb and pull out a plum. All the
plums being pulled out, the character of the remaining portion would
not be radically changed. But peppermint cannot be extracted except
by a process of chemical dissolution; and if it could, the taste of
the whole would be altered. Yet it is not patent to eye or finger,
though not wanting in stimulus to other senses. These two ingredients,
however, are not mutually exclusive. The permeated may also be
sufficiently glomerate to permit of some dissection; only the operation
is less fully explanatory of the whole.

For example, we may extract from Peacock his description of the Abbey
of Rubygill, situated--[209]

“* * * in a spot which seemed adapted by nature to be the
retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine
trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding
with excellent game.”

Or of the sword of Matilda, which went--[210]

“* * * nigh to fathom even that extraordinary depth of brain
which always by divine grace furnishes the interior of a
head-royal.”

Or the reply of Mr. Cypress to Dr. Folliott’s statement of the
Brotherhood of Man:[211]

“Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the thief; the squire of the
poacher; the judge of the libeller; the lawyer of his client;
the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of the
bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro: as these are
brethren, so am I and the worthies in question.”

But this would give little idea of Peacock’s prevailing attitude,--a
cheerfully sardonic amusement at the state of human affairs, expressed
most frequently by means of an ironic juxtaposition of Past and Present.

Less cheerful and more sardonic is the smile with which Butler greets
life and its follies. He is classed with Peacock as a romanticist in
method, but is more akin to Swift in temper and manner than to any
Victorian. The reader’s mind must be kept taut in the constant process
of translating the assumed pose into the real meaning. Under the grave
disapproval of the Erewhonian treatment of disease or any misfortune,
and crime, each being discussed in the terms we apply to the other,
lurks the reversed judgment. Nothing short of complete presentation,
especially of the chapters on Current Opinions, Some Erewhonian
Trials, The Musical Banks, and The Colleges of Unreason, could convey
an adequate impression.

A representative sample, however, is found in the retort of the judge
who pronounces sentence on the youth “charged with having been swindled
out of a large property during his minority by his guardian.” The
defendant puts up the plea natural under the circumstances, and is
promptly instructed not to talk nonsense:[212]

“People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe
of their guardians, and without independent professional advice.
If by such indiscretions they outrage the moral sense of their
friends, they must expect to suffer accordingly.”

Later a thorough exposition of this legal philosophy is given in a
long judicial oration preceding the doom of a prisoner found guilty
of pulmonary consumption. A few excerpts show the trend of the
argument.[213]

“It is all very well for you to say that you came of unhealthy
parents, and had a severe accident in your childhood which
permanently undermined your constitution; excuses such as these
are the ordinary refuge of the criminal; but they cannot for one
moment be listened to by the ear of justice. * * * There is no
question of how you came to be wicked, but only this--namely,
are you wicked or not? * * * It is intolerable that an example
of such terrible enormity should be allowed to go at large
unpunished. Your presence in the society of respectable people
would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly of all
forms of illness; * * * A time of universal dephysicalization
would ensue; medicine vendors of all kinds would abound in our
streets and advertise in all our newspapers. * * * If you tell
me that you had no hand in your parentage and education, * * * I
answer that whether your being in a consumption is your fault or
no, it is a fault in you, and it is my duty to see that against
such faults as this the commonwealth shall be protected. You may
say that it is your misfortune to be criminal; I answer that it
is your crime to be unfortunate.”

This is a fit successor to the marvelous “Let no man” conclusion to the
_Modest Proposal_.

Another unomittable instance is the account of a religious reformation.
The visitor hints to a Musical Bank manager that the popular reliance
on that currency was rather perfunctory, and that the other financial
system, ostensibly flouted, was the real repository of coin and
confidence.[214]

“He said that it had been more or less true till lately, but
that now they had put fresh stained glass windows into all the
banks in the country, and repaired the buildings, and enlarged
the organs; the presidents, moreover, had taken to riding in
omnibuses and talking nicely to people in the streets, and to
remembering the ages of their children, and giving them things
when they were naughty, so that all would henceforth go smoothly.

“‘But haven’t you done anything to the money itself?’ said I,
timidly.

“‘It is not necessary,’ he rejoined; ‘not in the least
necessary, I assure you.’”

One citation also from Butler’s novel is irresistible, particularly
as it reminds one of Trollope’s practical admonition to young
men contemplating matrimony. This is on the subject of domestic
discipline.[215]

“To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your
children that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most
children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as
models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep
sense of their own inferiority. You carry so many more guns
than they do that they cannot fight you. This is called moral
influence, and it will enable you to bounce them as much as
you please. * * * Say that you have their highest interests at
stake whenever you are out of temper and wish to make yourself
unpleasant by way of balm to your soul. Harp much upon these
highest interests.”

Thackeray is placed in the group of dyed-in-the-wool ironists mainly
because he does not belong in the other. One somehow acquires the
impression that ironic sayings will be plentiful as blackberries; but
when one actually goes berrying, he finds the crop strangely vanished.
Lacking the grave, dry, imperturbable manner and the consistently
preserved attitude, he cannot avoid the temptation of relapsing into
the literal and giving self-conscious explanations, as in _Barry
Lyndon_, and _Catherine_. This produces something of the effect of
Lydgate’s ironic titles,--_So as the Crabbe goeth forward_, and _As
Straight as a Ram’s Horn_,--followed by perfectly serious moralizing.
Probably nothing would astonish or distress Thackeray more than to have
his humor rated as the humor of Lytton, Reade, or Kingsley; nor would
this indeed be quite fair to him. Yet his lack of real spontaneity
classifies him with them rather than with Dickens or Trollope, and
his lack of finish and subtlety prevents him from being ranked with
Peacock, Eliot, Meredith or Butler. His ironic phrasing has too often
the flat, shallow sound of the man determined to be clever. Such, for
instance, is the comment on the plutocratic Miss Crawley:[216]

“She had a balance at the banker’s which would have made her
beloved anywhere. * * * What a dignity it gives an old lady,
that balance at the banker’s!”

Such also is this demolishing assault upon worldliness:[217]

“I, for my part, have known a five pound note to interpose and
knock up a half century’s attachment between two brethren; and
can’t but admire, as I think what a fine and durable thing Love
is among worldly people.”

And this upon a shoddy _noblesse oblige_:[218]

“I admire that admiration which the genteel world sometimes
extends to the commonalty. There is no more agreeable object in
life than to see May Fair folks condescending.”

When he gravely admonishes, it is as follows:[219]

“Praise everybody, I say to such; never be squeamish, but speak
out your compliment both point blank to a man’s face, and behind
his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his
hearing it again.”

The direct satire on Pitt Crawley as an undergraduate is given an
ironic fillip by another sting in the tail:[220]

“But though he had a fine flux of words, and delivered his
little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to himself, and
never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not perfectly
trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he
failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have
insured any man a success.”

Another successful bit,--this time the device of catching an unwary
character in an ironic trap,--is the account of Penn’s linguistic
proficiency. His friend Strong compliments him on speaking French like
Chateaubriand,--[221]

“‘I’ve been accustomed to it from my youth upwards,’ said Pen;
and Strong had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he
exploded into fits of hilarity which Pen has never, perhaps,
understood up to this day.”

In her preface to the second edition of _Jane Eyre_, Charlotte
Brontë said that Thackeray resembled Fielding “as an eagle does a
vulture;” and also compared the former to a Hebrew prophet. Putting
aside the injustice to Fielding (happily atoned for by the author of
_Middlemarch_, thereby restoring the average in feminine criticism)
one is moved to reply that if any Victorian shoulders received the
mantle of Elijah they were undoubtedly the firm-muscled ones of George
Eliot. Hers is the union of native, smoldering wit and tremendous moral
earnestness that marked the ancient Semitic race and reappeared in the
modern Saxon. The downright seriousness which constitutes her main mood
is tinctured but lightly with the ironic tone, but its pungency is well
distributed. Its appearance is characterized by brevity and frequency.
There are no long passages of sustained irony; and no very long ones
wholly devoid of it. It usually occurs in quiet, unostentatious
phrases, as in the description of the Raveloe philosophy, or of that
superior family whose daughters bloomed into the Mesdames Deane, Glegg,
Pullet, and Tulliver.

The cogitative Mr. Glegg, for instance, had a truly scientific attitude
toward the captious temper that enlivened his home,--[222]

“* * * it is certain that an acquiescent mild wife would have
left his meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.”

Mrs. Waule, on the other hand, was an acquiescent mild soul, and
accepted domestic frankness as in the order of nature,--[223]

“Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom
from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the
Almighty’s intentions about families.”

From this banter we pass to a bitter sarcasm that covers a burning
social sympathy in the account of the Florentine banquet, where
none could eat the tough, expensive peacock, but all gloried in the
extravagance of having it to play with,--[224]

“And it would have been rashness to speak slightingly of
peacock’s flesh, or any other venerable institution at a time
when Fra Girolamo was teaching the disturbing doctrine that it
was not the duty of the rich to be luxurious for the sake of the
poor.”

Irony is applied to two young men, with totally different purposes;
in one case it is directed against the youth himself; in the other,
against an anticipated criticism of his conduct.

Fred Vincy belongs to the class of which Algernon Blancove is the most
brilliant representative, and from which Evan Harrington made an early
escape. He is persuaded that he “wouldn’t have been such a bad fellow
if he had been rich.” But his destiny induces in him “a streak of
misanthropic bitterness.”[225]

“To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and the
inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such men as

Mainwaring and Vyan--certainly life was a poor business, when
a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of
everything, had so poor an outlook.”

Of contrasting caliber is Adam Bede, whose vision is turned outward and
even upward, instead of altogether inward; and whose survey causes a
feeling of modesty rather than injured conceit.[226]

“Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of rank,
and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to every one
who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher,
or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed
clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature,
which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he saw
very clear grounds for questioning them.”

George Eliot was held in high esteem by George Meredith; and the
two were indeed akin in outlook, and very much so in the matter of
ironic usage, in spite of their wide difference in general style. But
the Meredithian solution is at once more saturated and more subtle,
combined with greater uniformity of effect. This, however, does not
spell monotony, diversity being furnished by range of ideas and breadth
of subject-matter. Meredith has one ironic mold, but into it he pours a
procession of contents of great variety. The tone, it is unnecessary to
say, is undilutedly masculine; so is Eliot’s, except for the presence
of an element usually reckoned as feminine, and mentioned, by a curious
coincidence, in Meredith’s approving characterization of a French
writer. In making out his own preferred list with accompanying reason,
he cites Renan, “for a delicate irony scarcely distinguishable from
tenderness.”[227] In this quality Meredith was by no means lacking,
but his ironic mood was inclined to the caustic and merciless.

One of his devices is to substitute for the old mock-heroic a new
mock-syllogistic, more in accord with modern imagination. The great
doctrine of Natural Selection is applied to human courtship, as
exemplified by one of the Fittest.[228]

“Science thus--or it is better to say, an acquaintance
with science--facilitates the cultivation of aristocracy.
Consequently a successful pursuit and a wresting of her from a
body of competitors, tells you that you are the best man. What
is more, it tells the world so.

“Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in the eye of Miss
Middleton; he had a leg.”

Under the seductive opportunity of table talk Sir Willoughby again
falls a victim to the inductive method. This time he is airing his
opinion of the French, drawing an elaborate analogy from the character
of a national sample now officiating in the Patterne kitchen.
The general validity of his conclusion is admitted by his modest
secretary:[229]

“‘A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in
the vein of satire,’ said Vernon. ‘Be satisfied with knowing a
nation in the person of a cook.’”

But Sir Willoughby still has twin peaks of eminence to surmount: one he
achieves when he describes himself to Lætitia as a man of humor; and
the other when he warns Clara to beware of marrying an egoist.

Perhaps the two best understudies in egoism are Wilfred Pole and Victor
Radnor. Wilfred is satisfied with the talents and charm of his Emilia.
And yet[230]

“It was mournful to think that Circumstances had not at the same
time created the girl of noble birth, or with an instinct for
spiritual elegance. But the world is imperfect.”

Both have lofty conceptions of loyalty and sacrifice. In the case of
Wilfred,[231]

“He could pledge himself to eternity, but shrank from being
bound to eleven o’clock on the morrow morning.”

Victor is convinced of his love for Nataly,[232]

“And he tested it to prove it by his readiness to die for her:
which is heroically easier than the devotedly living, and has
a weight of evidence in our internal Courts for surpassing the
latter tedious performance.”

The occasion of the splendid housewarming at Lakelands is made into a
text on the perils of feminism. In a crowded hall--[233]

“Chivalry stood. It is a breeched abstraction, sacrificing
voluntarily and genially to the Fair, for a restoring of the
balance between the sexes, that the division of good things
be rather in the fair ones’ favor as they are to think: with
the warning to them, that the establishment of their claim for
equality puts an end to the priceless privileges of petticoats.
Women must be mad, to provoke such a warning; and the majority
of them submissively show their good sense.” (“With that innate
submissiveness,” speaks up George Eliot, “of the goose, so
beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander.”)

Another evidence of bewildering perversity is equally apposite to the
present moment of history. The Austrian Lieutenant Jenna is discoursing
on the Italians and the habit of the captured of spending their
enforced solitude in writing Memoirs:[234]

“My father said--the stout old Colonel--‘Prisons seem to make
these Italians take an interest in themselves.’ ‘Oh!’ says my
mother, ‘why can’t they be at peace with us?’ ‘That’s exactly
the question,’ says my father, ‘we’re always putting to them.’
And so I say. Why can’t they let us smoke our cigars in peace?”

But England does not lag behind in the matter of the application of the
intellect to practical questions. The country squires are excited over
the approach of the open game season; moreover,--[235]

“The entire land (signifying all but all of those who occupy the
situation of thinkers in it) may be said to have been exhaling
the same thought in connection with September. Our England holds
possession of a considerable portion of the globe, and it keeps
the world in awe to see her bestowing so considerable a portion
of intelligence upon her recreations. To prosecute them with her
whole heart is an ingenious exhibition of her power.”

It is naturally the fate of the active to suffer from Philistine
misapprehension, particularly when the activity is racial:[236]

“Foreigners pertinaciously misunderstand us. They have the
barbarous habit of judging by results. Let us know ourselves
better. It is melancholy to contemplate the intrigues, and vile
designs, and vengeances of other nations; and still more so,
after we have written so many pages of intelligible history, to
see them attributed to us. Will it never be perceived that we do
not sow the thing that happens?”

This rhetorical irony, which we have found so widely distributed, is
a sign of temperament at the most, and at the least only of habit,--a
mannerism of style. Philosophical irony, a sense of the irony of
life, is an indicator of character and the whole interpretation of
experience. The two kinds may or may not coincide. It happens, for
instance, that the two great ironists who inclose the Victorian period
like a pair of chronological brackets, illustrate them separately. Jane
Austen is habitually ironic in speech, but no novel of hers manifests
an idea of the irony of fate. Her situations are too simple, too
blandly logical, to be devised by a Destiny either impishly malicious
or cruelly malignant. But Thomas Hardy takes all his reasonable logic
and bland simplicity out in language. He seldom introduces the caustic
reflection. There is little of the acrid in the flavor of his style.
It is all poured into the story. The conditions he portrays convey
their own poignancy, and tell their own tale of gratuitous failure and
superfluous sacrifice.

Of this sharp impression of life as consisting of the nearly-achieved
or barely-failed, there are indications here and there in mid-century
fiction, but no thoroughgoing exponent, because none of that
unqualified pessimism which acknowledges irrationality as the presiding
genius of the world. It is natural that in Disraeli, Brontë, Kingsley,
circumstantial irony should be as snakes in Iceland; and that Lytton,
Gaskell, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, should furnish a pair of white
crows apiece. It is interesting though also not astonishing to find
that out of about three dozen culled examples, Peacock and Butler not
counted because they do not work in the medium of normal circumstance,
Meredith leads with nearly one-third the total amount, Eliot being
a close second, and Trollope a lagging third. Yet these three are
decidedly anti-ironic in general belief; shown both by actual testimony
and by implication. The former comes, as would be supposed, from
Meredith. Writing to a friend and alluding to the weakness of old age,
he says,--[237]

“We who have loved the motion of legs and the sweep of the
winds, we come to this. But for myself, I will own that it is
the natural order. There is no irony in Nature.”

In his last novel he gives a backhanded thrust at the ironic philosophy
in his favorite equivocal fashion:[238]

“We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when
some terrific event of the number at its disposal accomplishes
the thing and no more than the thing desired.”

In the same story the motive and emotion of the bridegroom is thus
described:[239]

“A sour relish of the irony in his present position sharpened
him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing:
* * * He had cried for Romance--here it was!”

But the author makes it clear that this irony is subjective. The
objective complement to it arrives later, and its real name is Nemesis.

Subjective also is it in the one account we have from George Eliot:[240]

“But anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human
lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on
another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference
or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced
neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our _dramatis
personæ_ folded in her hand.”

That is, our ignorance makes a dramatic irony out of a situation in
itself a link in the logical chain of cause and effect.

The implication that to the Victorians life is on the whole rational
rather than ironic is made by the fact that the ironic situations are
incidental, and the conclusions are based on poetic justice, whether
happy or tragic, and not on ironic injustice. It may be worth noting
that these various situations seem divisible into three or four
classes, and that such division serves to bring some order out of the
chaos of their multiplicity.

There is first the irony already mentioned as dramatic, where ignorance
is not bliss. Such is the case in Lytton’s _Alice_, when Maltravers
falls in love with his own unknown daughter, an Œdipean tragedy being
averted by timely information. A similar relationship with opposite
effect is that of Harold Transome, exasperating with warnings of
exposure the slippery scoundrel Jermyn, until he forces the incredible
exposure of his own social position. Even more ironic is that behavior
which in ignorant zeal precipitates the very calamity it strives to
avoid. Thus does Mrs. Tulliver, “a hen taking to reflection on how
to prevent Hodge from wringing her neck,” when she adroitly tries to
persuade Wakem not to buy the Mill, thereby putting the notion of doing
it into his head. Lady Glencora, in _Phineas Finn_, pleading with
Madame Max not to marry the Duke of Omnium, unaware of her already
made decision not to do so, very nearly meets with the same kind of
gratuitous failure. Of a different order is the use of secret knowledge
to extract an advantage from the ignorant adversary who misunderstands
the allusions; as Sandra Belloni, arousing Mr. Pole’s enthusiasm for
her as a daughter-in-law, good enough for any man indeed,--except his
unsuspected self, who was the only one desired. At three fine banquets
dramatic irony sits as an unwelcome guest: at Arthur Donnithorne’s
birthday feast, where the warm tribute paid him by Adam Bede and Mr.
Poyser would have turned to ashes in their mouths had they known the
truth; at Mr. Vane’s dinner for Peg Woffington, at which his innocent
wife appears just in time to assume all the honors to herself; and at
the Jocelyn party, where the daughters of the great Mel have him to
digest.

Another sort of irony comes from the reversed wheel of fortune. This
is also dramatic, being in fact the keynote of the mediæval idea of
tragedy, though all such reversal is not ironic. Authur Clennam in
the Marshalsea might be an instance, albeit less perfect than William
Dorrit fancying himself there when he was really in the perfectly
appointed Merdle dining room. There is a double reversal of expectation
that turns Fred Vincy into a passable success, through being cheated
out of his legacy, while Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate are
thwarted into comparative failure. Another subdivision is that
complete fall in which the victim does, and gladly, the thing he has
previously sworn he would in no wise ever do; witness Sir Willoughby in
triumph over the winning of the lady with brains, afterward to learn
“the nature of that possession in the woman who is our wife.”

Then there is the granted desire; as if mother Fate hearing her
children beg for poisoned candy said, Well, take it then, and see how
you like it. Lady Mason, in _Orley Farm_, Mrs. Transome, Sir Richard
Feverel, are all devoted parents who are allowed to have their own
way in plans for their children, and merely asked to abide by the
consequences. The death of Raffles comes most opportunely for Mr.
Bulstrode, and seals his doom.

The irony of the lost opportunity is hard to distinguish from just
retribution. Philip Beaufort, killed on his way to a belated deed of
duty to his family; Trollope’s Claverings and Bertrams; Godfrey Cass,
Lord Fleetwood, Edward Blancove, all are made to feel the ironic
undercurrent of that water the mill will never grind with, because it
has passed.

In addition to these _exempla_, attention might be called to a trio of
ironic titles: _Great Expectations_, _Beauchamp’s Career_, and _One of
Our Conquerers_.

Though all the novelists indulge at times in the use of irony, Meredith
alone offers a definition. In one place in the _Essay on Comedy_,
he characterizes it as the honeyed sting which leaves the victim in
doubt as to having been hurt. In another, he expands the idea:

“Irony is the humour of satire; it may be savage as in Swift,
with a moral object, or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious.
The foppish irony fretting to be seen, and the irony which
leers, that you shall not mistake its intention, are failures in
satiric effort pretending to the treasures of ambiguity.”

Some there are who are not quite guiltless of these failures, but
Meredith is not one of them. He is unique also, except for the
corroboration of George Eliot, in making the ironic interpretation of
life in itself an object of satire, in so far as it is brought forward
as an excuse for our deficiencies, for then it betrays a certain
weakness in our mental processes. For this he has one direct spokesman
and two or three dramatic examples. The former is the incisive
Redworth, who is exasperated at this vicarious refuge claimed by needy
human nature.[241]

“‘Upon my word,’ he burst out, ‘I should like to write a book of
Fables, showing how donkeys get into grinding harness, and dogs
lose their bones, and fools have their sconces cracked, and all
run jabbering of the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of
tracing the causes. And what are they? Nine times out of ten,
plain want of patience, or some debt for indulgence, * * * It’s
the seed we sow, individually or collectively.’”

Chief of the latter--the dramatic examples--is a youth who, just
returning from his father’s funeral, with bitter prospects ahead,
encounters a being more wretched than himself, a forsaken young woman
shelterless, and desperately ill.[242]

“Evan had just been accusing the heavens of conspiring to
disgrace him. Those patient heavens had listened, as is their
wont. They had viewed and not been disordered by his mental
frenzies. It is certainly hard that they do not come down to us,
and condescend to tell us what they mean, and be dumb-foundered
by the perspicuity of our arguments--the argument, for instance,
that they have not fashioned us for the science of the shears,
and do yet impel us to wield them.”

A little later in the same story is a bit of “eloquent and consoling
philosophy” on a happy juxtaposition of the meat and the eaters.[243]

“A thing has come to pass which we feel to be right! The
machinery of the world, then, is not entirely dislocated: there
is harmony, on one point, among the mysterious powers who have
to do with us.”

Another deeply meditative young man is Algernon Blancove. On the very
point of turning over a new leaf, he has the misfortune to lose a wager
of a thousand pounds,--which he did not have in the first place.[244]

“A rage of emotions drowned every emotion in his head, and
when he got one clear from the mass, it took the form of a
bitter sneer at Providence, for cutting off his last chance of
reforming his conduct and becoming good. What would he not have
accomplished, that was brilliant, and beautiful, and soothing,
but for this dead set against him!”

With a gentler touch Clotilde is pictured, on hearing of the disaster
to Alvin, as venting the “laugh of the tragic comedian.”[245]

“She laughed. The world is upside down--a world without light,
or pointing finger, or affection for special favorites, and
therefore bereft of all mysterious and attractive wisdom, a
crazy world, a corpse of a world--if this be true!”

One more angle has Meredith from which to view this subject, and this
shows up the absurdity of the opposite type,--the superior philosopher
who disdains to apply the ironic explanation to his own affairs, but
prides himself on his detached, Olympian, ironic view of the cosmos.
This spirit is incarnate in the wise youth, Adrian Harley.[246]

“He had no intimates except Gibbon and Horace, and the society
of these fine aristocrats of literature helped him to accept
humanity as it had been, and was; a supreme ironic procession,
with laughter of Gods in the background. Why not laughter of
mortals also?”

From the tranquillity of this calm eminence he observes the mortal
excitement produced by the news of Richard’s marriage.[247]

“When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from
which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects
may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at
them; their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their
frenzies more comical still.”

Whether or not there is such an actuality as an Ironic Fate, upon whom
mortals may blame their failures, or against whom they are doomed to
strive in vain, is as speculative a question as any in metaphysics.
The ironist is as dogmatic as the theist; and he no doubt gets as much
satisfaction from his denial of a rationally ordered universe, as
the other does from his assertion of it. To be able to fling back a
jest into the face of the Sphinx is undeniably a poor equivalent for
guessing her riddle, but it at least helps to take the edge off her
inscrutability.

In his _La Satire en France_, Lenient makes irony the opposite
of enthusiasm, and emphasizes the fact and the necessity of their
perennial alternation, like the recurrence of day and night. It would
indeed be a fearful world whose passive, indifferent night was
succeeded by no bright, clear, active day. But it would also be a
wearisome world whose glare never merged into the refreshing season
of dusky shadows, quiet half-tones, and twinkling stars. It is well
that they are reciprocal and that “_sous ces noms divers reproduèra
l’eternelle antethèse qui s’agite au fond de toute sociêtê_.”

PART III

OBJECTS

CHAPTER I

INDIVIDUALS

As the target to the missile, so is its object to satire. A target
is in itself a thing of sufficient identity to be amenable to
definition,--even if that can be no more precise than “something aimed
at.” But in the concrete there are targets and targets. So, while the
satirized may be reduced to an abstract entity, as deception or some
other ubiquitous trait of human nature, there exist in fact as many
varieties of the satirized as of satirists. Anything which any one may
criticise, if it be subject to humorous treatment, may be a satirical
object.

But since subdivisions are convenient, we make three for this purpose,
which seem fairly inclusive, though not at all mutually exclusive.
The simplest and narrowest class is that of actual Individuals. The
next is formed by the cohesion of individuals into groups, creating
Institutions. The third is made by the artistic conversion of
individuals into fictitious characters, sufficiently artificial to be
designated as Types,--more or less complex, according to the nature
of their creator, but never entirely simple, if they are fashioned of
human stuff.

Even more than usual, however, is the caution necessary that the
classification is artificial and the classes inseparable. An individual
may, and indeed generally does, represent an idea or an organization
or a certain temperament. Particularly when an object of satire, John
Doe is not viewed as John Doe but as an embodiment of some principle
or kind of conduct disapproved of by his critic. And conversely,
institutions and types, being abstractions, must be made concrete to
get them into workable shape. “The position of the satirist,” says
Lowell, in _The Bigelow Papers_, “is oftentimes one which he would
not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking
bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made
himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end
that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated _tenues
in auras_.” Lowell was of course not unaware that the satirist’s
obligation might be met and fulfilled through the method of dramatic
disguise, but it is evident that the author of the _Fable for
Critics_ had his leanings toward the personal type. Yet he confirms
the pious English tradition by adding,--

“Meanwhile let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist
is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood. * * *
Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. * * * The danger of
satire is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the
force of language.”

The real secret is that our primitive impulses clamor for the
delectable diet of personalities, and must be appeased by a little
judicious indulgence. Under pristine conditions, before we learned to
be apologetic for our instincts, we could enjoy our Fescinnine gibings
without a qualm. As we grew in poise and culture, we began to feel the
need of a finer diet for Cerberus, to gratify his acquired taste. Such
a sop was found in the altruistic motive, inexpensive and immediately
satisfying.

But, since motives are rarely single, there is frequently in this
unconscious pose an admixture of genuine idealism, most often of the
patriotic sort. _La Satire Ménippée_, for instance, was said to
have been worth as much to Henry of Navarre as was the battle of
Ivry; and its real object was the eternal one of good satire. Says a
historian,[248]

“All the mean political rivalries which pretend to work only for
the public good are exposed there; all those men who take God as
a shield to hide their own personal baseness, pass before us.”

So also was the _Anti-Jacobin_ designed as an instrument for the public
weal, though conceived in panic and brought forth in extravagance.
Both these productions, moreover, illustrate the difficulty of
distinguishing between personal and political or some sort of partisan
satire.[249] When Claudius was exposed on his bad eminence by Seneca,
Nero, by Persius, Domitian, by Juvenal, Wolsey, by Skelton, Napoleon
and George the Third, by Byron, and all four Georges, by Thackeray, it
was in every case, not as a mere human Doctor Fell, but as a crafty
tyrant or an incompetent mannikin made absurd by an incongruous
position of power and authority; although at first the personal
interest predominated over the political, the latter increasing with
time.

In any case, what has preserved personal satire in literature has been
the amber, not the flies. Such satiric portraits as are saved from
oblivion,--as those in _Absalom and Achitophel_, _Macflecknoe_, _The
Dunciad_, _The Vision of Judgment_,--are spared, not for their subjects
but for the wit in which they are dressed, irrespective of the justice
or the slander stitched into the costume.

In the field of prose fiction we find a comparatively small amount
of direct personal satire, and that modicum attached to the romantic
or fantastic section rather than the realistic. In the latter the
fusion of fact and fancy is too subtle to result in overt portraiture.
What Dickens says of Squeers is true in some degree of all fictitious
characters. All are drawn from observation, but none remain precisely
as observed, after passing through the crucible of their creator’s
imagination. Of some we chance to know more definitely than of others
that they were “taken from life.” Disraeli, for instance, in his
_Coningsby_, made the Honorable J. W. Croker into the politician Rigby,
Lord George Manners into Henry Sidney, and Lord Hertford into the Duke
of Monmouth. The last achieved his real immortality as the Marquis
of Steyne, and Theodore Hook also had the double honor of being the
original of Disraeli’s Lucian Gay and Thackeray’s Mr. Wagg. Richard
Monckton Milnes became the Vavasour of _Tancred_, John Bright, the Mr.
Turnbull of _Phineas Redux_, and Gerald Massey played the title rôle
in _Felix Holt_. We are aware too that their own families supplied
material to Dickens, Brontë, Eliot, and Meredith,[250] but we could
hardly class Mr. Micawber, Shirley Keeldar (or her friend Caroline
Helstone), Adam Bede, Dinah Morris, or Melchisedek Harrington as
examples of personal satire, even when given satirical treatment.

It is natural, therefore, that the member of our group who stands
preëminent in the line of individual satire is the one who also
heads the list chronologically; that the next are the two Victorian
forerunners; and that the only real Victorian left to complete this
small tale does it by virtue of his early work. After Thackeray’s
burlesques, ending about 1850, the personal species becomes practically
extinct.

Of Peacock’s seven stories, the first three, published during the
second decade of the century, are full of thinly veiled contemporary
personalities. The next two, in the third decade, have at least the
thicker veils of a historical perspective. In _Crochet Castle_
(1831) the early symptoms recur, but in much lighter form; and in
Peacock’s last appearance, thirty years after, they have vanished,
though the staging is current and local.

The characters in the first three and the sixth are a sort of stock
company, who reappear in the different _dramatis personæ_. Shelley
has been identified with Foster of _Headlong Hall_, Scythrop of
_Nightmare Abbey_, and Forester of _Melincourt_, though this last might
also be Lord Monboddo, as Peacock, like Spenser, had no objection
to the economy of duplication. Southey plays the unenviable parts
of Nightshade in _Headlong Hall_, Feathernest in _Melincourt_, and
Sackbut in _Crochet Castle_. In the last story, however, he may be Mr.
Rumblesack Shanstee, since Wordsworth is probably meant in Mr. Wilful
Wontsee. The latter is also Mr. Paperstamp in _Melincourt_. Coleridge
is another of triple incarnation, appearing as Mystic in _Melincourt_.
Flosky in _Nightmare Abbey_, and Skionar in _Crochet Castle_. In
this last volume Byron figures as Cypress, and is probably also the
Honorable Mr. Listless of _Nightmare Abbey_. Either Gifford or Jeffrey
may be intended in Gall, in _Headlong Hall_. In _Melincourt_, Canning
is Mr. Anyside Antijack, and Malthus, Mr. Fax.

Of all these the most purely personal, in the sense that they are
satires on the men as individuals and not as representatives of
a philosophy or an organization, are the hits at Coleridge and
Southey.[251] The former is allowed to speak for himself:[252]

“‘I divide my day,’ said Mr. Mystic, ‘_on a new principle_:
I am always poetical at breakfast, moral at luncheon,
metaphysical at dinner, and political at tea. Now you shall know
my opinion of the hopes of the world. * * *

“Who art thou?--MYSTERY!--I hail thee! Who
art thou?--JARGON!--I love thee! Who art
thou?--SUPERSTITION!--I worship thee! Hail,
transcendental TRIAD!’”

Later while his companions are concerned practically over the
catastrophe of an explosion of gas in his room, he bewails it as--[253]

“* * * an infallible omen of evil--a type and symbol of
an approaching period of public light--when the smoke of
metaphysical mystery, and the vapours of ancient superstition,
which he had done all that in him lay to consolidate in the
spirit of man, would explode at the touch of analytical reason,
leaving nothing but the plain common sense matter-of-fact of
moral and political truth--a day that he earnestly hoped he
might never live to see.”

Mr. Floskey is thus described:[254]

“He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had
hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day
that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and
misery, from the face of the earth. Because all this was not
done, he deduced that nothing was done, and from this deduction,
according to his system of logic, he drew a conclusion that
worse than nothing was done, * * *” etc.

And thus he describes his opinion of current literature:[255]

“This rage for novelty is the bane of literature. Except my
works and those of my particular friends, nothing is good that
is not as old as Jeremy Taylor; and, _entre nous_, the best
parts of my friends’ books were either written or suggested by
myself.”

In the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, Coleridge gets a contemporary thrust for
his conceit and dogmatism, with the conclusion,--

“The author o’ _Christabel_, and _The Auncient Mariner_, had
better just continue to see visions, and to dream dreams--for
he’s no fit for the wakin’ world.”

The most direct attack on Southey is in the comment on Mr.
Feathernest:[256]

“* * * to whom the Marquis had recently given a place in
exchange for his conscience. The poet had, in consequence,
burned his old ‘Odes to Truth and Liberty,’ and published a
volume of Panegyrical Addresses ‘to all the crowned heads in
Europe,’ with the motto, ‘Whatever is at court, is right.’”

In Disraeli’s _Ixion_, Enceladus has been identified as Wellington,
Hyperion as Sir Robert Peel, Jupiter as George the Third, and Apollo
as Byron. Byronism indeed is one of the shining marks loved by the
nineteenth century, a fact that not only labels the British temper, but
illustrates the irony of time’s revenges. The last great satirist of
the old school himself becomes the prime object of satire for the new,
partly through mutual lack of understanding, and partly because Byron,
like some other brilliant wits, lacked a real sense of humor. Both
these reasons enabled Lytton to flatter himself that his _Pelham_ had
“contributed to put an end to the Satanic Mania--to turn the thoughts
and ambitions of young gentlemen without neckcloths, and young clerks
who were sallow, from playing the Corsair and boasting that they were
villains.”[257]

Nearly a half century after _Pelham_, we have a reference which strikes
indirectly the keynote of satire, made by a genius great enough to
admire judiciously (as he elsewhere testifies) another genius.[258]

“Beauchampism, as one confronting him calls it, may be said to
stand for nearly everything which is the obverse of Byronism,
and rarely woos your sympathy, shuns the statuesque pathetic, or
any kind of posturing.”

It was Lytton, in turn, who was attacked by Thackeray. He heads the
list of _Novels by Eminent Hands_, and is brought up again in the
_Yellowplush Papers_ and _Epistles to the Literati_.

But here, as everywhere, the complexity of this type obtrudes itself.
Most of the preceding illustrations have been concerned with men as
authors, that is to say, with certain products of literature; and
this puts them out of the personal class. The same thing is true of
Trollope’s sarcastic allusions to the novels of Disraeli and Dickens,
and Kingsley’s little flings at _Coningsby_ and Young England generally.

No comment on the whole matter of personal satire could be more to the
point or more conclusive than that given informally by Thackeray in a
couple of letters concerning his own attack on Lytton,--which he calls
by the right name. The first is addressed to Lady Blessington, and
accounts for his objection to E. L. B.[259]

“But there are sentiments in his writings which always anger me,
big words which make me furious, and a premeditated fine writing
against which I can’t help rebelling. My antipathy don’t go any
further than this.”

The other is written to Lytton himself, calling his attention to a
paragraph in his Preface to the 1856 edition of his (Thackeray’s)
Works; it is this that really contains the apology:

“There are two performances especially (among the critical and
biographical works of the erudite Mr. Yellowplush) which I am
very sorry to see reproduced, and I ask pardon of the author
of _The Caxtons_ for a lampoon which I know he himself has
forgiven, and which I wish I could recall. * * * I wonder at
the recklessness of the young man who could fancy such satire
was harmless jocularity, and never calculate that it might give
pain.”

This fine utterance, coming at just the right time and from the
right person,--the last of the personal satirists, reformed into the
author of _Vanity Fair_,--might be used as an appropriate epitaph for
individual satire. Since the time when Lamb observed that “Satire does
not look pretty upon a tombstone,” we have not only agreed with him,
but gone enough further to admit that it is no more winsome applied to
the living than to the dead. And if we still for the most part reserve
our eulogy until it can serve as elegy, we are willing to let the dead
past of spiteful, recriminating satire bury its dead.

It would not, as a matter of fact, be quite fair to the past to ignore
its own repudiation of this brackish current that has discolored the
main satiric stream. For it was undoubtedly this element that Cervantes
had in mind when he declared,--[260]

“My humble pen hath never winged its way
Athwart the field satiric, that low plain
Which leads to foul rewards, and quick decay.”

In the bitterly partisan seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne
might well say, “It is seldom that men who care much for the truth
write satire.” And in the beginning of the next century we find the
confession,--[261]

“Our Satire is nothing but Ribaldry and Billingsgate. Scurrility
passes for wit; and he who can call names in the greatest
variety of phrases, is looked upon to have the shrewdest pen.”

A later eighteenth century view is voiced by Cowper:[262]

“Most satirists are indeed a public scourge;
Their mildest physic is a farrier’s purge;
Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr’d,
The milk of their good purpose all to curd.
Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse,
By lean despair upon an empty purse,
The wild assassins start into the street,
Prepar’d to poignard whomsoe’er they meet.”

It is with reference to this conception, induced by this type of
satire, that a modern critic observes, “It is commonly held by the
unreflecting that your satirist is bitter, your humorist a jester.”[263]

But in the nineteenth century comes a change brought about by two
influences: a finer discrimination, which shrinks from passing snap
judgments on things in the lump; and a more gracious urbanity,
sometimes springing from that humanitarianism which is the Victorian’s
pride, sometimes masquerading under its guise, sometimes even in scorn
of it, but always characterized by tact and taste, if not by a tender
regard for possibly hurt feelings.

Amidst the abundance of indirect testimony to this fact we have two
direct ones, from an earlier and a later novelist. Lytton declared in
_Pelham_ that he “did not wish to be an individual satirist.” And
George Eliot said in one of her letters,--

“We may satirize character and qualities in the abstract without
injury to our moral nature, but persons hardly ever.”

One of her own critics makes an observation on her work which shows the
new idea of satire struggling with the old, that all satire must be
toothed,--in spite of Bishop Hall. In the _milieu_ of Eliot, says Mrs.
Oliphant, “the satirist need be no sharper than the humorist, and may
almost fulfil his office lovingly.”[264]

Whether or not the satirist has any more of an “office” than that of
being an artist, he is at least beginning to have love enough for his
art, if not for humanity, to do his work as graciously as the nature
of it will permit. In Mallock’s _New Republic_, for instance, there is
a sort of Peacockian revival of personalities. But, while the figures
of Carlyle, Arnold, Huxley, Jowett, Pater, Ruskin, Rossetti, and
others, are recognizable through their thin disguises, they are not
drawn with the caricaturistic strokes that distorted those of Southey,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron, a generation or so earlier.
It is, however, from a member of that earlier generation that we get
a vivacious expression of the self-reflexive irony which is for the
satirist literally a _saving_ sense of humor. In his _Lyric Odes to the
Royal Academicians_, Peter Pindar reports a dialogue with Satire, who
urges him to attack certain of his contemporaries:

“‘Not write!’ cried Satire, red as fire with rage:
‘This instant glorious war with dulness wage;

* * * * *

Flay half the Academic imps alive;
Smoke, smoke, the Drones of that stupendous Hive.’”

Later, made compunctious by the fable of the frogs pelted to death with
stones thrown merely in sport, he resolves to reform, but is dissuaded:

“‘Poh, poh!’ cried Satire with a smile,
‘Where is the _glorious freedom_ of our isle,
If not permitted to call names?’
Methought the argument had weight:
‘Satire,’ quoth I, ‘You’re very right;’
So once more forth volcanic Peter flames.”

“Life,” says Hawthorne, “is a mixture of marble and mud.” In this
particular fragment of life as represented in literature, we have
the two in paradoxical combination. Personal satire has the effect
sometimes of being an ugly little gargoyle made of marble, and
sometimes, of a harmonious form done in muddy clay. The ideal union of
matter and manner,--an Apollo in marble,--is not for such an impish
sculptor as satire. Only to the true artist, poetry, is allotted the
task of shaping beauty into rounded perfection.

CHAPTER II

INSTITUTIONS

Since institutions are satirized by those who take an interest in
public affairs, without being too well satisfied with the way they are
managed, we may expect to find them conspicuously under indictment
at this time. The Victorians were notably a public-spirited group,
and left no cranny unpenetrated by their critical searchlight; for
it was the lamp they used, and not the hammer. The two most striking
features of nineteenth century public satire are its ubiquity and its
moderation. In all departments it was zealous for reform; in none did
it see the need of sweeping abolishment. It emanated from a generation
poised waveringly between acquiescence and iconoclasm, but avoiding
both extremes. Awake to the blindness and blundering of the past, it
was still too rooted in piety and tradition to visualize a future
radically different. Strong remedies, falling short of the drastic and
destructive, seemed about the right prescription. Dudley Sowerby is
Victorianism incarnate:[265]

“* * * he had been educated in his family to believe, that the
laws governing human institutions are divine--until History
has altered them. They are altered, to present a fresh bulwark
against the infidel.”

The Victorians deplored, for instance, the domestic disaster that
inevitably follows the mercenary marriage encouraged by Society, but
they no more questioned the marriage ceremony than they would any
law of nature. _Getting Married_ does not merely happen to be
post-Victorian; it could not have been otherwise.

They were also intensely partisan both as to Church and State,
according to the immemorial human habit; but none of them, not even
Disraeli or George Eliot, would refuse an amen to the invocation of
Charlotte Brontë:[266]

“Britain would miss her church, if that church fell. God save
it! God also reform it!”

Their Constitutional Monarchy was a broken reed, worse than useless,
yet _Anarchy_ was a fearful word, second only to _Atheism_ in horrific
import. As to the prevailing system of education, it was derided as
a failure and set down as naught; but we hear of no youth abjuring
college because it wasted his time and money.

Beyond these negative statements, however, the Victorians cannot be
described _en masse_, for individuality comes into play, both in
emphasis of interest and manner of attack. Nor is there throughout the
strictly Victorian period, any discernible evolution of ideas. From
Peacock to Kingsley the various novelists are to be distinguished only
by local color and personality. But the two whose lives actually extend
into the twentieth century are separated sharply in this matter from
their predecessors, and serve as links between their time and ours.
This omits only George Eliot, who belongs to the second group, although
she uses her modern scientific data seriously and not satirically.
With Meredith and Butler she forms a trio which faces resolutely with
the Course of Empire, while the others are more or less half-heartedly
saying their prayers toward the Orient.

As to the institutions themselves, started early in the human
stage through gregariousness and mutual dependence, and gradually
increased until now it is no longer possible for two or three to meet
together without organizing and equipping themselves with officers
and constitutions, any sort of classification must be as tentative,
interpenetrating, and unsatisfactory as are most topical outlines. But
a possible listing of satirized groups or provinces may be made under
half a dozen headings: Society, State, Church, School, Art, and Ideals.

By Society is meant that powerful but intangible influence that has a
name but no local habitation. It is in effect a federation of homes,
organized on the caste system. Known as “fashionable,” or “polite,”
its chief concern is with the lighter side of man’s life; with his
recreation if a worker, or his amusement if a drone. In view of the
fact that it is particularly the feminine domain, with the corollary
that Woman’s Place is in the Home, She, as a satirized class, belongs
here as appropriately as anywhere.

The State includes such ramifications as politics, law, charities and
corrections, labor and capital, and warfare. It is in this connection
that satire may be defined, as by Myers, as “essentially a weapon of
the weak against the strong, of a minority against a majority;” and
by Besant in the same terms, the latter adding, “Satire began when
man began to be oppressed.” This statement occurs in his _French
Humourists_, and it is interesting to note the confirmation implied
in Lenient’s description of France suffering under oppression:
“_Esclave, elle tremble et obéit, mais se venge par la satire de ceux
qui lui font peur_.”

The Church, when allied with the State, assumed dominion not only over
it but over the Home as well. This last, indeed, was raised to the high
estate of an Institution by the joint ministrations of the other two.
By imposing Marriage upon it, they were enabled to lead it, often more
firmly than gently, between them; State grasping the right hand of Home
to insure legalization, and Church the left, to produce sanctification.

More recently Church and School have exchanged places in relation
to State, as education has become a public concern, and religion a
private. Art and Ideals, like Society, are not palpably crystallized,
but are useful designations. The main subject criticised in Art is that
branch to which the critics themselves belong, Literature. When Ideals
or Ideas are ridiculed, it is naturally as fallacious reasoning or
erroneous judgment. Attacks on civilization in general and the English
species of it in particular, may also be put here for want of a better
place.

According to the satirists, Society is at fault chiefly for its
worship of Mammon, its hollowness, and snobbish vanity. These lead to
artificial relationships, the most disastrous of which is the marriage
of convenience, which usurps the higher dominion of sentiment and
romance.

Peacock is interested not only in this matrimonial bargaining but in
the accompanying insistence on a decent disguise. Mr. Sarcastic is
pointing out the astonishing results to be secured by a practice of
absolute frankness in speech. Among other instances, he cites the shock
he gave Miss Pennylove by declaring to her,--[267]

“When my daughter becomes of marriageable age, I shall
commission Christie to put her up to auction, the highest bidder
to be the buyer, * * *”

In spite of the lady’s utter amazement and indignation, she afterwards
rejects manhood and love in favor of senility and wealth; whereby her
critic concludes,--

“How the dignity and delicacy of such a person could have been
affected, if the preliminary negotiation with her hobbling
Strephon had been conducted through the instrumentality of
honest Christie’s hammer, I cannot possibly imagine.”

This is evidently not to be construed into a satire against women, for
Peacock follows the lead of Defoe in the chivalrous justice which, so
far from ridiculing women, pointed out on the contrary the absurdity
of the conditions that had made them seem absurd. In the same story he
describes Sir Henry as--[268]

“* * * one of those who maintained the heretical notion that
women are, or at least may be, rational beings; though, from the
great pains usually taken in what is called education to make
them otherwise, there are unfortunately very few examples to
warrant the truth of the theory.”

In another connection he observes that the repression of feminine
activity shows--[269]

“* * * the usual logic of tyranny, which first places its
extinguisher on the flame, and then argues that it cannot burn.”

As to the mercenary marriage, further satire is contributed by
Thackeray, whose plaints over the matches made every day in Vanity
Fair are well known; by Dickens and Brontë in short, glancing shafts;
and by Trollope, who makes it the main or secondary theme of half a
dozen novels. On the more intricate subject of the Eternal Feminine,
the contributions come from Lytton, Brontë, (not, however, from Mrs.
Gaskell or George Eliot), Trollope, and Meredith. The first three agree
on the bane of enforced idleness, which breeds frivolity and inane
restlessness. Caroline Helstone reflects bitterly on the helplessness
of her position:[270]

“I observe that to such grievances as society cannot readily
cure, it usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn: this
scorn being only a sort of tinselled cloak to its deformed
weakness. People hate to be reminded of ills they are unwilling
or unable to remedy: such reminder, in forcing on them a
sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an
obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their
ease and shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the
homeless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an
occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich:
it disturbs parents.”

She envies Solomon’s model woman, who had to arise early to go about
her own business; and Violet Effingham exclaims,--[271]

“‘I wish I could be something, if it were only a stick in
waiting, or a door-keeper. It is so good to be something!’

“‘A man should try to be something,’ said Phineas.

“‘And a woman must be content to be nothing,--unless Mr. Mill
can pull us through!’”

By the late seventies, Mr. Mill, with reinforcements, had done
something toward pulling us through; so that Meredith was able to
satirize masculine desire to stave off the threatened feminism, and
failure to appreciate the value of equality in comradeship.

In his ideal for his first betrothed, Constantia Durham, Sir Willoughby
is as much Man as Egoist:[272]

“He wished for her to have come to him out of an egg shell,
somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but as
completely enclosed before he tapped the shell, and seeing him
with her sex’s eyes first of all men.”

In another of the late novels, the two abstractions, society and woman,
are fused in one description as,--[273]

“* * * the terrible aggregate social woman, of man’s creation,
hated by him, dreaded, scorned, satirized, and nevertheless,
upheld, esteemed, applauded: a mark of civilization, on to which
our human society must hold as long as we have nothing humaner.
She exhibits virtue, with face of waxen angel, with paw of
desert beast, and blood of victims on it.”

This is discrimination; the general dearth of which is lamented by Lady
Dunstane:[274]

“The English notion of women seems to be that we are born white
sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do with our
colour. They dread to grant distinctions, and to judge of us
discerningly is beyond them.”

And Lætitia, after listening to a long Patterne discourse on feminine
traits and limitations, laconically sums up the whole matter in a
compact epigram:[275]

“‘The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary faculty for
swallowing the individual.’”

After this, decidedly flat and puerile falls the witticism of Kingsley,
spoken by Bracebridge in reply to Lancelot’s impatient question why
women would “make such fools of themselves with clergymen”:[276]

“They are quite right. They always like the strong men--the
fighters and the workers. In Voltaire’s time they all ran after
the philosophers. In the middle ages, books tell us, they
worshipped the knights errant. They are always on the winning
side, the cunning little beauties. In the war-time, when the
soldiers had to play the world’s game, the ladies all caught the
red-coat fever; now, in these talking and thinking days (and be
hanged to them for bores), they have the black-coat fever for
the same reason.”

Thackeray also is guilty of the generalization not at his time
discovered to be fallacious:[277]

“Women won’t see matters-of-fact in a matter-of-fact point of
view, and justice, unless it is tinged with a little romance,
gets no respect from them.”

The generosity of “Little Sister” in condoning young Firmin’s unwise
passiveness is based on “that admirable injustice which belongs to all
good women, and for which let us be daily thankful.” At this point the
undevout votary burns considerable medieval incense at the feminine
shrine,--not caring much if a little smoke should blow into his idols’
eyes:[278]

“I know, dear ladies, that you are angry at this statement.
But, even at the risk of displeasing _you_, we must tell
the truth. You would wish to represent yourselves as equitable,
logical, and strictly just. * * * Women equitable, logical, and
strictly just! Mercy upon us! If they were, population would
cease, the world would be a howling wilderness.”

The apologist errs, however, in supposing that any ladies,--real or
fictitious, his own characters or others’,--are angry at his accusation
of injustice. Helen Pendennis, Amelia Sedley, even Ethel Newcome and
Lady Castelwood, would be flattered; Becky Sharp and Beatrix Esmond
would not care. And as for Caroline Helstone, Violet Effingham, Diana
Warwick, Sandra Belloni, they are too far away to be disturbed by
either smoke or aroma.

For half our novelists, the woman question as such did not exist,
and about the same number show little or no interest in the world of
fashion, though the two lists coincide only in part. Lytton, Thackeray,
Trollope, Meredith, and in a small way, Kingsley, have grudges against
society in addition to its treatment of women and women’s influence
on it; while Disraeli, Dickens, and Butler have some general gibes at
social follies.

From first to last in his near-half-century of writing, Lytton, himself
to the manner born, loved to prick the social bubble. In youth he
says:[279]

“The English of the fashionable world make business an
enjoyment, and enjoyment a business: they are born without a
smile; they rove about public places like so many easterly
winds--cold, sharp, and cutting; * * * while they have
neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have
adopted all its falsehood and deceit.”

Mr. Howard de Howard, rebuking a drawing room smart set, speaks for
himself and his class:[280]

“Gentlemen, I have sate by in silence and heard my king derided,
and my God blasphemed; but now when you attack the aristocracy,
I can no longer refrain from noticing so obviously intentional
an insult. _You have become personal._”

When young Chillingly absconds for a taste of real life, he leaves
a letter for his father in which he promises a safe return, and
adds,--[281]

“I will then take my place in polite society, call upon you
to pay all expenses, and fib on my own account to any extent
required by that world of fiction which is peopled by illusions
and governed by shams.”

In his first adventure, masquerading as a yeoman, he is quizzed by
Uncle Bovill on topics for the intelligent,--politics, agriculture,
finance. To maintain his incognito, he affects ignorance; and is
astonished at the triumphant deduction,--[282]

“Just as I thought, sir; you know nothing of these matters--you
are a gentleman born and bred--your clothes can’t disguise you,
sir.”

Disraeli, whose career paralleled Lytton’s in several ways, takes the
same tone toward his own social environment, but his deeper political
earnestness led him to criticise that environment in the wider as well
as narrower social sense. In his first real novel we find the latter by
itself, in such touches as this:[283]

“Always in the best set, never flirting with the wrong man, and
never speaking to the wrong woman, all agreed that the Ladies
Saint Maurice had fairly won their coronets.”

Again it appears in this account of the hero:[284]

“The banquet was over: the Duke of Saint James passed his
examination with unqualified approval; and having been stamped
at the Mint of Fashion as a sovereign of the brightest die,
he was flung forth, like the rest of his golden brethren, to
corrupt the society of which he was the brightest ornament.”

The house-party of the Dacres, a family of taste and high standards, is
described negatively:[285]

“* * * no duke who is a gourmand, no earl who is a jockey, no
manœuvering mother, no flirting daughters, no gambling sons, for
your entertainment, * * * As for buffoons and artists, to amuse
a vacant hour or sketch a vacant face, we must frankly tell you
at once that there is not one.”

But from _Popanilla_ through the Trilogy the inanity and pretense
of this social circle is made more pointed by contrast with those
socially beneath it. Egremont’s experience with the plain people
induces this serious indictment of his own set:[286]

“It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth and depth
and breadth; that it is always discussing persons instead
of principles, * * * it is not merely that it has neither
imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling, nor
knowledge, to recommend it, but * * * it is in short, trivial,
uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar.”

Thackeray also speaks from within, and has to his credit his great
roster of Snobs, his panoramic Vanity Fair, and his imposing
procession of worldly, heartless, noble old dames. Trollope prefers
country life, but his Claverings, de Courcys, Luftons, and the Duke of
Omnium, show that he has no desire to neglect its aristocracy. Dickens,
on the other hand, loved London and its struggling poor, but in the
Merdles, the Veneerings, and the Dorrits _redivivi_, he does what he
can with the humors of the struggling rich.

To Meredith the exasperating thing about polite society was its
impoliteness,--its delight in gossip and scandal, its petty but
venomous persecutions, and the false courtesy that takes refuge in
conventionality. This impression apparently deepened with time, for
it is glimpsed only in _Evan Harrington_ and _Sandra Belloni_, of the
earlier books, but is entirely absent from none of the last half dozen.

Butler, preoccupied with other subjects, takes time for only one good
shot at this, but that one is so good that it forms a fitting climax.
He mentions casually an Erewhonian custom, which may be taken as
symbolic of that country’s social behavior and philosophy:[287]

“When any one dies, the friends of the family * * * send little
boxes filled with artificial tears, and with the name of the
sender painted neatly upon the outside of the lid. The tears
vary in number from two to fifteen or sixteen, according to the
degree of intimacy or relationship; and people sometimes find
it a nice point of etiquette to know the exact number which
they ought to send. Strange as it may appear, this attention is
highly valued, and its omission by those from whom it might be
expected is keenly felt. These tears were formerly stuck with
adhesive plaster to the cheeks of the bereaved, and were worn in
public for a few months after the death of a relative; they were
then banished to the hat or bonnet, and are now no longer worn.”

Whether the last clause may be viewed as a hopeful augury for the
future, the author does not state.

The step from the society of the drawing room to society at large, or
mankind, is a refreshing passage from indoors, where everything is
artificial, even the tears of bereavement, to the fresh air of common
interest. The weather may not always be serene nor the atmosphere
invigorating, but at least there is a wide horizon and a perspective of
some scope. It is evident that the Victorians enjoyed these excursions
into the masculine domain of Government, for not one of the list
forbade his mind to roam into its boundaries, and not one is wholly
silent as to the impressions gained by this adventuring. Here the
resemblance ends. Interest in public problems and The People varies
from a minimum in Thackeray and George Eliot to a maximum in Peacock,
Disraeli, and Butler. There is also great diversity in both breadth and
intensity. Lytton, Dickens, Trollope, have several irons in the fire.
Gaskell, Brontë, Reade, Kingsley, have but one or two, but the heat is
none the less fervent. In some cases, indeed, it is too fervent to give
off the sparkle of ridicule, and thus falls without our province. And
in some cases, while it is meant seriously as propaganda, it cannot be
taken seriously as literature; for the artist is not expected to speak
with the tongue of statesmen and economists, and conversely, as Dowden
reminds us, “a political manifesto in three volumes is not a work of
art.”[288]

Neither of these strictures applies to Peacock, who launches the
subject for us in a pungent description of the good old days of Celtic
antiquity:[289]

“Political science they had none. * * * Still they went to work
politically much as we do. The powerful took all they could
get from their subjects and neighbors; and called something or
other sacred and glorious when they wanted the people to fight
for them. They repressed disaffection by force, when it showed
itself in an overt act; but they encouraged freedom of speech,
when it was, like Hamlet’s reading, ‘words, words, words.’”

In the same story, the episode of the decaying embankment, with its
parody of Lord Canning’s Defense of the British Constitution, and
the satire on the game laws, set the pace for the subsequent thrusts
at Toryism and the country squires, particularly Meredith’s, whom
he naturally influenced. Demagogic bamboozlement of the public is
punctured again in the speech of Mr. Paperstamp:[290]

“We shall make out a very good case; but you must not forget to
call the present public distress an awful dispensation; a little
pious cant goes a great way towards turning the thoughts of men
from the dangerous and Jacobinical propensity of looking into
moral and political causes for moral and political effects.”

It is in _Melincourt_ also that the campaign of Mr. Oran Hautton in
the Borough of Onevote starts the satiric ball rolling into election
camps,--later pushed along by the authors of _Pelham_, _The Newcomes_,
_Doctor Thome_, _Felix Holt_, _Middlemarch_, and _Beauchamp’s Career_.

Although Lytton started out as a Liberal, he ended as a Conservative,
and furnishes some counter satire against democracy. In _Night and
Morning_ he speaks of men losing their democratic enthusiasm; and in
_The Coming Race_ he gives proof that his is entirely lost. The family
of the narrator are Americans, “rich and aristocratic, therefore
disqualified for public service;” his father, defeated by his tailor
in the race for Congress, decides on the superior beauty of private
life. The Vrilya have a very expressive compound word. _Koom_ means a
profound hollow; _Posh_ is a term of utter contempt; “_Koom-Posh_ is
their name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the
most ignorant and hollow.”[291] This contempt, distributed impartially
over dishonest demagogue and gullible public, is nothing new. Smollett,
for instance, in his _Adventures of an Atom_, appreciates the art of
oratory:

“Our orator was well acquainted with all the legerdemain of his
own language, as well as with the nature of the beast he had to
rule. He knew when to distract its weak brain with a tumult of
incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm
its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of words
without any ideas annexed.”

The same Adventurer notes that the names of the two political parties
of Japan signify respectively More Fool than Knave, and More Knave than
Fool. It is, of course this aspect of democracy that leads Lowell to
picture it as “Helpless as spilled beans on a dresser.”

Statemanship was Disraeli’s whole existence, and his art a handmaiden
to politics. More than any other nineteenth century novelist he
complemented destructive criticism by a definite constructive policy.
To a contemporary critic, a reforming Tory was a white blackbird; but
our own generation, having witnessed the phenomenon of Progressive
Republicanism, has less difficulty in understanding the paradox. It was
not indifference to the welfare of the masses that induced Disraeli’s
belief in the rule of a selected class, but a distrust of popular
ability and judgment, and a conviction (acknowledged in our own time
as a truth and the real salvation of democracy) that efficiency can
come only from expert knowledge and training. From such a viewpoint
satire would naturally be directed not against the people but against
its incapable and dishonest leadership. Peacock’s scorn of this
exploitation of popular ignorance and helplessness is taken up by
both his nearest successors, expressed, as it happens, in a pair of
portraits of the ward-politician type.

Pelham repudiates Vincent’s proposed new party because of its bad
personnel, men--[292]

“* * * who talk much, who perform nothing--who join ignorance
of every principle of legislation to indifference for every
benefit to the people:--who are full of ‘wise saws’, but
empty of ‘modern instances’--who level upwards, and trample
downwards--and would only value the ability you are pleased to
impute to me, in the exact proportion that a sportsman values
the ferret, that burrows for his pleasure, and destroys for his
interest.”

Montacute draws a more concrete and ironic picture:[293]

“Find a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses
nevertheless considerable talent; who has official aptitude,
a volubility of routine rhetoric, great perseverance, a love
of affairs, who, embarrassed neither by the principles of the
philosopher nor by the prejudices of the bigot, can assume,
with a cautious facility, the prevalent tone, and disembarrass
himself of it, with a dexterous ambiguity, the moment it ceases
to be predominant: recommending himself to the innovator by his
approbation of change ‘in the abstract,’ and to the conservative
by his prudential and practical respect for that which is
established; such a man, though he be one of an essentially
small mind, though his intellectual qualities be less than
moderate, with feeble powers of thought, no imagination,
contracted sympathies, and a most loose public morality; such a
man is the individual whom kings and parliaments would select to
govern the State or rule the Church.”

It is not to be supposed, however, that the people would choose any
better than kings and parliaments; on the contrary,--[294]

“The Thirty at Athens were at least tyrants. They were
marked men. But the obscure majority, who, under our present
constitution, are destined to govern England, are as secret as a
Venetian conclave. Yet on their dark voices all depends.”

The trend of the succeeding novelists is toward a modified liberalism,
but Meredith is the only one to satirize the reactionary attitude as
such. The others throw the emphasis elsewhere. Besides, even such
humanitarians as Dickens, Gaskell, Reade, and Kingsley, are dubious as
to the remedial power of popular government, and seem inclined toward
Carlyle’s view of Chartism. What Chesterton says of one of them would
not be untrue applied to the rest:[295]

“All his grumblings through this book of _American Notes_, all
his shrieking satire in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, are expressions
of a grave and reasonable fear he had touching the future of
democracy.”

But the humanitarianism itself is sounded in a harmonious chord, whose
overtone is a ridicule, more grim than gay, of the delinquents;--those
who lack the spirit of humanity, yet are the very ones, on the
principle of _noblesse oblige_, in whom it should well up most
abundantly. If they fail through that ignorance and mental limitation
from which not even the aristocracy are always exempt, the blow is
tempered accordingly; but it falls more heavily when the roots of the
evil are the black ones of selfishness and perversity.

Lady Lufton, for instance, is a kind soul, who would have made
an excellent Providence, though scarcely adequate to cope with
the mismanagement of the Providence already installed over human
affairs:[296]

“She liked cheerful, quiet, well-to-do people, who loved their
Church, their country, and their Queen, and who were not too
anxious to make a noise in the world. She desired that all the
farmers round her should be able to pay their rents without
trouble, that all the old women should have warm flannel
petticoats, that the workingmen should be saved from rheumatism
by healthy food and dry houses, that they should all be obedient
to their pastors and masters--temporal as well as spiritual.
That was her idea of loving her country. She desired also that
the copses should be full of pheasants, the stubble-field of
partridges, and the gorse covers of foxes; in that way, also,
she loved her country.”

These are as amiable sentiments for a lady as Victor Radnor’s for a
gentleman. He is introduced as regretting his fall on London Bridge
chiefly because it led to an unpleasant altercation with a member of
the mob.[297]

“* * * he found that enormous beast comprehensible only when it
applauded him; and besides, he wished it warmly well; all that
was good for it; plentiful dinners, country excursions, stout
menagerie bars, music, a dance, and to bed; he was for patting,
stroking, petting the mob, for tossing it sops, never for
irritating it to show an eye-tooth, much less for causing it to
exhibit the grinders.”

Everard Romfrey, of sterner stuff, sees the advantage of tempering
mercy with justice:[298]

“To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and
of a man’s right to hold his own; and so delicately did he
think the country poised, that an attack on them threatened the
structure of justice. The three conjoined Estates were therefore
his head gamekeepers; their duty was to back him against the
poacher, if they would not see the country tumble. * * * No
tenants were forced to take his farms. He dragged no one by
the collar. He gave them liberty to go to Australia, Canada,
the Americas, if they liked. * * * Still there were grumbling
tenants. He swarmed with game, and though he was liberal, his
hares and his birds were immensely destructive: computation
could not fix the damage done by them. Probably the farmers
expected them not to eat. ‘There are two parties to a bargain,’
said Everard, ‘and one gets the worst of it. But if he was never
obliged to make it, where’s his right to complain?’ Men of sense
rarely obtain satisfactory answers; they are provoked to despise
their kind.”

He returns to the argument, deepened in unavoidable pessimism:[299]

“This behavior of corn-law agitators and protectors of poachers
was an hypocrisy too horrible for comment. Everard sipped
claret.”

The novels which depict the really acute phases of labor and
poverty,--_Sybil_, _Mary Barton_, _North and South_, _Shirley_, _Alton
Locke_, _Hard Times_, (diagnosed by Macaulay as “sullen socialism”),
_Put Yourself in his Place_, _Felix Holt_,--are apt to have John
Barton’s kind of laugh, if any, “a low chuckle, that had no mirth in
it.” But the author of the first of these puts into another story a
pungent little description:[300]

“The Elysians consisted of a few thousand beautified mortals,
the only occupation of whose existence was enjoyment; the rest
of the population comprised some millions of Gnomes and Sylphs,
who did nothing but work, and ensured by their labour the
felicity of the superior class.”

It is inevitable that the artist and the humorist should find their
most congenial fields in those relationships that are vital, and
not too hampered by the technique of more formal and crystallized
institutions. Prisons, Asylums, Courts, and the whole legal machinery,
offer a less inviting prospect than do political parties and theories,
and the contrast between social strata.

Yet the first third of our list,--Peacock, Lytton, Disraeli, and
Dickens,--with the addition of Reade, Trollope, and Butler, did not
shrink from contact with red tape. Dickens and Reade have the monopoly
of the department of Charities and Corrections, though Lytton asserted
the purpose of _Paul Clifford_ to be an indictment against society’s
manufacture and destruction of criminals; and of _Night and Morning_ to
show the injustice and fallacy of its treatment respectively of vice
and crime. In regard to the latter he says, in the Preface:

“Let a child steal an apple in sport, let a starvling steal a
roll in despair, and Law conducts them to the Prison, for evil
communications to mellow them for the gibbet. But let a man
spend one apprenticeship from youth to old age in vice--let
him devote a fortune, perhaps colossal, to the wholesale
demoralization of his kind--and he may be surrounded with the
adulation of the so-called virtuous, and be served upon its knee
by that Lackey--the Modern World!”

Dickens starts his account with the English prison in _Pickwick_, and
closes it in _Little Dorrit_. But it is in _David Copperfield_ that he
stops to point out the whole thing as a stupid error. On the occasion
of a visit to the “immense and solid building, erected at a great
expense,” he reflects,--[301]

“I could not help thinking as we approached the gate, what an
uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man
had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the
erection of an industrial school for the young, or a home of
refuge for the deserving old.”

Within, he finds the rêgime of solitary, unemployed confinement,
and the official bait for professions of penitence, fine breeders
of hypocrisy, six years before Reade makes the same point in _Never
too Late to Mend_. But he sees in the exhibitions of No. 27 and No.
28--the Prize Show, the Crowning Glory--Lattimer, and Uriah Heep,
an opportunity for his riotous caricature; while to Reade this
degeneration of character is a wholly serious matter. Indeed, Reade
waxes so wroth over the cruelty, mental and physical, practiced upon
the hopeless victims that the satire itself is as scorching as Swift’s,
though of course of less clear a flame.

Yet the warden Hawes, chief culprit through main responsibility, is
analyzed as after all irresponsible, on psychological and social
grounds:[302]

“Barren of mental resources, too stupid to see, far less read,
the vast romance that lay all around him, every cell a volume;
too mindless to comprehend his own grand situation on a salient
of the State and of human nature, and to discern the sacred
and endless pleasures to be gathered there, this unhappy dolt,
flung into a lofty situation by shallow blockheads, who, like
himself, saw in a jail nothing greater or more than a ‘place of
punishment,’ must still like his prisoners and the rest of us
have some excitement to keep him from going dead. * * * Growth
is the nature * * * even of an unnatural habit. * * * Torture
had grown upon stupid, earnest Hawes; it seasoned that white of
egg, a mindless existence.”

The satisfaction one has in seeing him finally routed and dismissed is
enhanced by the manner of his exit. He is given permission to collect
his belongings before departure:--[303]

“‘I have nothing to take out of the jail, man,’ replied
Hawes rudely, ‘except’--and here he did a bit of pathos and
dignity--‘my zeal for Her Majesty’s service, and my integrity.’

“‘Ah,’ replied Mr. Lacy, quietly, ‘You won’t want any help to
carry them.’”

Next in order comes the “Visiting Injustice,” a purblind creature, who
sees only what the warden points out to him, and comforts a tortured
prisoner with pious exhortations to be patient and submit:[304]

“Item. An occasion for twaddling had come, and this good soul
seized it, and twaddled into a man’s ear who was fainting on the
rack.”

Later a sarcastic contrast is drawn between the dinner the official
enjoys at home and the convict’s gruel he had just ordered diluted.[305]

The first chaplain, well meaning and gentle, is also a failure, through
simple inanity:[306]

“Yet Mr. Jones was not a hypocrite nor a monster; he was only
a commonplace man--a thing moulded by circumstances instead of
moulding them. * * * But at the head of a struggling nation, or
in the command of an army in time of war, or at the head of the
religious department of a jail, fighting against human wolves,
tigers, and foxes, to be commonplace is an iniquity and leads to
crime.”

On the enlightened officialdom that permits all this, Reade is one
with Dickens. When an urgent appeal for investigation is sent to
headquarters, the reply is returned that the inspector would reach that
place in his normal circuit in six weeks:[307]

“‘Six weeks is not long to wait for help in a matter of life
and death,’ thought the eighty-pounders, the clerks who execute
England.”

Most unpardonable of all are such cases as Carter,--[308]

“* * * half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail
by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they
ought to modify and stigmatise until civilization shall come and
correct them.”

The Bench and Bar are tempting game for those who enjoy the absurdity
of legal tricks and manners. Disraeli pursues it in the Camelopard
Court, in _Popanilla_; Dickens in _Pickwick_, _Old Curiosity Shop_,
_Bleak House_, _Our Mutual Friend_, not to mention the Circumlocution
and Prerogative Offices; Trollope in _Orley Farm_; and Butler in
_Erewhon_.

Furnival, attorney for the defence, makes an eloquent and persuasive
appeal in behalf of Lady Mason:[309]

“And yet as he sat down he knew that she had been guilty! * *
* and knowing that, he had been able to speak as though her
innocence were a thing of course. That those witnesses had
spoken truth he also knew, and yet he had been able to hold
them up to the execration of all around them as though they
had committed the worst of crimes from the foulest of motives!
And more than this, stranger than this, worse than this,--when
the legal world knew--as the legal world soon did know--that
all this had been so, the legal world found no fault with Mr.
Furnival, conceiving that he had done his duty by his client in
a manner becoming an English barrister and an English gentleman.”

Contempt for chicanery and injustice, scorn for downright oppression
and exploitation, are notes often sounded. Much more rare is an
expression of sympathy for aspiring but baffled mediocrity, with its
converse satire for those at fault. The most striking example is given
by Trollope. An introductory chapter, with a title and a refrain of
_Væ Victis_! is devoted to this subject:[310]

“There is sympathy for the hungry man, but there is no sympathy
for the unsuccessful man who is not hungry. If a fellow-mortal
be ragged, humanity will subscribe to mend his clothes; but
humanity will subscribe nothing to mend his ragged hopes so long
as his outside coat shall be whole and decent.”

This indictment is hung on the peg of the competitive examination, a
device satirized also by Peacock and Dickens, for being a pretentious
failure. Trollope concludes a sarcastic exhortation to all to persevere
in the mad scramble for capricious rewards, with this reflection:[311]

“There is something very painful in these races which we English
are always running to one who has tenderness enough to think of
the nine beaten horses instead of the one who has conquered.”

When the tale of twentieth century satire shall be told, considerable
space will have to be devoted to Militarism versus Pacifism. But the
Victorians lived, if not in piping times of peace, at least in a time
reasonably peaceful, for their island heard little but echoes of the
European cannon; a condition which tended to keep men’s minds at home
and occupied with internal affairs. The satirists therefore have little
to say about war. Peacock unveils the policy of launching a foreign war
in order to smother discontent over domestic troubles. In such stories
as _Shirley_, _Silas Marner_, and others located in or soon after the
Napoleonic Era, are scattered parenthetical remarks; as for instance
the opening scene of _An Amazing Marriage_, “when crowned heads were
running over Europe, crying out for charity’s sake to be amused after
their tiresome work of slaughter; and you know what a dread they have
of moping.” In Disraeli’s _Ixion_, Mars is not popular in Olympian
circles, being despised as “a brute, more a bully than a hero. Not
at all in the best set.” Accordingly, since, as we are reminded by
Phillips in his _Modern Europe_, “the British lion, turned ruminant,
had been browsing in the pleasant pastures of peace to the melodious
piping of Bright and Cobden,” and since it had, when required, the less
melodious taunting of Carlyle, it needed at this time no Aristophanes
or Swift to mock at the madness of militarism.

In organized religion we see a paradoxical and yet natural enough
operation of mortal psychology. In its primitive origin it sprang from
two opposite sources, human innocence and human craft. In his innocence
man believed that his immortal life must put on mortality, become
incarnate in architecture, creed, ritual, before it could be lived.
And in his craft he discovered that the incorruptible could be made to
put on corruption,--to the great advantage of an entirely terrestrial
ambition. These two factors, conjoined with the ubiquitous impulse to
socialize feelings and thoughts as well as actions, have succeeded in
so clothing and housing the wistful spirit which for itself asks no
more than an assurance of some divinity dwelling without or within
us, that its elaborate trappings and conspicuous paraphernalia have
become shining marks for those who see the possible absurdity in this
materializing of the spiritual.

Until recently, however, few shafts have penetrated to the heart of the
discrepancy. Most of them have been aimed at the broad and inviting
surface of obvious inconsistencies: indulgence in material luxury on
the part of an institution founded to further the spiritual life;
dominance of authority in a realm that should be free; flourishing of
bigotry, greed, cruelty, hypocrisy, in the exclusive garden of all the
virtues; unlovely partisan disputes and recriminations in connection
with the one thing that best can symbolize the brotherhood of man.

The distinction must here be made between the official representatives
of the Church as such representatives, and as mere human beings. In
this discussion therefore clergymen are not cited as cases in point
unless they are clearly meant by their authors to be taken as clergy
and not as men.

The Chadband of Dickens, for instance, and the Bute Crawley and Charles
Honeyman of Thackeray, stand on their own feet, and share the common
lot of satirized humanity; neither of these novelists having an arrow
from his full quiver for the Church itself. Nor has Mrs. Gaskell,
though her _North and South_ hinges on the tragedy of Mr. Dale, an
Anglican minister turned Dissenter. George Eliot spares likewise the
Institution she had herself outgrown. Her Clerical Lives, her Reverends
Irwine and Lyon, such diverse types as the modest Dinah Morris and the
dominating Savonarola, are treated sympathetically, as is also the
pitiful fanaticism of Lantern Yard. Lytton and Reade too grant the
consent implied in silence. But other half speak out, briefly or at
length.

Peacock is most impressed with the uselessness of an institution which
seems to exist for the gratification of its dignitaries. The candid
Mr. Sarcastic, after horrifying Miss Pennylove on the question of
auctioning off brides, proceeds in his frank career:[312]

“I irreparably offended the Reverend Dr. Vorax by telling him,
that having a nephew, whom I wished to shine in the church,
I was on the lookout for a luminous butler, and a cook of
solid capacity, under whose joint tuition he might graduate.
‘Who knows,’ said I, ‘but he may immortalize himself at the
University, by giving his name to a pudding?’”

In his medieval tale he takes up the Church as an institution, with
his favorite, backhanded, historical thrust. The Saxons, it seems, had
attacked the Bangor monastery and killed twelve hundred monks:[313]

“This was the first overt act in which the Saxons set forth
their new sense of a religion of peace. It is alleged, indeed,
that these twelve hundred monks supported themselves by the
labour of their own hands. If they did so, it was, no doubt,
a gross heresy; but whether it deserved the castigation it
received from Saint Augustin’s proselytes, may be a question in
polemics. * * * The rabble of Britons must have seen little more
than the superficial facts that the lands, revenues, privileges,
and so forth, which once belonged to Druids and so forth, now
belonged to abbots, bishops, and so forth, who, like their
extruded precursors, walked occasionally in a row, chanting
unintelligible words, and never speaking in common language but
to exhort the people to fight; having, indeed, better notions
than their predecessors of building, apparel, and cookery; and a
better knowledge of the means of obtaining good wine, and of the
final purpose for which it was made.”

To such as this we have Thackeray’s counter-blast, with
admonition,--[314]

“And don’t let us give way to the vulgar prejudice that
clergyman are an overpaid and luxurious body of men. * * *
From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you
would fancy that a parson’s life was passed in gorging himself
with plum-pudding and port wine; and that his Reverence’s fat
chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs.
Caricaturists delight to represent him so: round, short-necked,
pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat like a
black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus.”

Whereas, he goes on at length to show, the reverse is the case. Both
sides are more or less illustrative of the _argument ad hominem_.

It is Trollope who really writes of Clerical Snobs. The house-party at
Chalicotes shelters a hierarchy. Mr. Robarts arrives,--[315]

“And then the vicar shook hands with Mrs. Proudie, in that
deferential manner which is due from a vicar to his bishop’s
wife; and Mrs. Proudie returned the greeting with all that
smiling condescension which a bishop’s wife should show to a
vicar.”

From here the “young, flattered fool of a parson” is persuaded to go to
Gatherum Castle and there gets into trouble. Brought to his senses, he
meditates ruefully,--[316]

“Why had he come to this horrid place? Had he not everything at
home which the heart of man could desire? No; the heart of man
can desire deaneries--the heart, that is, of the man vicar; and
the heart of the man dean can desire bishoprics; and before the
eyes of the man bishop does there not loom the transcendental
glory of Lambeth?”

The mixture of affectionate indulgence, shrewd amusement, and
fundamental loyalty which made up Trollope’s attitude is recorded in
this symbolic portrait:[317]

“As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech, erect in the
middle of that little square, he looked like an ecclesiastical
statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church
militant here on earth; his shovel-hat, large, new, and
well-pronounced, a churchman’s hat in every inch, declared the
profession as plainly as does the Quaker’s broad brim; his heavy
eye-brows, large, open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed
the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered
with fine cloth, told how well to do was its estate; one hand
ensconced within his pocket evinced the practical hold which
our mother church keeps on her temporal possessions; and the
other, loose for action, was ready to fight, if need be, in her
defense; and, below these, the decorous breeches, and neat black
gaiters showing so admirably that well-turned leg, betokened
the stability, the decency, the outward beauty and grace of our
church establishment.”

It is naturally in the Cathedral Series that clerical matters
most abound, but they appear in other volumes, especially _The
Bertrams_. Caroline Waddington, speaking of vicars, makes an empiric
induction:[318]

“I judge by what I see. They are generally fond of eating, very
cautious about their money, untidy in their own houses, and apt
to go to sleep after dinner.”

George Bertram, author of _The Romance of Scripture_, and _The
Fallacies of Early History_, exponents of the Higher Criticism, over
which “there was a comfortable row at Oxford,” discusses religion with
his cousin the curate. The attitude of prayer, he says, is beautiful
from the communion it symbolizes. But imagine the attitude with no such
communion,--[319]

“You will at once run down the whole gamut of humanity from
Saint Paul to Pecksniff.”

As to the practicability of freedom of thought, the churchman argues,--

“If every man and every child is to select, how shall we ever
have a creed? and if no creed, how shall we have a church?”

And the layman concludes for him,--

“And if no church, how then parsons? Follow it on, and it
comes to that. But, in truth, you require too much, and so you
get--nothing.”

An ingenuous young girl in another story inquires,--[320]

“* * * what is all religion but washing black sheep white;
making the black a little less black, scraping a spot white here
and there?”

Whoever may be meant by Thackeray as “gross caricaturists,” it cannot
be Trollope, for even Mr. Slope is less repulsive than the alleged
portraiture, and the Epicureans are models of refinement, and treated
with a corresponding delicacy. Dr. Stanhope, sinecurist and pastor
_in absentia_, had the appearance of “a benevolent, sleepy old lion.”
Like the rector at Clavering, and the Barchester archdeacon (who
kept his jolly old volume of Rabelais locked in his study desk, but
brought it out in the security of solitude as an antidote for the
tedium of sermon-writing), he had a taste for “romances and poetry of
the lightest and not always the most moral description.” And like Dr.
Grant, in _Mansfield Park_,--[321]

“He was thoroughly a _bon vivant_. * * * He had much to forgive
in his own family, * * * and had forgiven everything--except
inattention to his dinner. * * * That he had religious
convictions must be believed; but he rarely obtruded them, even
on his children.”

The dignified bishop, on hearing a startling piece of news,--[322]

“* * * did not whistle. We believe that they lose the power of
doing so on being consecrate; and that in these days we might as
easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop.”

The subject of foreign missions is glanced at in a conversation between
Sowerby and Harold Smith; but on the whole it is another neglected
topic. Disraeli observes in _Sybil_ that a missionary from Tahiti might
be spared for needed work in Wodgate, England. The rest in silence,
until Butler, post-Victorian, exposes, with some of his choicest irony,
the fallacy that underlies all proselyting logic.

Brontë and Kingsley are openly partisan, with a strain of the crudeness
inseparable from antagonistic warmth. They are also on the same
side,[323] the broad-church position, opposed to Tractarian principles
as much as to Catholicism itself.

The real acid of the first chapter of _Shirley_, entitled _Levitical_,
and promising only “cold lentils and vinegar without oil,” is not
poured upon the heads of the three curates and the rector, failures
though they all were as spiritual shepherds, but upon the contemporary
situation. In 1812, the author says, there was no Pastoral Aid nor
Additional Curates Society to help out rectors:[324]

“The present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr.
Pusey and tools of the Propaganda, were at that time being
hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration by
nursery-baptism in wash-hand-basins. You could not have guessed
by looking at any one of them that the Italian-ironed double
frills of its net cap surrounded the brows of a pre-ordained
specially sanctified successor of Saint Paul, Saint Peter or
Saint John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its
long nightgown the white surplice in which it was hereafter
cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely
to non-plus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in
a pulpit the shirt-like raiment which had never before waved
higher than the reading-desk.”

“Yet even then,” she adds, “the rare but precious plant existed--three
rods of Aaron blossomed within a circuit of twenty miles.” Their
clerical functions are summed up later by the gardener William:[325]

“They’re allus magnifying their office: it is a pity but their
office could magnify them; but it does nought o’ t’ soart.”

The autobiographical heroine of _Villette_ recounts her experience
of being subjected to persuasive priestly exhortation, and ironically
repeats the phrases:[326]

“I half realized myself in that condition also; passed under
discipline, moulded, trained, inoculated, and so on.”

She is enabled to resist, because,

“* * * there was a hollowness within, and a flourish around
‘Holy Church’ which tempted me but moderately.”

She discusses at length a Papist pamphlet left on her desk for her
perusal:[327]

“The voice of that sly little book was a honeyed voice; its
accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no utterance of
Rome’s thunders, no blasting of the breath of her displeasure. *
* * Far be it from her to threaten or to coerce; her wish was to
guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! not on any account!
* * * It was a canting, sentimental, shallow little book, yet
* * * I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked wolf-cub
muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless
lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist
tracts I had once read when a child; they were flavoured with
about the same seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. * * * I
smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from
the ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own
disinclination, not to say disability, to meet their melting
favours.”

As her reason is not swayed by the arguments of the “Moloch Church,”
neither is her fancy kindled by its ritual:[328]

“Neither full procession nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor
swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial
jewelry, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me
as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically
spiritual.”

Kingsley widens his criticism from the personal to the social point
of view. He objects to luxury not so much because it shows up the
luxurious as because it takes away even the necessities from those
who have not, to add yet more luxuries to those that have. He
questions--[329]

“* * * how a really pious and universally respected archbishop,
living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst _infernos_
of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy--can yet find
it in his heart to save £120,000 out of church revenues, and
leave it to his family; * * * how Irish bishops can reconcile
it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all,
large fortunes * * * taken from the pockets of a Roman
Catholic population, whom they have been put there to convert
to Protestantism for the last three hundred years--with what
success, all the world knows.”

Moreover, because he sees in the church a possible vanguard to
civilization, he rebels against its retrogressive and obstructive
policy. He laments that the working men do not trust the clergy:[330]

“They suspect them to be mere tubs to the whale--mere
substitutes for education, slowly and late adopted, in order
to stop the mouths of the importunate. They may misjudge the
clergy; but whose fault is it if they do? * * * Every spiritual
reform since the time of John Wesley, has had to establish
itself in the teeth of insult, calumny, and persecution. Every
ecclesiastical reform comes not from within, but from without
your body. Everywhere we see the clergy, * * * proclaiming
themselves the advocates of Toryism, * * * chosen exclusively
from the classes which crush us down; * * * commanding us to
swallow down, with faith as passive and implicit as that of
a Papist, the very creeds from which their own bad example,
and their scandalous neglect, have * * * alienated us; * * *
betraying in every tract, in every sermon, an ignorance of the
doubts, the feelings, the very language of the masses, which
would be ludicrous, were it not accursed before God and man.”

Meredith expresses the same idea, with the difference that he does not
speak apologetically from within, but with the unqualified disapproval
of the outsider. Jenny Denham, an incisive and thoughtful woman,
says,[331]

“My experience of the priest in our country is, that he has
abandoned--he’s dead against the only cause that can justify and
keep up a Church; the cause of the poor--the people. He is a
creature of the moneyed class. I look on him as a pretender.”

In his subtle way Meredith satirizes the Catholic Church by having the
Countess de Saldar take refuge in and approve of it. Its great asset
is that its democracy includes even tailors. That it is the only true
spiritual home for a true gentleman she proves by citing an example.
A noble knight does not hesitate at telling a flat falsehood to save
a lady, being safe in morality because “his priest was handy.” Her
nature is defined as the truly religious, that is, one with need of
vicarious strength and a sense of renewed absolution. Another exponent
is Constance Asper, in _Diana of the Crossways_, whose boudoir was
filled with expensive Catholic equipments, affording “every invitation
to meditate in luxury on an ascetic religiousness.”

Butler was not content to view the Church from his external position
with the silence of George Eliot or the casual comments of Meredith.
The intensity of his iconoclasm demanded full expression,--kept,
however, from crudeness by his ironic finish, and from injustice by
his fundamental reasonableness. In _Erewhon_ his chief point is
the perfunctory character of established religion. The Erewhonians
have two distinct economic currencies, one of which is supposed to be
_the_ system, and is patronized by all who wished to be considered
respectable. Yet its funds have no direct value in the community,
whose actual business is conducted on the other commercial system.
The Musical Banks excel in architecture, and keep up a routine of
receiving and paying checks. But their patrons are for the most part
ladies and some students from the College of Unreason. Mrs. Nosnibor, a
staunch shareholder, deplores this apparent lack of public interest,
and remarks that it is “indeed melancholy to see what little heed
people paid to the most precious of all institutions.” Her guest
observes,--[332]

“I could say nothing in reply, but I have ever been of opinion
that the greater part of mankind do approximately know where
they get that which does them good.”

The Musical Bankers not only protest too much as to the ascendancy of
their institution, but consistently depreciate the other:[333]

“Even those who to my certain knowledge kept only just enough
money at the Musical Banks to swear by, would call the other
banks (where their securities really lay) cold, deadening,
paralyzing, and the like.”

As to the cashiers and managers,--[334]

“Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them,
which struck me as a very bad sign. * * * The less thoughtful of
them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many were plainly
sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would
not have owned to being so. Some few were opponents of the
whole system; but these were liable to be dismissed from their
employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful,
for a man who had once been a cashier at a Musical Bank was out
of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted
for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly
called his education.”

_Erewhon Revisited_ deals more specifically with the miraculous and
doctrinal side of Christianity, mirrored in the account of the origin
of Sunchildism and its connection with the old Musical Banks. The two
main characters are Hanky and Panky, Professors respectively of Worldly
and Unworldly Wisdom. They are carefully distinguished:[335]

“Panky was the greater humbug of the two, for he would humbug
even himself--a thing, by the way, not very hard to do; and
yet he was the less successful humbug; * * * Hanky was the
mere common, superficial, perfunctory Professor, who, being a
Professor, would of course profess, but would not lie more than
was in the bond. * * * Panky, on the other hand, was hardly
human; he had thrown himself so earnestly into his work, that
he had become a living lie. If he had had to play the part of
Othello he would have blacked himself all over, and very likely
have smothered his Desdemona in good earnest. Hanky would hardly
have blacked himself behind the ears, and his Desdemona would
have been quite safe.”

The School is another favorite satirical topic. The only novelists who
refrain from depicting the shortcomings of the educational system are
Disraeli, Reade, Mrs. Gaskell, and George Eliot. On the public side,
Meredith might be added, as the theme of _Richard Feverel_, though
educational, is made an individual matter.

The adverse opinion handed down on the methods and results of the
prevailing system is more unanimous than is the case with other
subjects. On the main indictments, inefficiency and cruelty in the
lower schools, and inefficiency and carelessness in the higher, there
is no minority report. On the whole, the Victorians were innocent of
the partisanship that arose later over the great question of Culture
versus Efficiency as an educational ideal. The primary stages might
be allowed a modicum of the practical, though Gradgrind’s “facts”
are failures, and Squeers stands in solitary glory as an advocate of
applied arts and manual training. Mr. Tulliver is in line with his
_Zeitgeist_ in fondly supposing the best thing he can do for Tom
is to send him to an expensive private school, to learn Latin along
with the son of Lawyer Wakem. An education was tacitly defined as
that which makes a gentleman of you. And though no one would dissent
from Thackeray’s dictum that “all the world is improving except the
gentlemen,” neither would any one suppose that the definition might be
modified or expanded.

A number realize that education begins at home. The close father and
son relationship satirized in the case of Sir Austin and Richard
because it was too close and inflexible, is presented as a beautiful
ideal in those of Pisistratus and Mr. Caxton, Kenelm and Squire
Chillingly, Clive and Colonel Newcome, and the Duke of Omnium and his
sons.[336]

* * * * *

In David Copperfield’s recollections of the metallic Murdstone, Arthur
Clennam’s of his childhood’s Sabbath and Alton Locke’s of his mother’s
fearful bigotry, we get glimpses into the pathos of the old Puritan
discipline. These are too sad for satire. Butler, no less sad, is also
angry enough to brand it with his caustic wit. Theobald and Christina
Pontifex are texts for a satiric sermon on parental incompetence, no
less disastrous although “All was done in love, anxiety, timidity,
stupidity, and impatience.” After the scene in which Theobald, having
punished little Ernest severely and quite wantonly, rang the bell for
prayers, “red-handed as he was,” his visitor reflects that perhaps it
was fortunate for his host--[337]

“* * * that our prayers were seldom marked by any very
encouraging degree of response, for if I had thought there was
the slightest chance of my being heard I should have prayed that
some one might ere long treat him as he had treated Ernest.”

The keynote of this most Christian system is unconsciously hit upon by
the bewildered little lad himself, who later concludes,--[338]

“* * * that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for
him upon every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him.”

Formal education naturally falls into the school and college divisions.
We have the former presented dramatically by Brontë in _Jane Eyre_
(and more impressionistically in _Villette_), by Thackeray in _The
Fatal Boots_ and _Vanity Fair_, by Butler in _The Way of All Flesh_,
and by the zealous specialist in that field. It has been counted up
that Dickens deals with twenty-eight schools and mentions a dozen
others.[339] The most important are in _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Dombey and
Son_, _David Copperfield_, and _Hard Times_.

Major Bagstock is contemplating young Rob, a product of that school
where they never taught honor, but were “particularly strong in the
engendering of hypocrisy,” and deduces that “it never pays to educate
that sort of people.” Whereupon--[340]

“The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his
son, the quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and
badged, and taught, as parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his
place of schoolmaster with as much fitness for it as a hound,
might not have been educated on quite a right plan in some
undiscovered respect, when Mr. Dombey, angrily repeating ‘The
usual return!’ led the major away.”

Young David Copperfield profits little by losing Murdstone and gaining
Creakle. The aspect of this pleasant pedagogue so fascinates the gaze
of the boys that they cannot keep to their books. When a culprit is
called before the tribunal,--[341]

“Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at
it,--miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white
as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots. * * * Miserable
little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to
him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to
be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!”

From this infant purgatory the step to the college seems a long one,
for that is by comparison an Elysium, however inane and frivolous.
Those whose satiric arrows speed thither are Peacock, Lytton, Trollope,
Kingsley, and Butler. Thackeray should be mentioned for his two
chapters on University Snobs, and the preceding one on Clerical
Snobs, in which he describes the colleges as the last strongholds of
Feudalism; concluding--[342]

“Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and that
badge still? Because Universities are the last places into which
Reform penetrates. But now that she can go to College and back
for five shillings, let her travel down thither.”

Squire Headlong inquires in vain at Oxford for “men of taste and
philosophers.” Scythrop and Sir Telegraph were both cured at college
of their love for learning. Desmond describes the university system
as a “deep-laid conspiracy against the human understanding, * * * a
ridiculous and mischievous farce.” But Dr. Folliott refused to succumb.
Alluding to some one who cannot quote Greek, he adds,--[343]

“But I think he must have finished his education at some very
rigid college, where a quotation, or any other overt act showing
acquaintance with classical literature, was visited with a
severe penalty. For my part, I made it my boast that I was not
to be so subdued. I could not be abated of a single quotation by
all the bumpers in which I was fined.”

The same critic says elsewhere of the curriculum:[344]

“Everything for everybody, science for all, schools for all,
rhetoric for all, law for all, physic for all, words for all,
and sense for none.”

Pelham testifies that at Eton he was never taught a syllable of English
literature, laws, or history; and was laughed at for reading Pope out
of school. On his graduation from Cambridge, a place that “reeked with
vulgarity,” he is congratulated by his tutor for having been passably
decent. Whereupon he observes,--[345]

“Thus closed my academical career. He who does not allow that
it passed creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself, and
beneficially to the world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate
man, who knows nothing of the advantages of modern education.”

Trollope in _The Bertrams_, and Kingsley in _Yeast and Alton Locke_,
have a few words for the subject, but add no new idea, except that
Alton voices the disgust of the students themselves with their Alma
Mater. It is this same young neophyte who is advised by Dean Winnstay
to go to some such college as St. Mark’s, which “might, by its strong
Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint
of sans-culottism.”

In Butler’s Erewhonian Colleges of Unreason the leading subject is
Hypothetics, and the most honored Chairs are those of Inconsistency and
Evasion, both required courses. Genius and originality are resolutely
discouraged, it being a man’s business “to think as his neighbors do,
for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad.” These
Erewhonian professors, by the way, might have adduced as evidence the
well-known, horrified exclamation of Mary Shelley at the suggestion
that her son be sent where he would be taught to think for himself. By
refusing to “think like other people,” a man may become a poet and even
a beautiful, ineffectual angel, but he cannot lead a comfortable nor a
really effectual life. The problem as to who may safely be intrusted to
lead public opinion, and who are safest as followers, is an intricate
one, but it is certainly true that a sane and modest agnosticism is not
necessarily synonymous with “the art of sitting gracefully on a fence,”
which Butler concludes was brought to its greatest perfection in the
Colleges of Unreason.

On the subjects of Literature and the Press too much has been said
to be ignored, but not much of any great consequence. Trollope took
Journalism as a satiric province, with some little aid from Meredith.
He also takes a shot, not too well aimed, at the current humanitarian
fiction which purposes to set the world right in shilling numbers. He
adds,--[346]

“Of all such reformers, Mr. Sentiment is the most powerful. It
is incredible the number of evil practices he has put down. It
is to be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he
has made the working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer
put into proper sized pint bottles, there will be nothing left
for him to do. Mr. Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man,
and perhaps not the less so that his good poor people are so
very good; his hard rich people so very hard, and the genuinely
honest so very honest. * * * Divine peeresses are no longer
interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern
peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much
twaddle as one of Mrs. Ratcliffe’s heroines, and still be
listened to.”

A favorite theme, especially among the earlier writers, is the pose
of pessimism, alien to the self-satisfied optimistic spirit which
prevailed with little opposition--except from James Thompson and
Matthew Arnold--from Byron to Hardy.

The Honorable Mr. Listless finds the volumes of modern literature “very
consolatory and congenial” to his feelings:[347]

“There is, as it were, a delightful north-east wind, an
intellectual blight breathing through them; a delicious
misanthropy and discontent, that demonstrates the nullity of
virtue and energy, and puts me in good humour with myself and
sofa.”

Pelham perceives--[348]

“* * * an unaccountable prepossession among all persons, to
imagine that whatever seems gloomy must be profound, and
whatever is cheerful must be shallow. They have put poor
Philosophy into deep mourning, and given her a coffin for a
writing desk, and a skull for an inkstand.”

Ganymede anticipates that Apollo’s new poem will be very popular, for
“it is all about moonlight and the misery of existence.”[349]

It is in Meredith that we find the greatest point and depth in literary
criticism, as in most other things. Under cover of apology for his own
method of psychological analysis, he manages to convey his impression
of those who tell and who love the story for the story’s sake. He
cannot avoid, he explains, the slow start and detailed exposition in
which he unfolds the situation, and adds:[350]

“This it is not necessary to do when you are set astride the
enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves the man’s mind at
home while he performs the deeds befitting him: he can indeed
be rapid. Whether more active, is a question asking for your
notions of the governing element in the composition of man,
and of his present business here. * * * All ill-fortuned
minstrel who has by fateful direction been brought to see with
distinctness that man is not as much comprised in external
features as the monkey, will be devoted to the task of the
fuller portraiture.”

It is Meredith also who says the last word on the English, as English.
They are indeed the real objects under all these disguises of their
activities, but they are not often synthesized and called by name.
Yet--[351]

“An actually satiric man in an English circle, that does not
resort to the fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate
the excessive fury roused in his mind by an illogical people
of a provocative prosperity, * * * They give him so many
opportunities.”

He seizes one of them by symbolizing England in the Duvidney sisters;
composed of such, it becomes--[352]

“* * * a vast body of passives and negatives, living by precept,
according to rules of precedent, and supposing themselves to be
righteously guided because of their continuing undisturbed. * *
* mixed with an ancient Hebrew fear of offense to an inscrutable
Lord, eccentrically appeasable through the dreary iteration of
the litany of sinfulness. * * * Satirists in their fervours
might be near it to grasp it, if they could be moved to moral
distinctness, mental intention, with a preference of strong
plain speech over the crack of their whips.”

He had already decided, in _Beauchamp’s Career_, that “It is not too
much to say that a domination of the Intellect in England would at
once and entirely alter the face of the country.” Reade agrees with
this opinion, only he says bluntly that one is “an ass * * * to have
brains in a country where brains are a crime.” This national stupidity
and sentimentality are made impregnable by national complacency. Lytton
remarks on the egotistic nature of British patriotism:[353]

“The vanity of the Frenchman consists (as I have somewhere
read) in belonging to so great a country; but the vanity of the
Englishman exults in the thought that so great a country belongs
to himself.”

These criticisms are all from within. Disraeli is able to contribute
one from without. He describes the British through his Jewish
Besso:[354]

“There is not a race so proud, so wilful, so rash and so
obstinate. They live in a misty clime, on raw meats, and wines
of fire. They laugh at their fathers, and never say a prayer.
They pass their days in the chase, gaming, and all violent
courses. They have all the power of the State, and all its
wealth; and when they can wring no more from their peasants,
they plunder the kings of India.”

Nevertheless they all, even the Hebrew within their parliamentary
halls, believed in the English character and the civilization it was
blunderingly working out. The most incorrigible satirist of that
civilization was Peacock (who often, we suspect, gets carried away by
his own eloquence), and in his fervent summary of almost all our public
failures, he hints in the very phrasing, although ironically, at the
possibility of these failures being transformed into successes. Sir
Telegraph Paxarett, accused of extravagance, retorts with a conditional
promise of retrenchment:[355]

“When ecclesiastical dignitaries imitate the temperance and
humility of the founder of that religion by which they feed and
flourish; when the man in place acts on the principles which
he professed while he was out; when borough electors will not
sell their suffrage, nor their representatives their votes; when
poets are not to be hired for the maintenance of any opinion;
when learned divines can afford to have a conscience; when
universities are not one hundred years in knowledge behind all
the rest of the world; when young ladies speak as they think,
and when those who shudder at a tale of the horror of slavery
will deprive their own palates of a sweet taste, for the purpose
of contributing all in their power to its extinction:--why then,
Forester, I will lay down my barouche.”

Satire, being frankly a destructive process, makes no pretense of
supplementing its iconoclasm by reconstruction. But such implication of
reform as may lurk in the criticism that paves the way may be looked
for more assuredly than elsewhere in attacks on institutions. Such
criticism is neither lowered by the recrimination that puts satire
of individuals below the normal satiric level, nor elevated by the
artistic detachment that lifts satire of human nature above it. For
it is not in the too small lump of the solitary specimen that the
leaven can best work, nor yet in the too large mass of the whole human
race. It is in the unit between these two extremes, the body politic
or social or religious or educational, that it may best perform its
fermenting ministrations.

Even so, however, the idealism of the Victorian novelists did not
take this positive turn. English genius has on the whole contributed
its share to the anthology of Utopian vision, even to the furnishing
of the name, but the nineteenth century, preëminent in criticism and
speculation, venting more talk about it than all the other centuries
put together, has to its credit in this line, aside from _Erewhon_
and _The Coming Race_, only Morris’s _News from Nowhere_,
and that is too naïve in its simplification of human nature and too
absurd in its glorification of medievalism to be taken seriously.
More carefully thought out as an Ideal State, more searching in its
seriousness, more pertinent in its satire, and more constructive in
its conclusion, than any of these, is the American product, Bellamy’s
_Looking Backward_.

The Victorians did their looking backward literally from their own
present instead of an imagined future. And since in so doing they did
for the most part but cast their eye on prospects drear, and since they
shrank from a future they could only guess and fear if they thought
about it at all, they wisely and practically spent themselves on the
present. And because of this acceptance of the present and all its
institutions as a whole, they could couch their lances only against
this or that detail, not against the challenge of civilization itself.

The following instances show a characteristic difference in their
resemblance. “In England, poverty is a crime,” exclaims Lytton in the
nineteenth century. The observation is ironic, the tone scornful, and
the object of the ironic scorn is the snobbishness of those who from
the heights of wealth look down upon and despise the poor. The rebuke
is intended for the alien attitude toward that portion of society which
we may expect, according to Biblical authority, always to have with
us. Poverty itself is a mysterious dispensation, having indeed many
discernible compensations, and ever mitigable by applied morality.

“Poverty is the only crime,” echoes Bernard Shaw in the twentieth
century. His assertion is meant literally, the tone is decisive, and
the indictment is lodged against society at large for being so stupid
and inefficient as to permit such a canker, pernicious but curable, to
infect its body.

To remedy the supercilious attitude toward the poor is still to leave
poverty intact and in permanent possession of the field. To remedy the
criminal carelessness which tolerates its presence is to abolish the
thing itself.

But even if the twentieth century has stated the problem, it has not
yet solved it. And while neither the statement nor the solution of
the nineteenth is reckoned adequate today, still the Victorians did
accomplish something if not much, and all we can say for ourselves
is that we have not accomplished much, if something. Moreover, to
flatter ourselves that we are the first to discover the social onus of
poverty and other ills, is to ignore the contributions not only of the
novelists but of Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, and Henry George. When the
remaining four-fifths of our century shall have been added to history,
we may perhaps applaud ourselves. At present it will do us no harm to
render unto Victorianism the acknowledgment that is its due.

CHAPTER III

TYPES

For that form of satire which deals with actual individuals,
photographed or caricatured, the designation _personal_ is sufficiently
descriptive. But for that which deals with fictitious individuals,
wherein the models that sat for the portraits have passed through
the imaginative process that makes their portraiture a work of
art, there is no satisfactory name. _Typical_, in distinction from
_individual_ and _institutional_, is tolerably expressive, but a term
to be apologized for. The school of art known as realistic, which was
theoretically adopted by the nineteenth century, repudiates creations
that are “mere types,” and claims for itself the achievement of true
individuals. The sign of individuality is a discordant complexity.
Every man may have his humour but he is not always in it. He may
be ruled by a master passion, but the rule is not a monopolistic
autocracy. Its supremacy is constantly disputed and threatened by mob
rebellion. Civil war is the usual rêgime, and the attainment of a
stabilized government is rare.

Tamburlaine, Volpone, Othello, Tartuffe, Blifil, are not untrue,
but they are only partial truths. We see much, undoubtedly the most
significant and dominating traits, but we cannot see all when the
searchlight is concentrated on a single spot. Agamemnon, Hamlet, Tom
Jones, Jaffeir, swayed, perplexed, inconsistent, at once infinite and
abject, are more nearly full length and complete drawings. Milton’s
Satan becomes humanized when, entering the human abode, he grows
hesitant, half regretful, half eager, a prey to conflicting emotions
and cross purposes.

Yet those desirable factors of art, unity and emphasis, must be
secured, and they can be secured only by throwing the emphasis on some
one feature, thus giving unity to the character. In the field of satire
a classification based on these qualities is the more easily made in
that any given character is usually satirized for some particular
trait, although the problem does not end there. We may construct
encampments for our army of characters--and in Victorian fiction they
come in battalions--and we may label them; but we shall find it less
simple to assign the companies to their own barracks and keep them
there.

The Father of the Marshalsea is a snob. He is also hypocritical and
foolish. Moreover, he is a sentimentalist and an epicurean. Withal he
is not villainous, but more pathetic than execrable. He has no apparent
kinship with the Countess de Saldar, yet she also may be described in
the above terms. The enumeration would not show the difference. Thus
not only does each real character refuse to be known by one name and
one only, but the congregation assembled under any one denomination
shows such diversity as to make the category itself questionable.
Mrs. Mackensie and Mrs. Clennam, Mr. Dombey and Bertie Stanhope, Tom
Tulliver and Sir Willoughby Patterne, are all egoists; but they would
find little congeniality in their mutual egoism.

All that can be done is to indicate the range and the concentration of
the main types. These types will of course represent those elements
in human character which seem to the satirist such deflections from
an ideal as are amenable to comic exposure and perhaps correction. It
does not seem possible to reduce them to fewer than seven or eight
heads, as follows: hypocrisy, folly, snobbishness, sentimentality,
egoism, fanaticism, and vulgarity.

These various fields have their specialists. Hypocrisy, including
sycophancy and deliberate imposture of any kind, belongs to Dickens,
with Thackeray, Trollope, and others following not far behind. He leads
also in depiction of folly and incompetence, though these prevail
widely in Victorian fiction; and Meredith excels in portrayal of mental
incapacity and fallacy in reasoning. It is the latter who comes to the
front with sentimentality and egoism, having but few predecessors.
Thackeray handles snobbishness in all its ramifications of worldliness
and elegant _ennui_. But although he contributes the name, the thing
exists on the pages of Lytton, Disraeli, Trollope, and Dickens.
Fanaticism, bigotry, all sorts of fads, make another common ground
for Peacock and Butler, and crop up in Reade, Brontë, and Kingsley.
Coarse vulgarity is the rarest of all, the Age of Propriety refusing
to transplant this weed from life to literature, but it is admitted by
Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, and Trollope.

Since satire is usually directed against the special thing in which the
satirist feels superior, we may deduce the favorite Victorian virtues
to have been sincerity, wisdom, rationality, refinement, and a sense
of proportion; a large order, but the nineteenth century would scorn a
smaller.

Dickens did not invent the hypocrite, nor did he supply anything new
to the investigation of the nature of this most subtile of all the
beasts of the field. He himself had not the subtlety to search out
causes and discover possible extenuations and values in a thing he
simply and flatly abhorred and saw no excuse for. What he does furnish
is an immense amount of data, with many variations, showing _in
extenso_ this aspect of human nature. At least three dozen of his three
hundred characters exhibit the seamy side of scheming and deceit. From
_Pickwick_, wherein Mr. Winkle, unfrocked as to skates and branded as
a humbug and an impostor because he assumed an accomplishment when he
had it not, to _Edwin Drood_, harboring Luke Honeythunder, professional
philanthropist, who, “Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the
face of society, * * * expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon
Corner,” no volume is entirely free from the trail of the serpent.

Most of the humbugs and impostors are, like the philanthropist,
professional. Dodson and Fogg, Sergeant Buzfuz, Mr. Tulkinghorn, turn
their intrigues into legal channels; Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann, into
civic; Dr. Blimber and Mrs. Pipchin, into pedagogic. Mr. Merdle tricks
the financial world, though Mr. Casby, operating on a smaller scale,
makes himself much more of a fraud. Mr. Crummles, Mrs. Gamp, Mrs.
Crupp, in their various capacities, abstain from giving their patrons
value received. The Barnacles, parasites clinging to the Ship of State,
pose as public servants and benefactors.

It happens, however, that those who confine their dissembling and
pretense to private life are of the highest hypocritical quality. Mr.
Mantalini expertly bamboozles his wife. Mrs. Sparsit successfully plays
her part for the benefit of Mr. Bounderby. Mr. Pumblechook protests too
much to little Pip, now grown up and prosperous, but carries it off
with an air. Mr. Carker, who “hid himself behind his sleek, hushed,
crouching manner, and his ivory smile,” and who, “sly of manner, sharp
of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of
heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfastness and patience at
his work, as if he were waiting at a mouse’s hole,” finally catches his
mouse, though only to be eluded again.

A perfect modern instance of the bubble pricked by the ancient Socratic
method is that of Mr. Curdle, eminent dramatic critic. He has been
talking big about the Unities of the Drama. Nicholas innocently asks
what they might be. He is informed:[356]

“Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. ‘The unities, sir,’ he said,
‘are a completeness--a kind of universal dovetailedness with
regard to place and time--a sort of a general oneness, if I may
be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be
the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow
attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject and
thought much. I find, running through the performances of this
child,’ said Mr. Curdle, turning to the Phenomenon, ‘a unity of
feeling, a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of colouring, a
tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical development of original
conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older performers.
I don’t know whether I make myself understood?’

“‘Perfectly,’ replied Nicholas.

“‘Just so,’ said Mr. Curdle, pulling up his neckcloth. ‘That is
my definition of the unities of the drama.’”

The great trio, Pecksniff, Bagstock, and Heep, occur in the three
successive novels of the six years ending with the mid-century.
Pecksniff is the most gratuitous offender, for he encases himself in
piety and benevolence, and inserts his falseness into every word,
every deed, every relation of life. Heep’s specious humility is as
unrelaxed and vigilant, but it is more of a means to an end and not,
like Pecksniff’s, an end in itself. He fawns and flatters and cheats
for the benefits to be derived from such policies. Thus slippery are
the steps of Uriah’s ladder. He has, moreover, a word of self-defense
which forces his educational training to share the responsibility.
When he is reminded by Copperfield that greed and cunning always
overreach themselves, he retorts by implicating the school where he was
taught “from nine o’clock to eleven, that labour was a curse; and from
eleven o’clock to one, that it was a blessing and a cheerfulness and a
dignity,” and so on. Major Bagstock resembles Heep in being servile in
manner instead of pompously patronizing; but while Chesterton may be
right in calling him a more subtle hypocrite than Pecksniff,[357] it is
also true that the Major’s hypocrisy is not quite his whole existence,
as it is of both Pecksniff and Heep. He is at least a gourmand in
addition, if nothing more.

Before Dickens, in our period, the only character to exemplify this
trait, aside from Peacock’s Feathernest, is Lytton’s Robert Beaufort,
in _Night and Morning_. The author remarks in a later preface that
this character might be rated as a forerunner to Pecksniff; but he is
in reality more of the Blifil type, his brother Philip acting as his
Tom Jones.

Lytton, however, is inclined to discuss the subject by the way. In one
of his earlier novels he says,--[358]

“Honesty--patriotism--religion--these have had their hypocrites
for life;--but passion permits only momentary dissemblers.”

In a later one he analyzes a dubious citizen:[359]

“But our banker was really a charitable man, and a benevolent
man, and a sincere believer. How, then, was he a hypocrite?
Simply because he professed to be far _more_ charitable, _more_
benevolent, and _more_ pious than he really was. His reputation
had now arrived to that degree of immaculate polish that the
smallest breath, which would not have tarnished the character of
another man, would have fixed an indelible stain upon his.”

The same might be said of another banker, the respectable
Bulstrode, whom George Eliot presents with no satire and an almost
pitiful sympathy.

The wealthy plebeian Avenel is embarrassed by the inopportune arrival
of his rustic sister in the presence of his aristocratic guests. By
a brilliant counter-stroke of a candid and courageous confession, he
stems the tide and wins the day. But in private he is very severe with
the poor culprit, and then admits to himself, “I’m a cursed humbug, * *
* but the world _is_ such a humbug!”[360]

The only Pecksniffian hypocrite outside of Dickens is the Reverend
Brocklehurst, whom Jane Eyre describes as lecturing to the half starved
and shivering girls at the school of which he was trustee, on the
beauty of asceticism and the holiness of economy, while his wife and
daughters sit in state on the platform, curled, bejewelled, opulent in
plumes and velvet.

The cant and manœuvering of the Thackeray and Trollope hypocrites are
necessary as first aid to the ambitious. By means of them Becky Sharp
achieves a husband, Mrs. Mackenzie a son-in-law, Moffit and Crosbie
a patrician father-in-law, and Lady Carbury a literary reputation.
Mr. Slope and the Pateroffs fail but no less bear up beneath their
unsuccess. Melmotte, another Merdle, succumbs, like him, forced to
realize that deceit may strike one with a tragic rebound.

Jermyn and Grandcourt, the latter especially, indulge in deceit out of
pure selfishness, but in neither of them does George Eliot consider
hypocrisy a matter for even satirical mirth. In lighter vein she does
indeed show up the _poseur_ in low life. Mr. Dowlas, oracle of _The
Rainbow_, laying down the law about ghosts, is too frightened by the
apparition of Silas Marner to speak. Having recovered and feeling “that
he had not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion,” he
intrigues to get appointed as deputy constable, and consents to serve,
after “duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high ecclesiastical
life as _nolo episcopari_.” Mr. Scales, discoursing largely on
excommunication, is another caught in the Socratic trap by being asked
for definition of the term. He is no less ready than Mr. Curdle, though
more sententious:[361]

“Well, it’s a law term--speaking in a figurative sort of
way--meaning that a Radical was no gentleman.”

It is George Eliot who sees the necessity of the mask that most are
content simply to tear away or disfigure. Although she speaks through a
worldly wise character, she sounds no note of dissent:[362]

“‘I’ll tell you what, Dan,’ said Sir Hugo, ‘a man who sets his
face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered
impracticable fellow. There’s a bad style of humbug, but there
is also a good style--one that oils the wheels and makes
progress possible.’”

This is recognized also by Lytton, who quotes “an anonymous writer of
1722:”[363]

“Deceit is the strong but subtile chain which runs through all
the members of a society, and links them together; trick or be
tricked, is the alternative; ’tis the way of the world, and
without it intercourse would drop.”

Trollope subscribes with qualification, by having the archdeacon say,
on the death of Mrs. Proudie,--[364]

“The proverb of _De Mortuis_ is founded on humbug. Humbug
out of doors is necessary.”

At the extreme opposite from the hypocrites, shrewd, knowing, wise at
least in their own conceit, stand the incompetent, victims of folly;
satirized not for ignorance but for bland unconsciousness of it,
usually accompanied by a hallucination of efficiency. As the hypocrites
shade off into villains, to be rebuked without humor, such as Jasper
Losely, Randal Leslie, Bill Sykes, Sedgett, so the fools merge into the
artless, to be smiled at without rebuke, as Colonel Digby and Colonel
Newcome, Frank Hazeldean, the Vardens, Tom Pinch, Captain Cuttle,
and “poor, excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and a
toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one.”

It is Dickens again who contributes the most data to this study, and
particularly to the genus, Silly Dame. Here his amusement over mere
fatuous complacency becomes warmed into scorn when that stupidity
affects the home she has in charge, and lowers into a failure the
very thing that it is most important to raise into success,--such
success not being automatic. Mrs. Nickleby, Mrs. Wilfer, Mrs. Finching,
like Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Palmer, and Susan Ferrier’s
Lady Juliana Douglass, are comparatively harmless, and are indulged
accordingly. But an incapacity that may be picturesque in easy
circumstances deepens into a grave misdemeanor when joined to a small
income. Mrs. Micawber, Mrs. Pocket, Mrs. Pardiggle, and especially Mrs.
Jellyby are domestic pests, at whom we are more exasperated than amused.

Aside from Dickens, the only artist much interested in this stratum
of human nature is the one who has given us Mrs. Tulliver and Mrs.
Vincy and her daughter, but they are not real sources of trouble,
except Rosamund, and her failure is more spiritual than material. Mrs.
Tulliver, a plaintive, hopelessly literal soul, is distressed over her
husband’s metaphoric speech about “a good wagoner with a mole on his
face.” She resents feebly the dogmatizing of the majestic Mrs. Glegg,
but would never go “to the length of quarreling with her any more than
a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said
to quarrel with a boy who throws stones.” Under another metaphor she
is an amiable fish, which, “after running her head against the same
resisting medium for thirteen years, would go at it again today with
undiluted alacrity.”[365]

Out of her saddening experience Rosamund did emerge somewhat wiser, but
with none of the higher wisdom which constitutes character.

“She simply continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in
her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and also to
frustrate him by stratagem.”[366]

The other section of this class most fully recruited is made up of the
foolish young men. It might look as though in the novelist’s world
masculine folly were a malady incident to youth, while on the other
hand, the feminine sort appeared late. For it happens that Lydia and
Kitty Bennet have no real successors. There are indeed plenty of Hetty
Sorrels, Lucy Deanes, Rosa Mackenzies, Amelia Sedleys, Dahlia Flemings;
but their innocence and pathos protect them from satire. And the merely
vapid and vain school girl is apparently too worthless a figure to be
given a place on Victorian pages. So also seems the man whose mental
growth has not kept pace with the years. Mr. Micawber may be taken
as the exception that proves the rule. Sir Lukin Dunstane likewise
shows that one may reach man’s estate and flourish therein on a small
allotment of intelligence. He makes his best record in a gossipy
little conversation with his wife, to whom he is giving an account of
the Dacier-Asper wedding. Emmy had commented on the eloquence of his
report:[367]

“He murmured something in praise of the institution of
marriage--when celebrated impressively, it seemed.

“‘Tony calls the social world the “theater of appetites,” as we
have it at present,’ she said; ‘and the world at a wedding is,
one may reckon, in the second act in the hungry tragi-comedy.’

“‘Yes, there’s the breakfast,’ Sir Lukin assented. Mrs.
Fryar-Gunnett was much more intelligible to him; in fact, quite
so, as to her speech.”

Folly is more ludicrous in the young man than in the maid, on account
of his greater conspicuousness in affairs, and the greater things
expected of him,--any failure divulging the discrepancy between fact
and fancy which is the basis of humor. It is also true that he stands
a better chance of having his foolishness shaken out of him in his more
exposed and strenuous life. Both these conditions are implied in a
reflection made by one of Trollope’s characters. Isabel Boncassen, the
frank American beauty, looks upon the young man as a type:[368]

“Young men are pretty much the same everywhere, I guess. They
never have their wits about them. They never mean what they
say, because they don’t understand the use of words. They are
generally half impudent and half timid. When in love they do not
at all understand what has befallen them. What they want they
try to compass as a cow does when it stands stretching out its
head toward a stack of hay which it cannot reach. Indeed, there
is no such thing as a young man, for a man is not really a man
till he is middle-aged. But take them at their worst, they are a
deal too good for us, for they become men some day, whereas we
must only be women to the end.”

Dickens is again a contributor of portraits, though not of the best,
and is joined this time by Thackeray, Trollope, and Meredith.

Tom Gradgrind, product of a system, and Edmund Sparkler, product of a
lack of system, deserve mention, as does Edward Dorrit, though sketched
without color. Rawdon Crawley and Joseph Sedley, no longer in first
flush of youth, are consistent exponents of gullible good nature and
ponderous vacuity. But the two prizes of undeviating stupidity are Sir
Felix Carbury and Algernon Blancove.

Sir Felix is a spoiled darling and an excrescence on the face of the
earth. His accomplishments are set forth in a description of his
state of enforced solitude consequent upon his latest exhibition of
monumental inefficiency:[369]

“He had so spent his life hitherto that he did not know how
to get through a day in which no excitement was provided for
him. He never read. Thinking was altogether beyond him. And he
had never done a day’s work in his life. He could lie in bed.
He could eat and drink. He could smoke and sit idle. He could
play cards; and could amuse himself with women,--the lower the
culture of the women, the better the amusement. Beyond these
things the world had nothing for him.”

The complacent fool would be matter for pure mirth if he could live
for himself alone; but unfortunately his worthless existence is as
adequate as any for the promotion of disaster to others. Sir Felix is
comparatively harmless, for his wreckage is reparable, but Algernon is
made a _deus ex machina_, and lets his commission go by default. Those
who trusted him learn that “He that sendeth a message by the hand of a
fool cutteth off his own feet, and drinketh in damage.” Or, as his own
author says:[370]

“But, if it is permitted to the fool to create entanglements and
set calamity in motion, to arrest its course is the last thing
the Gods allow of his doing.”

He is, however, a fool of quality in that he has a philosophy of
life, and if he were pent up in his room, he could mitigate tedium
by reverie. One may indulge in anticipations without possessing the
faculty of foresight. His cousin “aspired to become Attorney-General of
these realms,” but he had other views:[371]

“Civilization had tried him and found him wanting; so he
condemned it. Moreover, sitting now all day at a desk, he was
civilization’s drudge. No wonder, then, that his dream was
of prairies, and primeval forests, and Australian wilds. He
believed in his heart that he would be a man new made over
there, and always looked forward to a savage life as to a bath
that would cleanse him, so that it did not much matter his being
unclean for the present.”

The present sorry scheme of things also suffers him to wander the
streets in temporary bankruptcy:[372]

“He continued strolling on, comparing the cramped misty London
aspect of things with his visionary free dream of the glorious
prairies, where his other life was: the forests, the mountains,
the endless expanses; the horses, the flocks, the slipshod ease
of language and attire; and the grog-shops. Aha! There could be
no mistake about him as a gentleman and a scholar out there! Nor
would Nature shut up her pocket and demand innumerable things of
him, as civilization did. This he thought in the vengefulness of
his outraged mind.”

Meredith keeps on the trail of this luckless youth with something of
the relentlessness with which Blifil, Reverend Collins, Mrs. Norris,
and Mrs. Proudie are pursued; but he gives a good Meredithian reason
for it. Twice he takes the trouble to explain him, both times on the
grounds of realism:[373]

“So long as the fool has his being in the world, he will be a
part of every history, nor can I keep him from his place in a
narrative that is made to revolve more or less upon its own
wheels. * * * for the fool is, after his fashion, prudent, and
will never, if he can help it, do himself thorough damage, that
he may learn by it and be wiser.”

Again, an incident is followed by comment. Algernon, being loggy after
a dinner at the Club, fancies himself melancholy and profound:[374]

“‘I must forget myself. I’m under some doom. I see it now.
Nobody cares for me. I don’t know what happiness is. I was born
under a bad star. My fate’s written.’ Following his youthful
wisdom, this wounded hart dragged his slow limbs toward the
halls of brandy and song.

“One learns to have compassion for fools, by studying them: and
the fool, though Nature is wise, is next door to Nature. He is
naked in his simplicity; he can tell us much, and suggest more.
My excuse for dwelling upon him is, that he holds the link of my
story. Where fools are numerous, one of them must be prominent
now and then in a veracious narration.”

According to the old duality of satirized objects,--Vice and Folly,
identified with the deceiver and the deceived,--the two classes just
discussed would exhaust the list. But these signify folly in its
narrowest and most literal sense, a plain lack of brains and a general
incapacity. In its wider sense it includes misuse as well as want of
intelligence. These mortals, as Puck discovered, are indeed all fools,
at times and on certain points. The number may not be infinite, but
Lydgate discovered sixty-three kinds; and Barclay augmented the list to
nearly one hundred. Perfect wisdom would cast out not only ignorance,
but also frivolity, sentimentality, vanity, all sorts of false
standards and all manner of fallacies. Therefore snobs, romanticists,
egoists, fanatics, merely exemplify folly in its varieties and
ramifications.

The snob is defined by his great expositor as “one who meanly
admires mean things.” A modern scholar calls vulgarity “satisfaction
with anything inferior when a superior is attainable.”[375] These
definitions together indicate why snobbishness and vulgarity are
allied, though not identical. There is, however, this difference,
that satisfaction implies in itself a passive acquiescence,
whereas admiration leads naturally to imitation, and if possible,
appropriation, of the thing approved. Of course, satisfaction on a
different plane results from a feeling of attainment and possession;
but it then becomes pride or vanity, which in turn may or may not be of
the snobbish sort.

In popular apprehension, indeed, snobbishness and vulgarity are
rated as more opposite than allied. The snob is thought of as either
belonging to the polite world or trying to secure an entrance to its
polished circles. If he occupies the former position, he boasts of his
refinement, and from his eminence contemplates with scorn or at best an
affable condescension, the mob below. To this class belong such members
as Lytton’s and Disraeli’s aristocrats; such diverse types in Dickens
as Sir John Chester, the Monseigneur in _Tale of Two Cities_,
Mrs. General, and Mrs. Gowan; Thackeray’s Marquis of Steyne, Major
Pendennis, and the Misses Pinkerton; Trollope’s de Courcys and the
Chaldicote circle; Meredith’s Everard Romfrey and Ferdinand Laxley.

But if the snob is engaged in climbing up instead of looking down, he
is likely to have some common clay still clinging to his shoes, as well
as to be dishevelled by the exertions of the ascent. Such insignia of
vulgarity are worn by a numerous clan, including the politician Rigby,
the money-lender Baron Levy;[376] the Veneerings and Dorrits, and those
patriotic American snobs whom Martin Chuzzlewit found so insufferably
vulgar; Barry Lyndon, Mr. Osborne, and Becky Sharp; Mr. Slope, Mr.
Crosbie, and the great Melmotte.

On the other hand, the frankly vulgar is reckoned among the plebeians.
As there is a snobbishness free from coarseness, so there is a
vulgarity unembellished even by pseudo-culture. In this ugly and gross
scum of the earth no novelist really delights except the creator of
Mrs. Gamp, Quilp, Squeers, and Fagin and his crew, though Thackeray is
able to depict Sir Pitt Crawley; Trollope, the Scathards; and Meredith,
Sedgett.

The compound of snobbishness and vulgarity has the additional
complexity of ramifying into hypocrisy on one side and sentimentality
on the other. The first conjunction is made because of the incitement
to that fawning, flattering servility that more than anything else
rouses satiric disgust. The second occurs when the flattering unction
is laid to one’s own soul instead of being paid to the possessions of
others. The first is obvious and its examples are legion. The second
is more subtle and obscure, though perhaps almost as prevalent. It
consists in an inaccurate orientation, a supposition that one has
arrived at a goal, when the case is otherwise. Such unwarranted
complacency cheers the lot of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, Mrs. Hobson Newcome,
Mrs. Proudie, and the Countess de Saldar.

This, however, is only one phase of sentimentality. It also may
exist independently, or otherwise combined than with snobbishness
or vulgarity. It is a term somewhat ambiguous because of a recently
changed connotation.

In the eighteenth century it was “sensibility,” and regarded as a
virtue until Jane Austen exhibited it in Marianne Dashwood and
her mother. At that time it was thought of as excess of feeling or
sentiment cherished for its own sake, without much regard for the
worthiness of its object. Marianne, disappointed in the vanished
romance she had built up chiefly from imaginative material, “would have
thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the
first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed
to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from
her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it.”[377]

If Meredith, three-quarters of a century later, had been relating the
sad fortunes of a self-deceived young lady, he would have stressed
in his account of her character, the cause of the trouble, that is,
the process of constructing a Spanish castle with a flimsy foundation
in fact, rather than the effect, namely, the emotional orgy which
celebrated its inevitable but astonishing collapse. He would have
seen that preliminary process as possible because of the disregard
for facts which is the real mark of the sentimentalist.[378] This
later interpretation is not a contradiction of the earlier one, but
a shifting of emphasis. The common factor in the two definitions is
feeling, ranging all the way from simple preference or inclination to
strong emotion. But whereas formerly this element was accepted without
further analysis, it came later to be accounted for in its relation
to the intellect. Emotion is an excellent driver but an untrustworthy
leader. It is when it assumes leadership, when action is not only
impelled but guided by feeling, that the ensuing motion is in danger
of being erratic, unprogressive, perhaps calamitous. This more or less
wilful blindness, which is the essence of sentimentality, is of course
a very natural human trait. Since it is the function of emotion to
supply heat, and of intellect to furnish light, and since warmth is as
a rule more grateful than illumination, particularly if the prospect
does not please, we are much more likely to be warmed in our passage
through life than illumined. To refuse to see the disagreeable is as
instinctive as to seek the delightful. Nor could one be regarded as
more of a fault than the other until the love of truth for its own sake
became an ideal, accompanying the dominance of the scientific spirit.

This accounts for the fact that, while Meredith did not invent the
sentimentalist any more than Dickens the hypocrite or Thackeray
the snob, he is the first to take a deep and conscious interest in
this species; being especially fitted for it by his own incisive,
highly rationalized nature as well as by the spirit of his time. His
predecessors in this field are Peacock, Gaskell, Dickens, Thackeray,
and Eliot, although the last is rather a contemporary.

From Squire Headlong, the would-be savant, to Mr. Falconer, the
would-be Platonist and devotee of Saint Cecilia, Peacock traces a vein
of rather innocuous sentimentality, but of Miss Damaretta Pinmoney he
gives a definite account, followed by several examples:[379]

“She had cultivated a great deal of theoretical romance--in
taste, not in feeling--an important distinction--which enabled
her to be most liberally sentimental in words, without at all
influencing her actions.”

Mrs. Shaw represents those who so appreciate the value of romantic
affliction that, lacking a grief, they manufacture a grievance to cover
the deficiencies of a too roseate existence. On a certain melancholy
occasion to be sure she orders “those extra delicacies of the season
which are always supposed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at
farewell dinners.” But her usual manner--[380]

“* * * had always something plaintive in it, arising from the
long habit of considering herself a victim to an uncongenial
marriage. Now that, the General being gone, she had every good
of life, with as few drawbacks as possible, she had been rather
perplexed to find an anxiety, if not a sorrow. She had, however,
of late settled upon her own health as a source of apprehension;
she had a nervous little cough whenever she thought about
it; and some complaisant doctor ordered her just what she
desired,--a winter in Italy.”

It is Mrs. Kirkpatrick, however, who takes the prize in “pink
sentimentalism,” and holds it until the arrival of the Countess de
Saldar, and the Pole sisters. Behind the “sweet perpetuity of her
smile” is carried on an equally perpetual manœvering, which ministers,
under the auspices of refinement and the proprieties, to a small and
selfish tyranny. If by any chance she is detected or foiled, she
is deeply wounded, for if she hates anything, “it is the slightest
concealment and reserve.” Moreover, she never thinks of herself,
and is “really the most forgiving person in the world, in forgiving
slights.” She is overcome by the spring weather,--[381]

“_Primavera_, I think the Italians call it. * * * It makes
me sigh perpetually; but then I am so sensitive. Dear Lady
Cumnor used to say I was like a thermometer.”

But it is in her association with Lady Harriet that her sincerity
and candor shine forth. Apprised, on one occasion, of the intention
of that personage--an aristocrat in character as well as social
station--to honor her with a morning call, she dispatches to a neighbor
her stepdaughter Molly, of whose friendship with Lady Harriet she is
jealous, and keeps at home her own daughter Cynthia, to prepare the
especially delicious luncheon to which the guest is to be invited as
an impromptu bit of pot-luck. During this visit Lady Harriet brings up
the question of white lies, confessing to an occasional indulgence,
and asking her hostess if she never yielded to the temptation. She is
answered:[382]

“I should have been miserable if I ever had. I should have died
of self-reproach. ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth,’ has always seemed to me such a fine passage. But
then I have so much that is unbending in my nature.”

Dickens and Thackeray, like Lytton, Reade, and Kingsley, have too much
of this trait in their own temperaments to be able to view it with
complete detachment, but they present a few samples. Besides Mrs.
Wititterly, Harold Skimpole, and the ever illustrative Mr. Dorrit,
Dickens is most successful with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and Mrs. Chick.

When Mr. Micawber, stimulated by the prospect of something being
about to turn up, presents poor Traddles, with great _éclat_ and
ceremony, his personal note for the exact amount of his indebtedness,
David, a witness, reflects:[383]

“I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to Mr.
Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly
knew the difference until he had had time to think about it.”

Mrs. Chick, with true Dombian genius, having helped to loosen her
sister-in-law’s slender hold upon life, now enjoys the pathos of the
situation:[384]

“What a satisfaction it was to Mrs. Chick--a commonplace piece
of folly enough, * * * to patronize and be tender to the memory
of that lady; in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her
lifetime; and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself
in, and make herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of
her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should
be when we are right, to be so very pleasant when we are wrong,
and quite unable to demonstrate how we came to be invested with
the privilege of exercising it!”

In her capricious cruelty to Lucretia Tox, she pretends to be
scandalized at what she had fostered all along, and taunts the dismayed
woman for the very thing she had been aiding and abetting:[385]

“‘The scales;’ here Mrs. Chick cast down an imaginary pair,
such as are commonly used in grocers’ shops; ‘have fallen from
my sight.’ * * * ‘How can I speak to you like that?’ retorted
Mrs. Chick, who, in default of having any particular argument to
sustain herself upon, relied principally upon such repetitions
for her most withering effects. ‘Like that! You may well say
like that, indeed!’”

Thackeray is included in this list chiefly on the strength of the
Osbornes, Pitt Crawley, and to a less degree, Blanche Armory and
Mrs. Bute. Of the first he says, regarding certain declarations of
disinterested friendliness and admiration,--“There is little doubt
that old Osborne believed all he said, and that the girls were quite
in earnest in their protestations of affection for Miss Swartz.” And
his thrust at the hoodwinked Pitt’s delighted apprehension that the
clever Becky really understood and appreciated him, is a palpable hit.
He also arraigns under this head his favorite satirical object,--“the
moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but
an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
On the other hand, more than any other novelist, he has given us
sentimentalists unaware; that is, in such characters as Helen, Laura,
and Arthur Pendennis, Lady Castlewood, and Colonel Newcome, he shares
their own unawareness of the possession of this foible, though in all
these it is of an innocent variety.

George Eliot is keenly alive to this blindness in human nature,
particularly as it manifests itself in the pernicious optimism of weak
and wilful youth; but as with other mortal failures, it is usually too
serious in her eyes for satire. Of all her novels, _Felix Holt_ and
_Daniel Deronda_ alone have no character of this type. In the others
he appears as Arthur Donnithorne, Stephen Guest, Godfrey Cass, Tito
Melema, and Fred Vincy; but rarely is he ridiculed, and then ironically.

Of the bonny young Squire Donnithorne she draws the portrait as he
himself would see it:[386]

“* * * candour was one of his favorite virtues; and how can a
man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few
failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his
faults were all of a generous kind--impetuous, warm-blooded,
leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. ‘No! I’m a devil
of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always
take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders.’ Unhappily
there is no inherent poetic justice in hobbles, and they will
sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences
on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly-expressed wish. It
was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things
that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides
himself.”

Even when troublesome consequences threatened both himself and others,
he was buoyed up by “a sort of implicit confidence in him that he was
really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him
harshly.”

Tito Melema also leaned heavily on the law of compensation:[387]

“It was not difficult for him to smile pleadingly on those whom
he had injured, and offer to do them much kindness: and no
quickness of intellect could tell him exactly the taste of that
honey on the lips of the injured.”

Godfrey Cass, having little to say for himself, is drawn with much
sympathy, the responsibility being thrown upon his self-excusing
father:[388]

“The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons’, but it was
a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe
that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their
aged wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by
sarcasm.”

In addition to these instances, and such casual phrases as, “that
softening influence of the fine arts which makes other peoples’
hardships picturesque,” and “that pleasure of guessing which active
minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge,” George Eliot defines
sentimentality indirectly in the words of Mary Garth, an observant
young woman and something of a humorist in her own right:[389]

“* * * people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying
their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while
everybody elses’ were transparent, making themselves exceptions
to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a
lamp they alone were rosy.”

The sentimentalist is rampant in Meredith’s novels, depicted in all his
aspects. The keynote is that the sentimental spirit may be arbitrarily
hospitable, not obliged to keep open house whither all truths may
turn for shelter. “Bear in mind,” he admonishes, “that we are
sentimentalists. The eye is our servant, not our master; and so are
the senses generally. We are not bound to accept more than we choose
from them.”[390]

It is in _Sandra Belloni_ that Meredith is most expository on
the subject, and in connection with the Pole sisters. He says of
them,--[391]

“It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say,
they supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice
Feelings, and exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades.” They
had “that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which
was the crown of their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may
be in the gross appreciation of the world by other people, who
excel in this or that accomplishment, persons that nourish Nice
Feelings and are intimate with the Fine Shades carry their own
test of intrinsic value.”

Here, however, the sentimental fallacy is shown to be the reverse side
of the refusal to see what is, and to consist in the assertion of what
is not. This is a logical corollary, since merely to disregard the
unpleasant is a passive state until reinforced by the active process of
manufacturing the desirable. Actually to manufacture the desirable is a
constructive work, and the occupation of the enterprising idealist. The
sentimentalist manufactures only in fancy, and, being a sentimentalist,
does not know the difference. His imagination, that marvelous power of
visualizing the absent or non-existent, is perverted by being turned
inward and forced to rest content with its hollow fabrication, instead
of being directed outward upon a plastic world waiting its formative
touch. As the urge to an ideal of excellence is the most hopeful
quality of human nature, so the satisfied repose on the fictitious
supposition of such excellence is the most hopeless. Being, as Meredith
adds, “a perfectly natural growth of a fat soil,” it lacks the stimulus
of a rebuff that turns earth’s smoothness rough, and perceives no
necessity for striving or daring.

On this assertive side sentimentality is related to egoism. But the
relation is difficult to express, for egoism is another complexity that
baffles analysis. Self-respect and attention to one’s own affairs are
basic and indispensable virtues; while conversely, altruism is often
but egoism in disguise and of all things the most sentimental. We
may conclude, however, that it is egoism pushed to its two extremes,
vanity on the one side and selfishness on the other, that is the
satirizible sort. It is to the vanity wing that sentimentality is more
closely connected, as the assumption it makes is usually that of our
own superiority in possession and attainment, our own sincerity of
motive, and our own immunity from ordinary consequences. Such is the
attitude of the sentimental egoists, of which Meredith gives us a full
complement.

The Countess de Saldar is abused by the exposure of her schemes, but
resolute:[392]

“Still to be sweet, still to smile and to amuse,--still to give
her zealous attention to the business of the diplomatist’s
Election, still to go through her church service devoutly,
required heroism; she was equal to it, for she had remarkable
courage; but it was hard to feel no longer at one with
Providence.”

Wilfred Pole, by Wilming Weir in the moonlight, vows his love for
Emilia:[393]

“Having said it, he was screwed up to feel it as nearly as
possible, such virtue is there in uttered words.”

Edward Blancove is visited by the facile compunction that attacks
Arthur Donnithorne and others of the kind:[394]

“He closed, as it were, a black volume, and opened a new and
bright one. Young men easily fancy that they may do this,
and that when the black volume is shut the tide is stopped.
Saying ‘I was a fool,’ they believe they have put an end to the
foolishness.”

Outside of Eliot and Meredith, the best examples of the youthful
sentimental egoist are Thackeray’s George Osborne, and Trollope’s
Crosbie. The latter argues himself into a state of innocence over his
desertion of Lily Dale by soliloquizing that he did not deserve her,
could not make her happy, and was bound to tell the truth, which,
however painful, was always best.[395]

A word might be vouchsafed for this trait in low life, usually brushed
lightly by the novelist. Dale of Allington is a great man in the market
town, “laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who usually
knew more about barley and oxen than he did.” Squire Cass, a person of
some importance, “had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to
him quite as if he had been a lord.” Craig looks to Mrs. Poyser “like
a cock as thinks the sun’s rose o’ purpose to hear him crow.”[396] And
Robert Armstrong says of Master Gammon,--“There’s nothing to do, which
is his busiest occupation, when he’s not interrupted at it.”

Then there are the unsentimental egoists, attached to the selfish and
domineering wing of egoism. They are less amenable to satire, being
less deceptive by nature, and more prone to tyranny and cruelty,
thereby deserving rebuke without humor. This class is represented by
Paul Dombey, Barnes Newcome, Tom Tulliver, and others from the author
of the last. This is another favorite type with Eliot, the self-willed
sharing honors with the self-indulgent. Grandcourt “meant to be master
of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would
have been capable of mastering another man.” Tito Melema “felt that
Romola was a more unforgiving woman than he had imagined; her love was
not that sweet, clinging instinct, stronger than all judgments, which,
he began to see now, made the great charm of a wife.” Harold Transome,
who “had a padded yoke ready for the neck of every man, woman, and
child that depended on him,” makes the alarming discovery about Esther
that a lightning “shot out of her now and then, which seemed the
sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more
admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman
should not see this.” Meredith portrays this irresponsible selfishness
in Roy Richmond, Lord Ormont, and Lord Fleetwood; and defines it in Sir
Austin’s _Pilgrim’s Scrip_, which says that sentimentalists “are they
who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing
done.”[397]

Another and more passive type of the egoist is the epicurean. He
asks only to have his tastes gratified, and, being devoted to
material comfort, demands little of the world but material supplies.
Epicurianism is marked by an indulgent good-humor so long as it is
itself indulged, and when not gratified sinks into nothing worse
than peevishness. Though it may be a deplorable trait, it is not a
ridiculous one in itself, and is therefore satirized only when in
conjunction with something that produces an incongruity. The constant
stream of satire directed against the epicurean clergy, for instance,
is due to the sense of an incompatibility between a profession which
inculcates simplicity at least, if not actual asceticism, and a régime
of sensuous indulgence. Those who are legitimately worldly, as for
example the patrician triad depicted by Thackeray,--Miss Crawley,
the Countess of Kew, and Madam Bernstein,--may not be admirable, but
neither are they absurd.

In Adrian Harley we have the egoistic epicure in all his plump
perfection. Meredith hastens, however, to exculpate the founder of the
hedonistic philosophy:[398]

“Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have scourged
out of his garden, certainly; an epicurean of our modern
notions.”

The combination in him of cynic, self-pamperer, and Sir Oracle forms
a type which Meredith especially delights to dishonor, because its
own smugness puts a splash of color, as it were, on the bull’s-eye
and renders it more conspicuous. Not only is the epicure pierced
with many an ironic shaft, but the Wise Youth is made the veritable
error incarnate of the Feverel tragedy. For it was his Fabian policy,
dictated and obeyed, that knotted still more the sad tangle, just as
it was Austin Wentworth’s simple manly directness that proved the knot
could be cut easily by prompt and silent action. Indeed, in these two
characters we see exemplified throughout the story the false Florimell
of vanity and the true Florimell of pride,--the pride that is too proud
to do an unworthy or debasing deed, and the vanity that can counterfeit
successfully until confronted by the genuine reality.

Egoism within bounds is a perfectly sane and rational thing, but to
keep it within bounds is exceedingly difficult. When given over to an
irrational rule it grows into fanaticism. For the fanatic owes his
monomania to the force of a strong personality, which engenders the
unmitigated assurance of being right, plus the perverted reasoning that
characterizes the sentimentalist. He is always foolish, but seldom a
hypocrite, as his deception usually extends to himself. His selfishness
is of the opposite sort from the epicure’s. What he seeks is not a soft
berth and personal acquisitions, but a chance to impose his opinions on
a misguided world, and to dominate over converts or subjects. In his
milder moods he only dreams of happy schemes and far-reaching reforms,
but when charged with energy his proselyting zeal tends to make him
tyrannical.

In some form or other he appears on the pages of almost every Victorian
novelist. That the faddist is a favorite subject with Peacock is well
known. Lytton gives a delightful contribution in the Uncle Jack of _The
Caxtons_, whose “bewitching enthusiasm and convincing calculation” led
him into alluring speculations that invariably proved disastrous to the
members of his family. Not financial but missionary and philanthropic
zeal animate the souls immortalized by Dickens,--Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs.
Pardiggle, Reverend Honeythunder, and the Snagsbys. Brontë and Kingsley
specialize in the religious bigot. The former satirizes the Jesuit in
_Villette_, but not St. John Rivers, who is drawn seriously. The latter
gives a vivid picture in his Mrs. Locke and the Calvinistic preachers,
and another, of the opposite type, done with more partisanship and
less sympathy, in the vicar and Argemone in _Yeast_. Trollope is more
interested in the sociological zealot. He introduces him as the author,
Mr. Popular Sentiment; the “Barchester Brutus,” Mr. John Bold; the
demagogue, Ontario Moggs, son of a capitalist, and advocate of labor
unions; and some characters in the Parliamentary Series. A sample from
a harangue of Moggs will serve to illustrate the fair-mindedness that
accompanies Trollope’s love of parody. He quotes and then comments:[399]

“‘Gentlemen, were it not for strikes, this would be a country
in which no free man could live. By the aid of strikes we will
make it the Paradise of the labourer, and Elysium of industry,
an Eden of artisans.’ There was much more of it, but the reader
might be fatigued were the full flood of Mr. Moggs’s oratory to
be let loose upon him. And through it all there was a germ of
truth, and a strong dash of true, noble feeling; but the speaker
had omitted as yet to learn how much thought must be given to a
germ of truth before it can be made to produce fruit for the
multitude. And then, in speaking, grand words come so easily,
while thoughts--even little thoughts--flow so slowly!”

Mrs. Proudie herself is above all a politician, and justifies her
existence by turning her religious bigotry into the channel of
ecclesiastical polity, a procedure that well might cause the gentle
bishop to quake:[400]

“When Mrs. Proudie began to talk about the souls of the people
he always shook in his shoes. She had an eloquent way of raising
her voice over the word souls that was qualified to make any
ordinary man shake in his shoes.”

She rejoices in an opportunity to condone with a member of the Clerical
Opposition over a disappointment she has done her best to bring upon
it:[401]

“‘For, after all, Mrs. Arabin, what are the things of this
world?--dust beneath our feet, ashes between our teeth, grass
cut for the oven, vanity, vexation, and nothing more!’--well
pleased with which variety of Christian metaphors, Mrs. Proudie
walked on, still muttering, however, something about worms and
grubs, by which she intended to signify her own species and the
Dumbello and Grantly sects of it in particular.”

George Eliot’s zealots,--Dinah Morris, Savonarola, Felix Holt, Daniel
Deronda, are not ridiculed, except for some sarcastic repartee put into
the mouths of Mrs. Poyser and Esther Lyon. Nor is the pseudo-scholar
Casaubon, though he is described as having a soul that “went on
fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its
wings and never flying,” and on a certain occasion, as slipping “again
into the library, to chew a cud of erudite mistake about Cush and
Mizraim.”

Of all fanatics, those who are obsessed by an educational theory are
perhaps the most dangerous, as they impose their systems on flexible
youth, the result being often an orchard of lamentably bent twigs. Two
exponents of opposite divisions of this type are Gradgrind, who aimed
at the elimination of the imagination, and Feverel, who proposed to
circumvent the element of original sin in human composition, by the
policy of watchful waiting and absolute dictation. Both come to grief
through the failure of facts to support their philosophies; but Dickens
in his optimism makes Gradgrind a wiser man through being a sadder,
while Meredith in his realism keeps Feverel blandly unconscious and
untaught by a lesson that would have pierced any heart protected by a
less impervious pericardium.

All the materials that go into the warp and woof of human nature are
thus seen to be so commingled and interwoven that even the degree of
separation necessary for examination is almost impossible. And when
this dissection is after a fashion accomplished, it is the less useful,
in that the same strand is discovered to change its color and texture
from one section to another. Deception is here a vice and there a
virtue. Folly is here amusing and there horrifying. Egoism is here
absorbent and there encroaching. There are sentimental epicures and
unsentimental epicures and ascetic sentimentalists. There are vulgar
snobs and refined snobs and a vulgarity that is not snobbish. All of
these are criticizably absurd at times, and yet the same things may at
others be admirable or pathetic or tragic. Frequently the sublime and
the ridiculous advance on the one step that separates them, and merge
their diverse identities.

A peculiarly good illustration of the qualified nature of human
traits, in view of which we are wise to discard nouns in favor of
adjectives for identifying purposes, is furnished by Trollope’s Lady
Carbury. She is hypocritical in her wire-pulling intrigues, but not
a hypocrite, for her pretenses are not utterly hollow; her sincerity
is about on the average level, and her industry much above it. She is
sentimentally foolish in her maternal devotion to a son who has no
possible claim on toleration, much less on a patient and sacrificing
indulgence, but not a fool, for her cleverness is indisputable. She is
as tyrannic to her daughter as lenient to her son, but not a selfish
egoist, for she refuses to take advantage of Mr. Broune’s offer of
marriage, especially tempting to her harassed soul, on the altruistic
grounds that she and her family would be more of a burden than a
comfort to Mr. Broune. She is not a vulgar snob, but her respect for
aristocratic connections is not always marked by refinement of method
in her pursuit of them. Much of all this is unconsciously betrayed in
the series of three letters to editors and critics, bespeaking their
good offices for her new book, _Criminal Queens_. The epistles are
tactfully adjusted to their respective recipients. To Mr. Broune, of
_The Morning Breakfast Table_, she is intimately confiding and begs
frankly for a lift, while pointing out the attractive features of her
volume:[402]

“The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had
to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra,
of course, I have taken from Shakespeare: what a wench she was!
I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible
to pass over so piquant a character. * * * Marie Antoinette I
have not quite acquitted. It would be uninteresting,--perhaps
untrue. I have accused her lovingly, and have kissed when I have
scourged. I trust the British public will not be angry because
I do not whitewash Caroline, especially as I go along with them
altogether in abusing her husband.”

To Mr. Booker, of _The Literary Chronicle_, she is gently menacing,
reminding him that she has engaged to review his _New Tale of a Tub_
for _The Morning Breakfast Table_;[403]

“Indeed, I am about it now, and am taking great pains with it.
If there is anything you wish to have specially said as to your
view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should
like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical
details, which I know you can safely do.”

To Mr. Alf, of _The Evening Pulpit_, of whom she has reason to be
afraid, her candor assumes a more impersonal and business-like air.
She alludes to a recent caustic criticism in the _Pulpit_ of some poor
poetic wretch who well deserved it:

“I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who
contrive by toadying and underground influences to get their
volumes placed on every drawing-room table. * * * Is it not
singular how some men contrive to obtain the reputation of
popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of
their country worthy of note? It is accomplished by unflagging
assiduity in the system of puffing. To puff and to get one’s
self puffed have become different branches of a new profession.
Alas, me! I wish I might find a class open in which lessons
could be taken by such a poor tyro as myself.”

As for herself, she expects ruthless severity, but trusts that her work
has some merits. In any case, no amount of editorial flagellating can
discount her personal admiration for this particular editor. Truly, she
is all things to all men,--a policy, however, for which she might claim
a certain Scriptural precedent of high authority.

PART IV

CONCLUSIONS

CHAPTER I

RELATIONSHIPS

To call a man a satirist or a satirical writer is to say something
about him, certainly. It is, however, a piece of information which can
be nothing more than a curiosity of literature so long as it remains an
isolated fact. Although we are for the time being interested in a group
of novelists primarily as satirists, we cannot even understand them as
such, much less come to any fuller comprehension, unless we also view
the satirists as novelists, as artists, as human beings.

These relationships extend on the internal side, so to speak, into such
matters as quantity, quality, and range; and on the external, into the
larger realms of the two satiric factors--criticism and humor--and
thence into the neighboring domains of pessimism and tragedy, comedy
and wit, realism and romanticism, emotion and intellect, and idealism.
In none of these things, of course, can we do more than indicate
briefly the effect they may have upon satire, or satire upon them.

Those who have furnished the largest amount of
satire,--proportionately, as it happens, both to their own total
production, and to the satiric production of others,--are Peacock,
Dickens, Butler, and Meredith. But when it comes to quality,--tested by
subtlety of wit, self-command, justice as to objects, and moderation of
amount,--the only one to remain on the preëminent list is Meredith.

At the other extreme we find the same overlapping as to quantity
and quality. The smallest satiric amounts come from Brontë, Reade,
and Gaskell, but, while the first two are correspondingly inferior
in quality, the last is promoted several degrees up the qualitative
scale, by reason of her lack of flourish, and the deft sureness of her
touch. The low place she leaves vacant belongs by desert to Kingsley,
who, like Brontë and Reade, never learned to solve the satirist’s
problem,--to trifle without being trivial. Frivolity, to be sure, was
never a besetting sin of the Victorians, but in their earnestness they
were prone to the opposite fault, and are occasionally caught beating a
big satiric drum when softer notes would be more effective. Neither are
any on the entire list guilty of downright insincerity, but the less
successful ones are sometimes betrayed by partisan zeal, acrimonious
temper, or unsound judgment, into more or less injustice. This is true
to some extent of Peacock, Dickens, and Thackeray, as well as of those
just mentioned.

In range of interest Dickens easily leads, followed by Meredith and
Trollope. From _Oliver Twist_ to _Edwin Drood_, this satirist spreads
his attacks over more ground, and lays about him in more different
directions than does any one else. With the exception of the Church,
no possible word of importance is omitted from his satiric lexicon.
His tastes in the ridiculous are catholic, and scarcely a satirizible
subject languishes under his neglect. The other writers are more or
less specialists in their chosen fields.

As to the effect on the satiric product of a versatile mind, a prolific
pen, or preoccupation with other affairs, no deduction seems possible.
Lytton, Kingsley, and Butler were versatile and prolific both, to a
degree. Thackeray and Trollope were prolific within a more limited
range. Those most exclusively novelists were Disraeli, Dickens, and
Brontë, but those to produce the most novels were Trollope, Lytton,
Dickens, and Meredith. Lytton and Disraeli had more outside interests
and underwent more varieties of social and political experience than
any of their successors, though Trollope and Kingsley had occupations
and avocations outside those of literature.

All these internal relationships have some significance but much less
than the external ones. They deal primarily with accomplishments,
which have their value chiefly as emanating from character and so
defining it, whereas the various elements of which character itself is
composed are in the nature of vital statistics in the life spiritual.
Of these elements those most closely related to satire are naturally
its constituents, though they may exist independently of it. Although
satire is a form of criticism, it does not follow that those writers
who are most consistently satirical have the most widely or deeply
critical attitude toward life in general. Such fundamental criticism
branches out into two philosophies: the hopeless, or pessimistic,
shading off into flippant cynicism or bitter misanthropy; and the
hopeful, or unsentimentally optimistic, which is the basis of all
dynamic idealism. For whithersoever the idealist may tend, he certainly
cannot start from a point of uncritical satisfaction with things
as they are. Locke may have made some errors regarding the human
understanding, but he was eminently correct in identifying the stimulus
to action, not with a vision of fulfilled desire, but with the sting
that bids nor sit nor stand but go. We must be driven out before we
can be led on, but the driving process once being inaugurated, we make
it more dignified and endurable by conceiving a goal upon which our
endeavors may be focussed.

To the philosophy of pessimism no Victorian novelist was addicted.
The phase of it current in the period just preceding was met by a
prolonged, skeptical, British chuckle, beginning with our first
novelist, who represents, indeed, in his own history the reaction from
pensive melancholy to humorous common sense. Peacock is speaking of
being unhappy, and adds:[404]

“To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly commonplace:
to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of
being miserable for misery’s sake, has been brought to great
perfection in our days; and the ancient Odyssey, which held
forth a shining example of the endurance of real misfortune,
will give place to a modern one, setting out a more instructive
picture of querulous impatience under imaginary evils.”

Lytton shared the fondness of Dickens and Thackeray for pathos, but
none of them went further into the anatomy of melancholy than some such
comment as,--“Dig but deep enough, and under all earth runs water,
under all life runs grief.”[405]

* * * * *

Thackeray muses on the theme of aspiration in a whimsically pensive
vein. Between the questions and the exclamation of the following
excerpt are several instances of disappointment, related in his jocular
mock-sympathetic tone:[406]

“Succeeding? What is the great use of succeeding? Failing?
Where is the great harm? * * * Psha! These things appear
as naught--when Time passes--Time the consoler--Time the
anodyne--Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to
say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and
of yourself who pursue them.”

In the essay _Of Adversity_ Bacon says,--“We see in needleworks and
embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and
solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome
ground.” In so far as this can be granted, and applied to the novel,
it would explain why George Eliot is more pleasing than Thackeray,
for that is just the difference between them. Athwart the brilliant
background of Vanity Fair fall the sinister shadows of the sordid
little Puppets of the Show,--“the bullies, the bucks, the knaves,
the quacks, the yokels, the tinselled dancers, the poor old rouged
tumblers, and the light-fingered folk operating on the pockets of the
rest.” Behind Hayslope, Raveloe, and Middlemarch, the Floss and the
Arno, hangs the curtain of Destiny, somber with pain, drudgery, sin and
its wages. Yet over it plays a light shed around the characters as they
appear upon the stage. It shines from Mrs. Poyser’s kitchen and Mr.
Irwine’s study, from the parlors of the sisters _née_ Dodson and the
Garth family, from Celia Chettam’s nursery, the bar at the Rainbow, and
the shops of Florence. Together these actors weave a pattern of mirth
and amusement,--the incorrigible human defiance of the ache of life and
the agony of death.

Dickens, (upon whose Hogarthian gloom Taine lays great stress),
Reade, and Kingsley are as critical of society in the larger sense as
Thackeray is in the smaller, and as Eliot and Trollope are of human
nature. Meredith has no illusions about any of these things, and Butler
comes nearer than any to an unqualified pessimism. But even he does
not attain it. They all escape through the avenue of satire, sometimes
reinforced by action,--both being efficacious means of getting
melancholia out of the system. Nowhere does Browning speak more as a
Britisher than when he declares rage to be the right thing in the main,
and acquiescence the vain and futile.

Pessimism, to be consistent, would express itself in terms of tragedy.
Out of approximately one hundred Victorian novels of the realistic
type,--for romantic tragedy cannot be taken as an index of the
writer’s philosophy,--less than ten per cent can be classified as
tragic in outcome; and in none of these is the catastrophe inclusive,
overwhelming, or a perversion of justice. Of these the largest
proportion belongs to Eliot and Meredith, but _The Mill on the Floss_
is the solitary complete tragedy. _Rhoda Fleming_ and _Middlemarch_
are almost as truly tales of comic tragedians as _Romola_, _Richard
Feverel_, and _An Amazing Marriage_ are of tragic comedians. On the
other hand, tragedy of this mitigated sort is not inconsistent with
idealism, which in turn is the constructive side of criticism. While
it is too much, as Lytton reminds us in _Kenelm Chillingly_, to expect
both critical and constructive ability to be conspicuous in the same
individual, nevertheless the criticism which is content to note a
deflection from an ideal without even a tacit recognition of the
ideal deflected from, is mere childish fretting over the personally
irritating. Of this there is little in the nineteenth century. The
Victorians may have had some of the unpardonable disregard for reality
of which they have been accused,[407] but they never could be accused
of a disregard for ideality. None of the novelists, indeed, announced
an ecstatic premonition of some far-off, divine event toward which
the whole creation moves; but they would all have asserted, even if
under their breath,--_Eppur si muove_. This assertion is none the less
emphatic and possibly the more artistic, by being made indirectly,
through dramatic presentation of characters. Harley L’Estrange,
Egremont, Mr. Hale, Mrs. Brandon, Mark Tapley, Sidney Carton, Mr. Eden,
Jane Eyre, Alton Locke, Mr. Harding, Dinah Morris, Dorothea Brooke,
Austin Feverel, Vittoria, Beauchamp,--these all testify in their
various ways, by noble aspiration, generous self-effacement, sensitive
response to duty, devotion to principle, courage in daring and in
endurance, to the existence of a something in the human soul that is
stemming the tide of its selfishness, cowardice, and cruelty, and may
in time work out a salvation for the race.

A recognition of ideality does not imply, however, a lack of proper
concern for reality, or the reverse. To make the two diametrical
opposites is to confuse issues. As Meredith says,--“Between realism
and idealism there is no natural conflict. This completes that.” He
adds the caution that only the great can be truly idealistic, and
concludes,--“One may find as much amusement in a kaleidoscope as in a
merely idealistic writer.”[408] The direct counterpart to realism is
romanticism; and the Victorians did not scruple to make free use of
this alliance with the improbable, whenever the actual would fail to
secure the desired dramatic effect. Coincidences abound,--convenient
returns of the absent and departures of the troublesome, discoveries
of kinship and inheritance of fortunes, narrow escapes and astonishing
reunions. Yet there is also some conscious defense of the practice.
Lytton has one of his characters, confessing her disappointment in the
fiction of the time (the early thirties), conclude,--[409]

“These novelists make the last mistake you would suppose them
guilty of, they have not enough _romance_ in them to paint
the truths of society. * * * By the way, how few know what
natural romance is: so that you feel the ideas in a book or play
are true and faithful to the characters they are ascribed to,
why mind whether the incidents are probable?”

Trollope reinforces the idea:[410]

“No novel is worth anything, for the purpose either of tragedy
or comedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters
whose names he finds upon the pages. * * * If there be such
truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.”

And Meredith expresses on at least two occasions his opinion of the
value of realism. An embittered authoress determined to make her next
novel a reflex of her bitterness. Considering that type, she--[411]

“* * * mused on their soundings and probings of poor humanity,
which the world accepts as the very bottom-truth if their dredge
brings up sheer refuse of the abominable. The world imagines
those to be at our nature’s depths who are impudent enough to
expose its muddy shallows. * * * it may count on popularity, a
great repute for penetration. It is true of its kind, though the
dredging of nature is the miry form of art. When it flourishes
we may be assured we have been over-enamelling the higher forms.”

In another volume he is describing the humorist’s idea of it:[412]

“I conceive him to indicate that the realistic method of a
conscientious transcription of all the visible, and a repetition
of all the audible, is mainly accountable for our present
branfulness, and for that prolongation of the vasty and the
noisy, out of which, as from an undrained fen, steams the malady
of sameness, our modern malady.”

It might seem that a romanticism so prevalent and avowed would not
be the best medium for satire, which is supposed to be realistic in
the sense that it deals with the actual. But since satire is directed
against persons rather than circumstances, it is in no danger so long
as the romancing is confined to the situations, and the characters
are kept to the plane of reality,--as is the case, with a few easily
recognizable exceptions, in the Victorian novel. That the difficulty
of truthfulness is one excuse for indulgence in the easier romantic
method, is admitted by Eliot:[413]

“The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing
a griffin--the longer the claws and the larger the wings, the
better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius
is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real, unexaggerated
lion.”

But in Victorian fiction neither griffins nor lions are in much
evidence. The total personnel is fairly well symbolized (with the
addition of a few more of the nobler brutes than are admitted by
Thackeray) in the Overture to _The Newcomes_, wherein the “farrago
of old fables” pictures a crow, a frog, an ox, a wolf, a fox, an
owl, and a few lambs, but only the skin of a lion,--and that serving
as cloak for a donkey. The romantico-realistic solution, therefore,
forms probably the most satisfactory base for the dissolving of the
critical-humorous acid and the precipitation of satire. It secures a
maximum of pungency with a minimum of flatness, and is perfectly safe
to take.

As satire ramifies on the critical side into pessimism, tragedy,
idealism, and the cognate matters of romanticism and realism, so it
extends on the humorous into the comic, the witty, and the philosophic
amusement known as a sense of humor.

Of those who launch their satire on the comic current, Dickens is again
first. He is, as Taine remarks, the most railing and the most jocose of
English authors. Speaking of his sportiveness, the French critic adds
that “he is not the more happy for all that,” and uses him to point the
double moral: that “English wit consists in saying very jocular things
in a solemn manner,” and “The chief element of the English character is
its want of happiness.”[414] This last may account for the fact that
none of the novelists is abreast of Dickens in fun-making. Indeed, the
only others to deserve mention are Lytton, Trollope, and Thackeray,
and the last in his extra-novel productions. Those, on the other hand,
who are most endowed with wit are Meredith, Butler, and Peacock, with
George Eliot not quite to be omitted. More important than comicality or
wit is the sense of humor, for while they are largely in the nature of
devices whereby the object is made _ex post facto_ ludicrous to
others, it is the quality which enables the critic himself to perceive
the absurdity, and is thus the _sine qua non_ of his being a
satirist at all. It is Meredith who excels here, and this excellence,
combined with his gift of wit and his restrained use of the comic,
lifts him to a position of superiority on the humorous as well as the
critical side. George Eliot also has the sense of proportion which is
the basis of humor, and so, to a less degree, have Trollope and Mrs.
Gaskell. At the other extreme stand Reade, Kingsley, and Charlotte
Brontë, with very little perspective or artistic detachment. The
unfortunate thing about them is that they did not dare be as serious
in expression as they were in temperament. Their humor does not bubble
up from a natural spring but is manipulated through an artificial
fountain, with varying effects of spontaneity. Lytton, Disraeli, and
Thackeray had some youthful smartness of this sort to outgrow, and
to a large extent they did it. But these others never did; and Reade
especially has moments of a truculent pertness and shrill sarcasm that
do an injustice to the really fine spirit of his work.

That there are more of these fitful gleams and partial visions than of
an inclusive view of the cosmos, is not astonishing. The wide, clear
outlook requires not only an infinite radius but a lens of powerful
magnitude. To train a small telescope on a remote object achieves
nothing. None of the novelists evinces the cosmic perspective that
reports back in terms of a universe. That, indeed, is the function
of the seer,--poet, prophet, or philosopher. But if only these see
life in all its panoramic vastness, there are others who at least
splash at a ten-league canvas, and insist on having real figures
to draw from, whether saint or sinner. These have no use for the
trivial and frivolous, yet they know better than to scorn the small
and unpretentious. They delight in spaciousness, but are not enamored
with mere bulk or nebulous vagueness. Such are our satiric novelists
at their best, those among them ranking highest whose philosophical
humor is greatest in proportion to their love of the comic, and who are
granted sufficient wit to transmute their perception of the absurd into
effective expression.

The value of a sense of humor lies largely in a certain duality about
it, in that it springs from the intellectual side of one’s nature
and is reinforced by the emotional. It thus brings into play both of
the supplementary factors, and in so doing tests them both. To have
a sense of humor is an intellectual asset, but the enjoyment of it,
which is inseparable from its possession, is an emotional state. This
combination, as well as the order of procedure, affects the quality
of the resulting satire. The best satirists are those most fully
developed in head and heart, with the proviso that they keep the latter
subordinate to the former, by making reason the final tribunal, and
awarding the decision to intellectual judgment rather than emotional
prejudice.

Among our novelists the greatest in other things is greatest in this
also. The most generous endowment along both lines, and the nicest
balance between them is Meredith’s. With him are again associated Eliot
and Butler. Nor is it by accident that we find the lowest extreme
of the list still occupied by the same representatives. The test of
course is one of control. It is not that Reade, Kingsley, and Charlotte
Brontë are deficient in intellection. They do considerable thinking and
sometimes reach conclusions that are rational and true. But when truth
and rationality do dominate, it is by a happy good fortune rather than
the inevitability that marks the ratiocination of a capable mind. This
last cannot guarantee infallibility, to be sure, but the errors are
reduced to a minimum, and moreover left open to correction. This is
the case with Meredith, Eliot, and Butler, in whom a warm and sincere
emotion is directed by the light of reason.

It might seem at first sight that Butler ran more to head than heart;
but in this as in other things he was like Swift, having the faculty
of stating in cold logic what he had conceived in hot wrath. In such
a temperament the feelings are more likely to be turned against those
responsible for misery than toward the victims, thus producing a
negative effect, with the positive side left to our inference. The only
one whose work is entirely unemotional is Peacock, and even he waxes
warm over the exploitation of the helpless, and the crimes committed
in the name of Progress. Aside from this he shines with a hard mental
brilliance,--which, be it said, does not insure soundness of viewpoint,
as no one on the whole list can surpass him in prejudice and injustice.

George Eliot, admitted by all to have a better intellectual equipment
than any of her predecessors, admired above others by Meredith because
her fiction was “the fruit of a well-trained mind,” herself says, “Our
good depends on the quality and breadth of our emotion.”[415] And
again, “There is no escaping the fact that want of sympathy condemns
us to a corresponding stupidity.”[416] This realization that mental
inertness itself is the result of callous or defective emotion,
and that these two elements are not only inseparable but mutually
dependent, is one secret of the fine quality of her satire.[417]
It is the sheen on the surface of a deep current of sympathetic
comprehension. Never does she forget or cease to commiserate the great
predicament of the human race, condemned to make bricks without straw,
under a hard taskmaster, with little prospect of reward to encourage
perseverance or satisfy an outraged sense of justice. Yet she is able
to apply a few satiric goads,--not to the taskmaster, for he directs
from behind the veil and is not subject to human aspersions, nor to the
weak or the blundering, but to the shirkers, the selfish, and those who
demand more wage than a fair return for work done as well as possible
under the circumstances.

In 1902 Meredith wrote to his daughter-in-law:[418]

“You have a liking for little phrases; I send you three:--Love
is the renunciation of self. Passion is noble strength on fire.
Fortitude is the one thing for which we may pray, because
without it we are unable to bear the Truth.”

Here we have in juxtaposition, quite unconsciously no doubt, his
_obiter dicta_ on emotion and intellect. In many places he had already
dramatized them. His egoists--Sir Austin, Sir Willoughby, Wilfred
Pole[419]--are satirized because they conceived love as self-assertion
instead of renunciation; his epicures and snobs--Adrian Harley, Edward
Blancove, Ferdinand Laxley--because their passion was neither noble
nor truly strong; his sentimentalists of every description, because
they neither realized that Truth is the highest thing a man may keep,
nor, whether high or not, would they purchase it at the price of a
disturbance to their equanimity. They might pray for the truth to be
pleasant, but never for fortitude to endure it if it were otherwise.
The apparent pessimism underlying the implication that the Truth is
such as to demand courage for facing it, is counterbalanced by Diana’s
exclamation, “Who can really _think_, and not think hopefully?”

None of Meredith’s novels lacks an intellectual theme, and it was this
that he himself regarded as most important. In the very last one he
says:[420]

“But the melancholy, the pathos of it, * * * have been
sacrificed in the vain effort to render events as consequent to
your understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposure of
character!”

At the same time he surpasses all others in the treatment of love.
Contemporary readers, who had had to be content with David and Dora,
Pen and Laura, Rochester and Jane, Adam and Dinah, were vouchsafed
a revelation,--which, however, they apparently did not at once
appreciate,--in Richard and Lucy, Evan and Rose, Redworth and Diana,
Dartrey and Nesta. To them all Meredith would say approvingly what he
said warningly to a more unfortunate cavalier,--“You may love, and
warmly love, so long as you are honest. Do not offend reason.”[421] And
in them all he illustrates the higher hedonism voiced by Lady Dunstane
to her Tony, though from the negative side,--“The mistake of the world
is to think happiness possible to the senses.”[422]

In addition to these, Meredith gives us pictures of other than the
purely romantic devotion. There is the brooding tenderness of maturity
for childhood and youth: of Sir Austin, Lady Blandish, Wentworth,
and Mrs. Berry, for Richard and later, Lucy; of Clara Middleton for
Crossjay; of Rosamund for Beauchamp. This relationship is enhanced by
a more intimate comradeship in the case of Lady Jocelyn and Rose, of
Natalia Radnor and Nesta, and, in a happy-go-lucky fashion, of Roy
Richmond and Harry. Nesta and Rose illustrate respectively Meredith’s
genuine and exquisite sentiment, and the omnipresent common sense which
preserved it from sentimentality. When Nesta felt the first chill of
the shadow on her life,--[423]

“She sent forth her flights of stories in elucidation of the
hidden; and they were like white bird after bird winging to
covert beneath a thundercloud; until her breast ached for the
voice of the thunder: harsh facts: sure as she was of never
losing her filial hold of the beloved.”

When Rose determined to appeal their case to her mother, she said to
Evan,--[424]

“You know she is called a philosopher; nobody knows how
deep-hearted she is, though. My mother is true as steel. * *
* When I say kindness, I don’t mean any ‘Oh, my child,’ and
tears and kisses and maundering, you know. You mustn’t mind her
thinking me a little fool.”

Then there is the sisterly attachment between Rhoda and Dahlia Fleming
that leads Rhoda’s puritanic nature into a dictatorial fanaticism
as disastrous in its results as Sir Austin’s; there is friendship
masculine between Beauchamp and Dr. Shrapnel; and friendship feminine
between Lady Dunstane and Diana. It is not that Meredith has a monopoly
on the portrayal of human affection. Lytton has to his credit the
Chillinglys[425] and the Caxtons; Gaskell has the Gibsons; Dickens,
Amy Dorrit, and Joe Gargary; Brontë, Caroline Helstone and her mother;
Trollope, Lily Dale and hers; in Barry Lyndon, Thackeray gives us a
base soul redeemed by love for a child, and in Colonel Newcome, Helen
Pendennis, and Amelia Osborne, he presents a rather one-sided devotion,
as does Eliot in Mrs. Transome,--though the latter does not feel called
upon to exclaim, “By Heaven, it is pitiful, the bootless love of women
for children in Vanity Fair!” But it is true that Meredith through the
richness of his well-rounded nature was more able than the others to
lift emotion fearlessly to a height of intensity, preserved there from
any danger of a fall into bathos, because supported by intellect on the
one hand and humor on the other.

Any final alignment must be left flexible, because of the numerous
factors in the test. Writers may excel in one way or another. When,
however, the same author reappears on every count, it begins to look
suspicious, and the suspicion falls most heavily on Meredith. Others
may come to the top twice or even thrice, but he alone is never wholly
submerged, and is nearly always dominant. When Arnold Bennett declared
that “Between Fielding and Meredith no entirely honest novel was
written by anybody in England,” he was merely following the twentieth
century fad of depreciating the nineteenth,--any smart miss of sixteen
being naturally more modern and sophisticated than her middle-aged
mother. But in saying that “The death of George Meredith removes,
not the last of the Victorian novelists, but the first of the modern
school,” he mentions an obvious fact, not really discredited by the
chronological situation. This does not necessarily argue, be it said,
that Meredith casts the forward shadow of coming events. His strong
individuality did not lend itself to imitation, or even a prompt
appreciation. Moreover, he had in him no germ either of _fin de siècle_
decadence or of its flaunting iconoclasm. In his own mountain range he
is simply a preëminent peak, as in theirs were Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Dryden, Johnson.

As to the lower plateaus and the foothills, the only thing of interest
that develops through examining their juxtaposition, is the resultant
effect on Thackeray. While the others stand firmly up to their own
normal height, making no attempt to add a cubit to their stature,
he seems constantly to be taking thought; nor is it thought that
leads to conclusions of much moment. “His depth,” like Lytton’s, “is
fathomable,” but his air is of the most profound and meditative. It
must be this, together with his _Snobs_ and _Vanity Fair_ (to both
of which, acknowledgments are due) that has bewitched his critics
and persuaded his readers into ranking him as the foremost Victorian
satirist. That he is among the elect is undeniable, even to being “more
long-winded than Horace and bitterer than Juvenal,”[426] but to place
him above them in any absolute way is to ignore the greater range
of Dickens, the keener wit of Peacock and Butler, the rarer charm of
Mrs. Gaskell and Trollope, and above all, the superior penetration and
insight of George Eliot and Meredith.

It is not necessary, however, to make all distinctions invidious and
all comparisons odious. Individually and collectively the Victorian
satirists are to be accepted with the ungrudging appreciation they
deserve. The terribly exacting author of _The New Machiavelli_
recognized in their endowment to us nothing but “emasculated thought,”
“a hasty trial experiment, a gigantic experiment of the most slovenly
and wasteful kind,” “a persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or
disagreeable to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking
about it,”--all resulting in “the clipped and limited literature
that satisfied their souls.” But there is consolation in the
counter-discovery of Professor Sherman (in his _Modern Literature_)
that there was a compensating economy, even in their failure: “Dickens,
Kingsley, Reade, Mrs. Stowe, and the rest,” he reminds us, “they did
not seek to make the world over, but only to accomplish a few, simple
things like abolishing slavery, sweat-shops, Corn Laws, the schools of
Squeers, imprisonment for debt, the red tape of legal procedure, the
belief in pestilence and typhoid as visitations of God--and all that
sort of piddling amelioration.”

For this modest ambition, the Victorians found satire an effective
means, and they proved they could turn it also to more purely artistic
uses. Such as their achievement was, they are doubtless content to
rest in peace upon it, granting without jealousy to their illustrious
successors whatever surpassing results they may be able to accomplish.

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.

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.

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.

[Illustration]

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.

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