FOOTNOTES:

[1] Churchill, in The Author.

[2] Satires, I, 10, 15.

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

“He, with a sly, insinuating grace,

Laugh’d at his friend, and look’d him in the face.”

[4] Preface to Every Man in his Humour.

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

[6] Young: Preface to the Seven Satires.

[7] Fielding: Historical Register: Dedication to the Public, III, 341.

[8] Fielding: Tom Jones: Dedication to George Lyttleton, VI, 5.

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

[9] Browning: Aristophanes’ Apology.

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

[11]

“Wolves use their teeth against you, bulls their horn;

Why, but that each is to the manner born?”

Satires, I, 1. Conington, 46.

Some modern echoes are heard. Says Byron,—

“Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen;

You doubt—see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean.”

Hints from Horace.

Taine applies his general theory to this instance:

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

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

[12] Scourge of Villainy.

[13] Apology for Smectymnuus.

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

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

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

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

[18] Fielding: Covent Garden Journal.

[19] Preface to the Translation of Juvenal.

[20] Essay on Comedy, 76.

[21] The Renaissance in Italy, V, 270.

[22] Makers of English Fiction, 86.

[23] Scourge of Villainy, Satire II.

[24] Preface to The Trueborn Englishmen.

[25] Preface to his translation of Aristophanes.

[26] The Task: The Time-Piece.

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

“* * * when the sat’rist has at last

Strutting and vaporing in an empty school,

Spent all his force and made no proselyte.”

Later, however, he inadvertently admits even clerical insufficiency:

“Since pulpits fail, and sounding boards reflect

Most part an empty ineffectual sound,

What chance that I, to fame so little known,

Nor conversant with men or manners much,

Should speak to purpose, or with better hope

Crack the satiric thong?”

(From The Garden).

[27] Preface to The Universal Passion.

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

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

[29] Introduction to Croiset’s Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens.

[30] Skelton: Colyn Clout.

“Of no good bysshop speke I,

Nor good priest I escrye,

Good frere, nor good chanon,

Good nonne, nor good canon,

Good monke, nor good clerke,

Nor yette of no good werke;

But my recounting is

Of them that do amys.”

[31] Barclay: Preface to Ship of Fools.

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

[32] Essay on Satire.

[33] Trueborn Englishman.

[34] Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift.

He adds, as to motive:

“Yet malice never was his aim;

He lash’d the vice, but spared the name;

*****

His satire points at no defect,

But what all mortals may correct;

For he abhorr’d that senseless tribe

Who call it humour when they gibe:

*****

True genuine dullness moved his pity,

Unless it offer’d to be witty.”

[35] Preface to The Intriguing Chambermaid: Epistle to Mrs. Clive.

[36] Prologue to The Coffee-House Politician.

[37] Hist. of Eng. Lit.: on Dickens.

[38] Post Liminium.

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

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

[40] Satires, II, 1.

[41] The Steele Glas.

[42] Preface to The Journey to Parnassus. Gibson’s translation.

[43] Fielding: Tom Jones.

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

[44] Raleigh: The English Novel.

[45] Hist. of Eng. Lit.: on Dickens.

[46] Imaginary Conversations: Lucian and Timotheus.

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

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

[47] Essay on Comedy.

[48] Laughter, 174.

[49] Byron as a Satirist, 180.

[50] Political Satire in English Poetry, 240.

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

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

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

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

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

[54] Universal Passion.

[55] Charity.

[56] Literary Theory and Criticism. The Poetry of Pope.

[57] Imag. Conv. Lucian to Timotheus.

[58] Arist. Apol.

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

[60]

“All zeal for a reform that gives offense

To peace and charity, is mere pretense;

A bold remark; but which, if well applied,

Would humble many a tow’ring poet’s pride.”

(Charity.)

[61] Sea Dreams.

[62] Collected Essays, I, 187.

[63] Post Liminium.

[64] Preface to Headlong Hall, in the Aldine edition of Peacock, 40. In his Essay on Comedy, Meredith goes beyond mere absence of hate:

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

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

[65] John Brown’s Essay on Satire.

[66] Spectator, 209. L.

[67] Browning: Aris. Apol. Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, 357, for a similar distinction.

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

“Deride our weak forefathers’ musty rule,

Who therefore smil’d, because they saw a fool;

Sublimer logic now adorns our isle,

We therefore see a fool, because we smile.”

He concludes that wit is safe only when rationalized:

“Then mirth may urge, when reason can explore,

This point the way, that waft us to the shore.”

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

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

[70] Rise of Formal Satire in England. 49.

[71] Leslie Stephen: George Eliot, 67–68.

[72] Thorndike, English Literature in Lectures on Literature, 268–9.

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

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

[75] English Humorists; Swift, 2.

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

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

[76] Autobiography, 133.

[77] Preface to Oliver Twist, xv.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His motto for Crochet Castle is:

“De monde est plein de fous, et qui n’en veut pas voir,

Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir.”

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

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

[80] The Young Duke, 173.

[81] Never Too Late to Mend, 216.

[82] Vanity Fair, I, 104.

[83] Ibid., I, 106.

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

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

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

[85] The Later Renaissance, 113.

[86] Evolution of the English Novel, 120.

[87]

[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:

[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.