[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.