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.