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.