[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.