CHAPTER I
THE ROMANTIC
The implication behind that sage instruction, “First catch your hare,” is that after the catching the rest will be easy. But, admitting that the second step cannot antedate the first, we are still confronted by the fact that the achievement of the first must be followed by the second in order to be rendered efficacious. “How serve him up?” is the next question.
It is the question of method, the problem of ways and means, and a most important one it is in the case of satire, for it is here that the element of humor finds its field of operations. In its cause and effect satire is serious, nominally at least. In the connecting link, the means reaching from design to end, it must use wit or humor.
A certain object is perceived by a certain observer to be ridiculous. How is he to make it seem ridiculous to other observers, whose unaided perception may not equal his? He is able to do it by drawing upon the common fund of human experience and idea in regard to humor. If the satirist can subsume his object under one of the universally recognized categories, he makes it _ipso facto_ absurd. So automatic is this effect that only the analytic spectator will stop to question the justice of the classification. Socrates dangling in a basket, Volpone caught in his own trap, Hudibras gawkily playing the Cavalier, Atticus monopolizing the throne but fearful of pretenders, Southey routing infernal legions by the mere offer to read aloud his poem, Ichabod Crane fleeing when only Brom Bones pursued,--these are ludicrous to the imagination, whether or not the sentence is ratified by the intellect.
Humoristic devices are so numerous as to call for some classification, the choice of any one being made at the expense of other possibilities. The traditional cleavage between the Horatian and the Juvenalian types is characteristically described by Saintsbury:[85]
“From Horace and Persius downward there have been two satiric manners:--one that of the easy well-bred or would be well-bred man of the world who suspends everything on the adunc nose and occasionally scratches with still more adunc claws, the other that of the indignant moralist reproving the corruptions of the times.”
But by the nineteenth century the indignant moralist was considerably subdued, even in England, and his reproof more likely to be acidulous than acrid. For this reason some other antithesis would seem more useful to our present study; and from the fact that our satiric vehicle is made on the two general models known as romantic and realistic, the same division appears most workable to apply to the satiric methods used in fiction. Both terms, however, are too nebulous to be used without the precaution of stating the sense in which they are at present used. As to the former, this statement by Stoddard sums up the situation:[86]
“To give an exact definition of what one means by romanticism, to give anything more than a vague idea of the notion one intends to convey when he uses the word romantic, to give a single definite conception to a reader by the use of the word romance, is impossible.”
The difficulty about realism is not so much ambiguity as the question of its very existence. This, however, need not concern us here, as there is no question of its nonexistence in Victorian fiction. Whether or not pure unadulterated realism is a myth was to the Victorians a postulate of no moment, for they had no use for it in any case. No stage of theirs would ever be set for a _Madame Bovary_ or an _Old Wives’ Tale_. But while they looked upon their art as akin to painting rather than photography, they prided themselves on their fidelity to human character and the great truths of human life. To them the romantic meant the fantastic and incredible, while the realistic signified the sane and sober, the possible if not the actual; and in this sense we use the terms.
To these two divisions, it is necessary to add a third as a sort of _tertium quid_, for the ironic method is important enough to deserve some special treatment, although not correlative with the others. It is conscious indeed of its aristocratic superiority to them, although it cannot maintain itself independently but must be allied to one or the other.
Of the dozen names on the roll of Victorian satiric novelists about half are found in the list of the romantico-satirical. They seem to come in pairs, and for the sake of symmetry and clearness may be so grouped. The first pair are the most distinguished contributors to this section,--Peacock and Butler, standing at the two chronological extremes. The second pair furnish a medium amount, and are themselves forerunners to the main group, though their fantastic productions are forty years apart,--Lytton and Disraeli. The third pair are of least account here, but are of especial importance in the realistic field,--Thackeray and Meredith.
Altogether this half dozen men produced nearly two dozen items of the romantico-satiric order, none of which could be called novels in the strict sense, yet all of which are worthy of being included in this list, because of the light they throw on the characteristics of the romantic method in satire. The largest amount, both actually and relatively, is supplied by Peacock, for his seven tales represent the bulk of his own output. The smallest is Lytton’s, represented by only one, and that an aftermath of a prolific and versatile energy. Disraeli threw off three skits, like Thackeray’s half dozen and Meredith’s two, in being preliminary to later and more substantial work. Butler’s two, on the contrary, though forming only a fraction of his stops of various quills, are the most inevitably associated with his name, the pair indeed whereby his name is known.
The list covers a period of eighty-five years, though it is prolonged over a half century only by the interval of thirty years between _Erewhon_ and its sequel. The rest are fairly compact, except for Peacock’s Rip Van Winkle sleep between _Crochet Castle_ and _Gryll Grange_. A dated table is appended for the convenience of a bird’s-eye view.[87]
Returning now to our first parallel, Peacock and Butler, we find the parallelism to be rather complete, manifesting itself in character, destiny, and product.
The destiny of both lay in a mean that was not golden. Their annals were the long and simple of the fairly well to do. Neither knew the exhilaration that comes from prosperity and downright good luck; neither, the depression of bitter struggle or disaster. The current of Peacock’s progress was retarded by the comparative poverty that, like Tennyson’s, postponed his marriage; and that of Butler was obstructed by his family’s opposition to his unpardonable preference for a secular career. If the son of a clergyman and the grandson of a bishop could not see his clerical duty and do it, there was no help for it, he must go to New Zealand. But to banish a youthful radical was only to set him free; and to allow him a perspective and a fresh viewpoint was to bring down upon orthodoxy an infinite deal of mischief. “It was the England that he saw with new eyes,” says his biographer Harris, “after his return, that awakened his restless, satiric vigour. He reacted to the English scene as no one else in his century had reacted before.”[88]
By temperament Peacock and Butler were both solitary, pervaded by a gentle melancholy, and permeated with love of classic lore. But Peacock’s sadness could take the ironic Jonsonian turn. Quite appropriately did he choose “Your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit,” as the motto for _Nightmare Abbey_. Butler’s persiflage, however, covers a more real and permanent pessimism, perhaps because it is directed against the spectacle of the wilfully blind leading the born blind, rather than against a lot of “sentimentalists, chasers after novelty, bilious malcontents.”[89]
As was natural, neither was acclaimed by the populace, and neither cared. Peacock had little concern for the British public, which might like him or not, as it pleased; and Butler was content to write for the coming generation, in whose appreciation he placed a not unjustified confidence. Both could afford to publish at their own expense and were willing to do so.
But in spite of their apparent detachment from local affairs, and preoccupation with the past, perhaps indeed for that very reason, these two thoughtful scholars were able to observe their environment keenly and judge it shrewdly. It was the total environment that interested each one, his own _Zeitgeist_, of which neither approved. Peacock rebelled against the futile ferment and restless experimenting of the first half of the century; Butler protested against the torpid acquiescence and smug complacency of the second.
These attitudes represent the chief contrast between them. Peacock was a calm soul, caught in a vortex. He could not be expected to like it. Butler was a speculative one, pent in a self-satisfied halcyon. He could not like that. What each would have been if exchanged in time with the other, it were idle to guess. But it was no irony of fate that made it the congenial mission of one to banter his age into calming down, and of the other to prick his into waking up.
An additional difference, and the main one, is that Butler is the bigger man in every way more searching and earnest, more constructive, more versatile, more profound. An additional resemblance is that their fiction is so entirely in the romantic field[90] that they alone of all on this list will not come up for consideration when we reach the other.
Peacock’s novels[91] form probably the most monomorphic little group to be found in literature. His seven fantasies have the strong family resemblance of the seven vestal maidens in _Gryll Grange_. Six of the Pleiades appeared in a compact series within a fifteen-year period; and the apparently lost sister joined the constellation thirty years later than the latest preceding one.
Two of them, _Maid Marian_ and _The Misfortunes of Elphin_, are in historic costume, and thus afford a chance for the inverted satire that comes from a contrast between past and present, not to the advantage of the latter. The other five are all domiciled in contemporary English house parties; in Hall, Court, Abbey, Castle, or Grange. These are not, however, the habitations of the conventional citizen. They are “Headlong,” “Nightmare,” “Crochet.” They harbor all sorts of whimsies and fads. Those assembled dine, drink, and talk. Between meals they have a few adventures, not recounted for their own sake, but that of the additional talk they will bring forth.[92] Though the repartee of these dramatized Imaginary Conversations is always at concert pitch, it harmonizes with the whimsically theatrical setting; and the _toute ensemble_ edifies while it sparkles, like a set of fireworks displaying maxims of intellectual wit as they explode.
The characters themselves wear their very names as satiric labels. Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Dross, Mrs. Pinmoney, the Honorable Mr. Listless, Sir Oliver Oilcake, the Reverends Gaster, Grovelgrub, Vorax, are ticketed after the fashion inherited from the Morality Plays, a device that distills a quaint mediæval odor on the nineteenth-century air, and persists only in some of Trollope’s minor characters.
Of all these people exploiting all their “humours” Peacock is the ever amused spectator. He speaks ironically through the voice of the artlessly ambitious Squire Crochet:[93]
“The sentimental against the rational, the intuitive against the inductive, the ornamental against the useful, the intense against the tranquil, the romantic against the classical; these are great and interesting controversies, which I should like, before I die, to see satisfactorily settled.”
It is because of this effect of inconsequent raillery, doubtless, that Peacock appears to lack humanity,[94] and to laugh without responsibility.[95] But one feels that such criticisms would not have ruffled the twinkling serenity of his placid spirit; that he would not have deplored the loss of power nor demurred at the penalty. He was a born sportsman. The hunting was good. Pleasure to him was in pursuit more than possession. Having had the fun, he would willingly give away his bag of game before he went home.
One turns with an especial interest to the belated _Gryll Grange_ to see what change there may be thirty years after, but finds little more than the natural mellowing influence of time. He is indeed “satirist to the last,” albeit he is disposed to use “more oil and less vinegar.”[96]
If Peacock is Horatian, without the Roman’s sense of realism, Butler is more of a Juvenal, as the latter might have been, perhaps, had he lived under Victoria instead of Domitian. The wind of invective is now tempered, not to the shorn lamb, but to the modern prejudice against the rudeness of tempests unmitigated by sunshine.
Butler’s publications, beginning two years after Peacock’s had ended,[97] extended through the next half century, _The Way of All Flesh_ and _Notebooks_ being posthumous. But the three decades bracketed by the two Erewhons were the fertile ones. Through them flowed steadily a stream of many currents; satiric, scientific (mainly controversial), classic, critical, descriptive, expository, musical, and artistic. Of all these volumes only three can be classed as fiction, and one of those falls in the other group. Our present interest centers upon _Erewhon_ and its sequel.
There is no more effective satiric machinery than that of the Foreign State, or Adventures among Strange People. It may take the form of a serious though perhaps fantastic conception with incidental satire, as in _Utopia_, _New Atlantis_, _The Coming Race_, _Modern Utopia_; or a travesty of these, an inverted pyramid, made grotesque by the dominating satire, though none the less freighted with serious intent, as _Gulliver_, _Journey from This World to the Next_, _Erewhon_.
From the fact that _The Coming Race_ and _Erewhon_ may be cited as examples of the same literary genus, though of different species, comes the suggestion that the real complement of Butler is Lytton. It does happen that they furnish the only two instances on our list of the exercise of this particular kind of creative fancy.[98] Lytton’s tale pictures a positive ideal, which satirizes our inadequate reality by
## acting as a foil to it. Butler’s narrative portrays a supposed reality,
of which the visitor does not approve; and his comments satirize our accepted reality by a subtle, indirect reflection. Our race placed beside the “coming” one merely looks small, inferior, incomplete, yet all it needs is growth. But if the barrier could be leveled between our country and the one Over the Range, the two would confront each other and see their own images, not as in a glass darkly but as in a brilliant yet tricky and distorting mirror. Our actual beliefs and practices, shorn of the verbal illusions we have spun around them, and pushed to their logical conclusions, would become the naked _reductio ad absurdum_ we view in the Erewhonian philosophy of illness, crime, science, religion, life, and death.[99]
In _Erewhon Revisited_ we see a mental sequence even more interesting than the dramatic sequel. _Erewhon_ was followed the very next year by _The Fair Haven_. The former supplies the stage setting, the latter the central idea, whose combination makes the Revisit a seemingly artless but really astounding _tour de force_, an uncanny offspring of logic and fancy.
Given the original situation and the climax that closes the Erewhonian adventure, given considerable study and meditation on the strange, enshrouded origin of the religion which possessed the author’s part of the world, given a speculative dream as to what might have happened in his fabricated autobiography after the event, given the Butlerian mind, patient to track and quick to spring, and the result is as inevitable as a theorem. One scent, and the proficient hound is off, literally hot on the trail, nor does he halt till Hanky and Panky, the credulous mob, Sunchildism itself, are fairly run down and given a good fright, though finally let off with a shaking that leaves them limp.
The dramatic canvas on which this satiric design is drawn is worthy a Cervantes, a Swift, or a Defoe; a beautiful example of the “grave, impossible, great lie,” absorbing if not convincing. Butler’s stories, more than any in this group, show constructive art; length that is enough and not too much, sufficient swiftness, coherence, and climax. They are fantastic but not flimsy. The imagination is captivated, as always, by the introduction to a strange, new land; the intellect is aroused by the significance of the panorama rapidly unfolding; the imp of mischief that dwells in all normal human hearts is delighted at the deft overthrow of certain conventional idols, now shown to be ugly, inane, and clay from the feet up; and all this through a concrete, realistic medium that can be visualized and lived in. We share the excitement of finding and crossing the range, of the capture and imprisonment of the “foreign devil” who is at least a dare-devil, of his later success, and astounding elopement. We sympathize with Mr. Nosnibor, voluntarily fined and flogged; and we feel quite at home in the Musical Banks and the Law Courts.
In the sequel we renew old acquaintances and make some new ones. We admire the executive ability of Yram, seconded by that of her able son George. We participate in the suspense at the Dedication Ceremony, are relieved after the dinner table council, and finally well satisfied when the Bridgeport schemers are discomfited but nobody Blue-Pooled.
It is the business of the _raconteur_, romantic as well as realistic, to beguile his audience into acquiescence even of the incredible. But the romancing satirist has the anomalous task of creating a story good enough to be its own reward and then not allowing it to be. It must have all the air of being an end in itself the while it is being made the means to another end. This adroit manipulation whereby the idea appears subordinate to the plot, although the reverse is the case, is a point in which Butler surpasses the others on our list and ranks with the highest at large.[100]
But the idea itself was a premature blossom, and the winds of March, though late Victorian, were ruthless. About that time, however, it was the much more massive figure of Ibsen that happened to stand in the main current of the blasts, and Butler was merely blown aside and left until Shaw and the Twentieth Century came along and picked him up. One of his recent biographers has a serious time trying to establish him as the laws of chronology would dictate, and finally decides it cannot be done:[101]
“How is it possible to fit a man like Butler, * * * into any system, * * * how are we to classify one who, above all others, belonged to no school, was traceable, it may fairly be said, to no influence at all _direct_ in character, looking back to, and fitting in with, none of those particular habits of thought at any rate in the age just preceding and merging into his own? On an external view, of course, it might be maintained that Butler harmonized with the solid, scientific background of Victorian thought--harmonized with it, yet was not of it. Again * * * one might quite easily say that Samuel Butler stood outside the Victorian system. And this would be the truest description of him.”
The parallel noted above between the next two on the list, Lytton and Disraeli, is more applicable to their work in the realistic field than in this, for the reason already stated, that Lytton’s one contribution, _The Coming Race_, is more akin to Butler’s, both in date and design.
Accident rather than enterprise led to the discovery of Lytton’s Utopian people, the Vrilya, for they inhabit the concave inner surface of our own planet, and are to be reached only through a subterranean chasm leading down from the depths of a mine. The citizens of this highly cultivated nation regard the English intruder as a primitive barbarian, and despise him for his ignorance and his crude, carnivorous habits. Deciding, however, to spare his life and risk his presence until proved contaminating and pernicious, they proceed to educate him by means of the Vril Trance, a sort of telepathic radio-activity. The process is mutual, except that they accomplish more,--“partly because my language was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and partly because their organization was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile, and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine.”[102]
Being adopted, the invader is treated with indulgent condescension, nicknamed _Tish_, a froglet, (in allusion to the Great Batrachian Theory, that humans sprang from frogs, or, according to one branch of the school, degenerated from them), and allowed to roam around with a child, who is about his equal in intellect. All goes well until the politely tolerated guest has the temerity to fall in love with a native maiden. This means death, by the painless Vril method (a marvelous application of electricity), in order to prevent the disgrace of so uneugenic an alliance; and the calamity is averted only by the skill and resourcefulness of the lady herself, who manages to return the unwelcome wooer to his native outer clime. This is made possible through the use of wings, another invention of this advanced people.[103]
The story has considerable picturesqueness, nor does it fail in point. The _Modern Utopia_ of Wells is anticipated in the emphasis on sanitation and material welfare. As in _Looking Backward_, crime is eliminated through the elimination of poverty and disease. The dramatic conclusion is that this underground people are to be the coming race, against whom we must be prepared if we would not by them be conquered and exterminated. The philosophical conclusion, however, is the old paradox, the inescapable dilemma of stagnant perfection.[104]
Disraeli’s _Popanilla_ was a _jeu d’esprit_ of his youth, and develops an opposite situation from that of the preceding. Instead of the Britisher abroad, he pictures the foreigner in England, thus affording us a chance to see ourselves as others see us.[105]
The mechanism by which this new scrutiny is brought to bear upon our old establishments is well worn and familiar, but has some novelty in the application. A sailor’s chest is washed ashore on a remote island, and found by one of the aborigines, Popanilla, who becomes inoculated with ambition through perusal of some documents discovered therein. He immediately organizes a proselyting campaign, but encounters too much opposition from a recalcitrant public to make much headway. The people are well content with their present peaceful existence, and quite averse to receiving the serpent of aspiration in their idyllic though socially sophisticated Garden of Eden. They are provokingly obtuse even to the argument that “they might reasonably expect to be the terror and astonishment of the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation of any consequence.”[106] Finally to settle the trouble caused by the convert’s tactless propaganda, which has had the lamentable effect of inducing the young men to desert society for politics, the king orders the disturber of the peace to be set adrift, and bids him farewell with this encouraging prophecy:[107]
“As the axiom of your school seems to be that everything can be made perfect at once, without time, without experience, without practice, and without preparation, I have no doubt, with the aid of a treatise or two, you will make a consummate naval commander, although you have never been at sea in the whole course of your life.”
This is not exactly the destiny of the involuntary voyager, but his luck is good. In due time he lands on the shores of Vraibleusia, and forthwith meets Mr. Skindeep, an instantaneous guide and friend, if not a philosopher, whom he accompanies with implicit trust, “for, having now known him nearly half a day, his confidence in his honour and integrity was naturally unbounded.”[108]
As Popanilla becomes introduced to the best people of Hubbadub, the capital, the resources of his own country arouse interest, and an expedition of vast commercial enterprise is headed for the Isle of Fantaisie. Failure to find it precipitates a panic and leads to the imprisonment of its representative, for exciting hopes under false pretenses. However, a happy ending is secured by a legal _coup d’état_, and a solution of all problems announced by Mr. Flummery Flam, who has discovered that “it was the great object of a nation not to be the most powerful, or the richest, or the best, or the wisest, but to be the most Flummery-Flammistical.”[109]
In Disraeli’s two little classical burlesques, published five years after _Popanilla_, still another device is used. There is neither an Englishman in Italy, nor an Italian in England, but the ancient stage of Greek mythology is made the background for a thinly disguised modern satiric drama. Familiar characters and incidents are seen masquerading in equally familiar costumes and scenes, but the former are local and current, and the latter revived from a far past.
There is none of Browning’s seriousness in Disraeli’s interpretation of Ixion. His story is utilized because it offers tempting chances for saucy, allusive comment on mundane affairs. A journey through space inevitably suggests the humor of proportion; but Ixion and Mercury give us not the grave irony of Byron’s Cain and Lucifer, nor the rollicking yet pensive mirth of Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield. They are content with clever jocularity.
For instance, as they graze a certain star, Ixion inquires who live there. “Some low people who are trying to shine into notice,” is the haughty reply. “’Tis a parvenu planet, and only sprung into space within this century. We do not visit them.”[110]
During his brief but splendid sojourn on Olympus the guest is postured as a complacent, insolent, Barry Lyndon sort of rascal, who makes himself perfectly at home in the divine dining and drawing rooms (which are, of course, conducted according to the British code of etiquette), fulfills Cupid’s prediction that he will write in Minerva’s album, though he does manage to escape her “Platonic man-trap,” carries on his intrigue with the Queen of Heaven in the Don Juan manner, and meets his detection and punishment with supercilious assurance and a final triumphant taunt.
The Infernal Marriage of Proserpine to Pluto introduces a disturbing element into the _ancien régime_ of Hades. The new and influential bride stirs up a terrible political turmoil by interfering in the matter of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the consequence is quite disastrous. The conservative Fates and Furies are so incensed that they neglect their disciplinary duties, whereby the radical Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion obtain a respite from torture and a dangerous opportunity to talk politics. The phrases “Ministry Out,” “Formation of New Cabinet,” are bandied about. Finally a change of scene is prescribed for the Queen. Her departure is celebrated by an elaborate banquet and a magnificent procession,[111] and we left to infer that the future belongs to the reactionaries.
We, however, follow the fortunes of Proserpine, who dwells for a season in Elysium, after a visit _en route_ to the dethroned Saturn, who discusses with her The Spirit of the Age. Elysian society is of course the English of Disraeli’s set; gay, graceful, complacent, and malicious. The finest gentleman there is Achilles; the worst cad is Æneas, who would fain make up with the now popular Dido, but being repulsed, must content himself with becoming head of the Elysian saints and president of a society to induce Gnomes[112] to drink only water.
In form these last two productions belong to the general division of burlesque. There are also touches of travesty in Peacock.[113] But the main instances of this type of the grotesque are found in the two writers who filled in this line the interval between the last of Disraeli’s, in 1833, and the last of Peacock’s, in 1861. During the forties and first half of the fifties stood Thackeray, monopolist of parody and caricature. Immediately following came the two contributions of Meredith to satiric persiflage. In both cases this fantastic stuff formed the preliminary to the real work, being merely the romantic avenue by which two of the greatest realistic satirists came into their own kingdom.
It happens, therefore, that though the quantity of this early product is sizable enough, its rank is comparatively low. It is overshadowed by the others on the list because in it the fun and nonsense is predominant and the critical element so slight as to be negligible; and it is overshadowed still more by the more mature genius of the authors themselves.
It is natural that the burlesque should have been a favorite satiric mode from Aristophanes to Rostand and Shaw. The wit it requires is imitative rather than creative, and its appeal is instantaneous.
It is also natural that it should manifest itself at the beginning of a writer’s career, and form a prelude to greater achievement. This is the case for good and sufficient psychological reasons. In youth the exuberant and undisciplined spirit, not yet checked by the reins of reality, riots in the glory of extravagance; the inventive faculty is awake but unfurnished by experience with material for original creation; the critical scent is keen but unpracticed, and impatient of sober, qualified judgment.[114] Such a condition is prime for the production of a _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, a _Joseph Andrews_, a _Northanger Abbey_, a _Pickwick_, a _Barry Lyndon_, a _Shaving of Shagpat_; to be followed by _Twelfth Night_, _Tom Jones_, _Emma_, _David Copperfield_, _Vanity Fair_, _The Egoist_.
Thackeray’s apprenticeship at this desk was rather unduly prolonged, covering about half the period of his literary activity; and its output is difficult to segregate on account of the ambiguous description of much of his early work. But from the large mass of sketches, essays, skits, stories, perhaps half a dozen may be selected as being fairly within the limits of satirico-romance.
Two of them, the _Hoggarty Diamond_ and the _Yellowplush Papers_, are on the border line, included here only because too exaggerated and irresponsible to be otherwise classed. The same might be said of _Barry Lyndon_, which is not far from being a real novel. Yet perhaps none of these are more “grotesque” than some phases of legitimate fiction. Much of their humor comes from the dramatic monologue device. Five are roughly definable as burlesques: three--_Catherine_, _A Legend of the Rhine_, and _The Rose and the Ring_, of types; the other two, _Novels by Eminent Hands_, and _Rebecca and Rowena_, of individuals; yet here again, classification is misleading, as these latter are versus the _forms_ of certain productions rather than their _authors_.
Meredith’s _Farina_ is an interesting companion piece to Thackeray’s Rhine Legend, both having a Teutonic and chivalric background, and one might perhaps find a closer parallel there than in the one chosen by Moffat, who traces “reminiscences of Peacock in the fantastic element which occasionally crops up,” in Meredith, and points out that the idea underlying _Farina_ and _Maid Marian_ is “substantially the same--an attempt to reproduce with gentle satire, the medieval romance of sentiment and gay adventure.” It is true, however, that _A Legend of the Rhine_ differs from both these in its mocking parade of anachronisms and telescoped chronology. It was “many, many hundred thousand years ago” that Thackeray’s German knight was pricking o’er the plain, but it was in the time of Richard the Lion-Hearted, and “on the cold and rainy evening of Thursday, the twenty-sixth of October.” In addition to his full armor he was equipped with an oiled silk umbrella and a bag with a brazen padlock.
On a subsequent adventure he halts at a wayside shrine covered with “odoriferous cactuses and silvery magnolias,” and recites “a censer, an ave, and a couple of acolytes before it.” A victim of his mighty lance wishes for a notary-public to take down his dying deposition. And a lost champion is advertised for in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_.
_The Shaving of Shagpat_ out-Herods Herod in Arabian Nightism, and is not devoid of satiric pith, but we are expressly forbidden by the author himself to allegorize his geyser of ebullient mirth. The humor is Rabelaisian--or American--in its pure love of size; it floats in a gigantic, inflated balloon, to which a small basket of mental cargo is attached. In this, however, is wrapped up the very important secret that continuous laughter releases one from enchantment and restores one’s true form.
The romantic satirist must have, like any other compound, certain more or less inconsistent traits. There must be the inventive wit of romance plus the shrewd logic of satire. Yet this rare combination does not insure the best satiric results. Indeed the contrary is more likely to be the case, as the union at best is somewhat adventitious.
Then, too, there must be a degree of exaggeration, with the strain on our credulity so evenly distributed that it is not felt. The sound sense that satire calls for[115] must maintain her operations, the while she is masquerading as arrant nonsense.
Finally there is the dilemma encountered by the dramatist,--the necessity of concentrating high lights as life never does, yet preserving sufficient effect of dullness and vapid inanity to simulate reality as we know it.
The various kinds of artifice employed in this artificial process are all found in the examples on our list. Remoteness of time lends illusion to _Maid Marian_, _Legend of the Rhine_, _Farina_; remoteness of place, to _The Coming Race_, and the _Erewhons_; non-human characters, to _Melincourt_, _Ixion_, _The Shaving of Shagpat_; anomalous situations, to _Misfortunes of Elphin_ and _Popanilla_. Some are able to combine them all, notably Lytton and Butler.[116] Some, on the other hand, manage to create a maximum impression with a minimum use of the spectacular.
Peacock, for instance, never leaves England nor gives us any but English characters, quiet if not actually subdued, and usually unexceptionable in behavior. Disraeli is really as circumscribed. He apparently transports us to Heaven, Hades, some unsuspected isle in the far seas, but he actually conveys all these to the isle where he was born. Thackeray and even Meredith keep strictly to _terra firma_.
If it were desirable to make comparisons with a view to determining whether any particular ingredient made for success in this sort, we might observe the connection between originality and exaggeration in their relation to effectiveness. Evidence from the data seems to indicate that satiric value, estimated by weight and pertinence of ideas, is in direct proportion to the amount of inventive wit; but in irregular or even inverse ratio to extravaganza or caricature.
For example, the general order of both satiric and constructive excellence, is approximately as follows,--listed in an ascending series: Meredith, Thackeray, Lytton, Disraeli, Peacock, Butler. But to reach a climax of pure fantasy we would pass from Thackeray through Peacock, Disraeli, Butler, and Lytton, to Meredith. Exaggeration does not seem, therefore, to inhere in satire though it may enhance it.
The chief advantage of the fantastic is that it gives unfettered play to whatever fancy the mind is endowed with; and it enlists a naturally too serious Criticism under the brilliant banner of Wit. That its attractions are many is proved by its distinguished history; for enrolled among the members of this versatile society are such names as _Reynard the Fox_, _Romance of the Rose_, _Piers Plowman_, _Don Quixote_, _Dunciad_, _Gulliver_, _Don Juan_.
Few on our list deserve comparison with these; none perhaps except _Erewhon_. Peacock’s name might have a place, not for any one tale but for the _toute ensemble_. What one of Disraeli’s biographers[117] says of _Popanilla_, that it is “a work of the same kind as Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_” is true enough, but would be more to the point if the Travels had been confined to Laputa.
Not only are our modern instances comparatively light in quality, but restricted in range. The fable, for example, is not represented at all, nor the allegory, though both forms have had a sort of revival in even more recent times. These deficiencies, if such they are, are easily accounted for by the fact that in the nineteenth century realism (in the liberal sense) was having its day, that it had taken especial possession of the Victorian novel, particularly in its satiric aspect, so that such scattered fantasies as we have may be regarded as the crumbs from an opulent table.
The marks of the satiric extravaganza are wit, invention, and exaggeration. In a general way the opposites of these may be called respectively humor, interpretation, and exposure; and it may be premised that these last will be found the characteristics of satiric realism.
Another contrast that may be anticipated is that when romance is used as a satiric vehicle it is built expressly for that purpose and carries its passenger in solitary state; while realism is a public carry-all, in which this fare is allowed a place along with the others.
Whether further generalization as to relative effectiveness is possible is a question that must be deferred until after the discussion of the complementary type.
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