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_,