in the death of faithful old Harry Verney, concludes with this comment,—characteristic in that it breathes the spirit of irony but lacks its complete form.[1]
"And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them
grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug;
and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept
quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his
wing. Oh! if the pheasants had but understanding, how they
would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies
which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious
sake!"
That Lytton should gain in poise and subtlety in the
forty-five years intervening between Pelham and Kenelm
Chillingly is to be expected, although the progression is by
no means a steady one. Some of his most absurd sarcastic
moralizing is found in My Novel, about midway in time,—particularly
on the March of Enlightenment, with a
smart sketch of half a dozen typical Marchers; and on liberal
notions generally. And in the youthful volume are
some very good touches, as this concerning his country
uncle:[2]
"He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man:
built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished
his farmers' rents; indeed, on account of these and similar
eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by
others."
This pales perceptibly, however, by the side of Peacock's
firm and vivid treatment of the same subject, embodied in
Squire Crochet:[3]
"He could not become, like a true-born English squire, part
and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he could not find in
