"Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously sees its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowest citizens in point of property, education, and character."
This is the ironic version of Matthew Arnold's polished
dubiety about majorities in Numbers; and of the robustious
satire of Dickens. If we feel that Lytton excels the latter
in pithy conciseness and allusive point, we have to remember
that he was at this time more than twice the age of
Dickens when Martin Chuzzlewit was written, and that in
the intervening quarter century some improving changes
had taken place in their common object of satire.
Disraeli's irony is less tangible and quotable. His favorite method is to hint at the implication in a burlesque comparison; as in the opening sentence of The Young Duke:[1]*
- ↑ 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
