Thus slippery are the steps of Uriah's ladder. He has, moreover, a word of self-defense which forces his educational training to share the responsibility. When he is reminded by Copperfield that greed and cunning always overreach themselves, he retorts by implicating the school where he was taught "from nine o'clock to eleven, that labour was a curse; and from eleven o'clock to one, that it was a blessing and a cheerfulness and a dignity," and so on. Major Bagstock resembles Heep in being servile in manner instead of pompously patronizing; but while Chesterton may be right in calling him a more subtle hypocrite than Pecksniff,[1] it is also true that the Major's hypocrisy is not quite his whole existence, as it is of both Pecksniff and Heep. He is at least a gourmand in addition, if nothing more.
Before Dickens, in our period, the only character to exemplify this trait, aside from Peacock's Feathernest, is Lytton's Robert Beaufort, in Night and Morning. The author remarks in a later preface that this character might be rated as a forerunner to Pecksniff; but he is in reality more of the Blifil type, his brother Philip acting as his Tom Jones.
Lytton, however, is inclined to discuss the subject by the way. In one of his earlier novels he says,—[2]
"Honesty—patriotism—religion—these have had their hypocrites
for life;—but passion permits only momentary dissemblers."
In a later one he analyzes a dubious citizen:[3]
