color, as it were, on the bull's-eye and renders it more conspicuous. Not only is the epicure pierced with many an ironic shaft, but the Wise Youth is made the veritable error incarnate of the Feverel tragedy. For it was his Fabian policy, dictated and obeyed, that knotted still more the sad tangle, just as it was Austin Wentworth's simple manly directness that proved the knot could be cut easily by prompt and silent action. Indeed, in these two characters we see exemplified throughout the story the false Florimell of vanity and the true Florimell of pride,—the pride that is too proud to do an unworthy or debasing deed, and the vanity that can counterfeit successfully until confronted by the genuine reality.
Egoism within bounds is a perfectly sane and rational thing, but to keep it within bounds is exceedingly difficult. When given over to an irrational rule it grows into fanaticism. For the fanatic owes his monomania to the force of a strong personality, which engenders the unmitigated assurance of being right, plus the perverted reasoning that characterizes the sentimentalist. He is always foolish, but seldom a hypocrite, as his deception usually extends to himself. His selfishness is of the opposite sort from the epicure's. What he seeks is not a soft berth and personal acquisitions, but a chance to impose his opinions on a misguided world, and to dominate over converts or subjects. In his milder moods he only dreams of happy schemes and far-reaching reforms, but when charged with energy his proselyting zeal tends to make him tyrannical.
In some form or other he appears on the pages of almost every Victorian novelist. That the faddist is a favorite subject with Peacock is well known. Lytton gives a delightful contribution in the Uncle Jack of The Caxtons, whose "bewitching enthusiasm and convincing calcula-
