To the philosophy of pessimism no Victorian novelist was addicted. The phase of it current in the period just preceding was met by a prolonged, skeptical, British chuckle, beginning with our first novelist, who represents, indeed, in his own history the reaction from pensive melancholy to humorous common sense. Peacock is speaking of being unhappy, and adds:[1]
"To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly commonplace:
to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of
being miserable for misery's sake, has been brought to great perfection
in our days; and the ancient Odessey, which held forth
a shining example of the endurance of real misfortune, will give
place to a modern one, setting out a more instructive picture
of querulous impatience under imaginary evils."
Lytton shared the fondness of Dickens and Thackeray
for pathos, but none of them went further into the anatomy
of melancholy than some such comment as,—"Dig
but deep enough, and under all earth runs water, under
all life runs grief."[2]
Thackeray muses on the theme of aspiration in a whimsically pensive vein. Between the questions and the exclamation of the following excerpt are several instances of disappointment, related in his jocular mock-sympathetic tone:[3]
"Succeeding? What is the great use of succeeding? Failing?
Where is the great harm? * * * Psha! These things appear
as naught—when Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the
- ↑ Nightmare Abbey, 78.
- ↑ What Will He Do with It? Preface to Chap. IV, Bk. VI.
- ↑ Sketches and Travels: in London, 268. Cf. Taine's comment that Thackeray "does as a novelist what Hobbes does as a philosopher. Almost everywhere, when he describes fine sentiments, he derives them from an ugly source." Hist. of Eng. Lit., IV, 188.
