them in any absolute way is to ignore the greater range of Dickens, the keener wit of Peacock and Butler, the rarer charm of Mrs. Gaskell and Trollope, and above all, the superior penetration and insight of George Eliot and Meredith.
It is not necessary, however, to make all distinctions invidious and all comparisons odious. Individually and collectively the Victorian satirists are to be accepted with the ungrudging appreciation they deserve. The terribly exacting author of The New Machiavelli recognized in their endowment to us nothing but "emasculated thought," "a hasty trial experiment, a gigantic experiment of the most slovenly and wasteful kind," "a persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or disagreeable to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking about it,"—all resulting in "the clipped and limited literature that satisfied their souls." But there is consolation in the counter-discovery of Professor Sherman (in his Modern Literature) that there was a compensating economy, even in their failure: "Dickens, Kingsley, Reade, Mrs. Stowe, and the rest," he reminds us, "they did not seek to make the world over, but only to accomplish a few, simple things like abolishing slavery, sweat-shops, Corn Laws, the schools of Squeers, imprisonment for debt, the red tape of legal procedure, the belief in pestilence and typhoid as visitations of God—and all that sort of piddling amelioration."
For this modest ambition, the Victorians found satire an effective means, and they proved they could turn it also to more purely artistic uses. Such as their achievement was, they are doubtless content to rest in peace upon it, granting without jealousy to their illustrious successors whatever surpassing results they may be able to accomplish.
