"My compliments to George Eliot for her Rosamund Vincy; the ugly work of satire she has transmuted to the ends of art by the companion figure of Lydgate; and the satire was much wanted for the education of young men."
Victorian literature would not have cared to produce a
Ship of Fools,—though a passenger list might easily be
culled out from its fiction,—nor a Hudibras, nor a Dunciad,
nor even a Tartuffe, for George Warrington voiced the general
sentiment when he said of that great drama that it
could not be reckoned great in comparison with Othello,
because "'a mere villainous hypocrite should not be chief
of a great piece.'"[1]
This segment of literature may not be more sincere in its claim of truth-telling, but it shows more art in its method; and it is perhaps even less flattering to human nature in its assumption that simple exposure, without exaggeration, is quite enough.
Nor did it ever expect its satire to prove revolutionary. Peacock, first on the list, confessed, through one of his characters, of having been cured of a passion for reforming the world, "by the conviction of the inefficacy of moral theory with respect to producing a practical change in the mass of mankind." He adds,—[2]
"Custom is the pillar round which opinion twines, and interest
is the tie that binds it. It is not by reason that practical
change can be effected, but by making a puncture to the quick
in the feelings of personal hope and personal fear."
The fear of being ridiculous is of course one of those
which may be punctured to the quick, and thereby a
practical change effected. It is also true that, the human
constitution and capacity being what they are, constant
