Taine[1] would find both easy to account for, on racial grounds:
"The first-fruits of English society is hypocrisy. It ripens
here under the double breath of religion and morality; we know
their popularity and sway across the channel. * * * This
vice is therefore English. Mr. Pecksniff is not found in
France. * * * Since Voltaire, Tartuffe is impossible."
Landor[2] has Lucian say:
"I have ridiculed the puppets of all features, all colours,
all sizes, by which an impudent and audacious set of impostors
have been gaining an easy livelihood these two thousand
years. * * *
"The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life."
Meredith's portrait of The Comic Spirit is applicable to
satire, for throughout the essay he gives to the term comic
the connotation generally allowed to the term satiric:
"Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty
and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out
of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical,
- ↑ Hist. of Eng. Lit.: on Dickens.
- ↑ Imaginary Conversations: Lucian and Timotheus. Timotheus, exultant over the Dialogues, remarks that "Nothing can be so gratifying and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule." Disappointed, however, in his assumption that Lucian is now ready to embrace the true faith, which turns out to be a non sequiter, he accuses the inflexible pagan of sacrilege, ready to turn into ridicule the true and the holy. To which Lucian in turn replies "In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hands a blade without a hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary." Lucian himself, in The Angler, declares it his business to hate quacks, jugglery, lies, and conceit.
