Therein lies the greatest variety. The fourth occupies the great field of irony. It is the siccum lumen, occasionally flashing, usually lambent, smouldering, gravely glowing.
Amid these differences in kind and degree, the Victorian novelists had a sort of unity in possessing a certain sense of satire, more or less consciously realized, and of themselves as satirists. This is not only discernible in the general air they have of intending to do it, but is made visible by remarks in the nature of Confessions of a Satirist voiced by about half their number.
"Let those who cannot nicely and with certainty discern," says Charlotte Brontë in Shirley, "the difference between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving wit."
Thackeray,[1] the "cynic", is the one to reiterate most strongly the Pauline creed that love of mankind is the root of all good. He remarks that humor means more than laughter, and adds:
"The humorous writer professes to awaken your love, your
pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your
tenderness for the weak, the oppressed, the unhappy.
To the best of his means and ability he comments on
all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes
upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accord-*
- ↑ English Humorists; Swift, 2. Cf. Kingsley: "One cannot laugh heartily at a man if one has not a lurking love for him." Two Years Ago, 143. And Meredith: "And to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope for good." Essay on Comedy, 40. Also: "You share the sublime of wrath, that would not have hurt the foolish, but merely demonstrate their foolishness." Ibid. 85.
