to laugh without responsibility.[1] But one feels that such criticisms would not have ruffled the twinkling serenity of his placid spirit; that he would not have deplored the loss of power nor demurred at the penalty. He was a born sportsman. The hunting was good. Pleasure to him was in pursuit more than possession. Having had the fun, he would willingly give away his bag of game before he went home.
One turns with an especial interest to the belated Gryll Grange to see what change there may be thirty years after, but finds little more than the natural mellowing influence of time. He is indeed "satirist to the last," albeit he is disposed to use "more oil and less vinegar."[2]
If Peacock is Horatian, without the Roman's sense of realism, Butler is more of a Juvenal, as the latter might have been, perhaps, had he lived under Victoria instead of Domitian. The wind of invective is now tempered, not to the shorn lamb, but to the modern prejudice against the rudeness of tempests unmitigated by sunshine.
Butler's publications, beginning two years after Pea-*
- [Footnote: some genius, he is a keen observer, a caustic critic. What he lacks is humanity,
just that which is the essence of the greatness of the great humourists—Cervantes, Rabelais, Shakespeare." Walker: Lit. of the Victorian Era, 618. (He explains that humanity in work is meant, not of character.)]
- ↑ "But because he laughed without responsibility he belongs less with the writers of power than with those of whom laughter has exacted a great, as of all laughter exacts a certain, penalty." Van Doren, Life of Peacock, 281. (One could wish the nature of this "penalty" had been elucidated a bit, instead of being entirely taken for granted. In any case, it must be largely subjective, and therefore a thing which exists only by being felt.)
- ↑ The phrases are Van Doren's and Walker's respectively. Cf. Garnett: "It cannot be said that the satire of Gryll Grange is very Archilochian. The author has lost the power of raising a laugh at the objects of his dislike, and merely assails them with a genial pugnacity, so open, honest, and hearty as inevitably to conciliate a certain measure of sympathy." Introduction.
