impracticable fellow. There's a bad style of humbug, but there is also a good style—one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible.'"
This is recognized also by Lytton, who quotes "an
anonymous writer of 1722:"[1]
"Deceit is the strong but subtile chain which runs through
all the members of a society, and links them together; trick or
be tricked, is the alternative; 'tis the way of the world, and without
it intercourse would drop."
Trollope subscribes with qualification, by having the
archdeacon say, on the death of Mrs. Proudie,—[2]
"The proverb of De Mortuis is founded on humbug. Hunbug
out of doors is necessary."
At the extreme opposite from the hypocrites, shrewd,
knowing, wise at least in their own conceit, stand the incompetent,
victims of folly; satirized not for ignorance
but for bland unconsciousness of it, usually accompanied
by a hallucination of efficiency. As the hypocrites shade
off into villains, to be rebuked without humor, such as
Jasper Losely, Randal Leslie, Bill Sykes, Sedgett, so the
fools merge into the artless, to be smiled at without rebuke,
as Colonel Digby and Colonel Newcome, Frank
Hazeldean, the Vardens, Tom Pinch, Captain Cuttle, and
"poor, excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a
fawner and a toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant
one."
It is Dickens again who contributes the most data to this study, and particularly to the genus, Silly Dame. Here his amusement over mere fatuous complacency becomes warmed into scorn when that stupidity affects the home
