Good-Humour, and her affianced husband, Mr. Hate-Cant." Bunyan doubtless would have replied that he also approved of these somewhat worldly characters, but that they were people of less importance in their day than they became thereafter. The progress of the modern pilgrim is toward a City of Sanitation rather than Holiness, but sanitation is interpreted so widely as to include the soul also in the cleansing process. For this work Common-Sense and Hate-Cant are our efficiency experts; and that Good-Humour should be a member of their household is inevitable at a time when graciousness is accounted not a negligible adornment but a fundamental virtue..
To the poise and proportion contributed to satire by the emphasis on the quality of humor, must be added the justice that comes from a rationalized sympathy, and from the counter, positive element which restores the balance pulled down by destructive criticism. A striking example of both is furnished by Meredith in his explanation of one of his characters. No pretender has ever been more skillfully pursued or more thoroughly unmasked than the ambitious daughter of the great Mel. After such treatment no one before this time could have presented so fairly the case for the defendant:[1]
"Now the two Generals—Rose Jocelyn and the Countess
de Saldar—had brought matters to this pass; and from the
two tactical extremes: the former by openness and dash; the
latter by subtlety and her own interpretations of the means
extended to her by Providence. I will not be so bold as to
state which of the two I think right. Good and evil work together
in this world. If the Countess had not woven the tangle,
and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,—never
have had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms
- ↑ Evan Harrington, 368.
