The difficulty about realism is not so much ambiguity as the question of its very existence. This, however, need not concern us here, as there is no question of its nonexistence in Victorian fiction. Whether or not pure unadulterated realism is a myth was to the Victorians a postulate of no moment, for they had no use for it in any case. No stage of theirs would ever be set for a Madame Bovary or an Old Wives' Tale. But while they looked upon their art as akin to painting rather than photography, they prided themselves on their fidelity to human character and the great truths of human life. To them the romantic meant the fantastic and incredible, while the realistic signified the sane and sober, the possible if not the actual; and in this sense we use the terms.
To these two divisions, it is necessary to add a third as a sort of tertium quid, for the ironic method is important enough to deserve some special treatment, although not correlative with the others. It is conscious indeed of its aristocratic superiority to them, although it cannot maintain itself independently but must be allied to one or the other.
Of the dozen names on the roll of Victorian satiric novelists about half are found in the list of the romantico-satirical. They seem to come in pairs, and for the sake of symmetry and clearness may be so grouped. The first pair are the most distinguished contributors to this section,—Peacock and Butler, standing at the two chronological extremes. The second pair furnish a medium amount, and are themselves forerunners to the main group, though their fantastic productions are forty years apart,—Lytton and Disraeli. The third pair are of least account here, but are of especial importance in the realistic field,—Thackeray and Meredith.
