Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/113

 the slough of facetiousness, or at least lapsed into childish jocularity.

To quote him at his best, however, we take a few excerpts from the last of his trilogy of domestic novels. In the second of the series, My Novel, he had adapted the prefatory device of Tom Jones, using the remarks of the Caxton family as a sort of introductory (or more properly, retrospective) chorus to each book. In ''What Will He Do with It'', the idea is carried out on a smaller scale, in expository paragraphs preliminary to chapters. The following will be sufficient to indicate the tone:

Book I

Chapter XII

"In which it is shown that a man does this or declines to do that for reasons best known to himself—a reserve which is extremely conducive to the social interests of a community; since the conjecture into the origin and nature of those reasons stimulates the inquiring faculties, and furnishes the staple of modern conversation. And as it is not to be denied that, if their neighbors left them nothing to guess at, three fourths of civilized humankind, male or female, would have nothing to talk about; so we cannot too gratefully encourage that needful curiosity, termed by the inconsiderate tittle-tattle or scandal, which saves the vast majority of our species from being reduced to the degraded condition of dumb animals."

Chapter XV

"The historian records the attachment to public business which distinguishes the British Legislator—Touching instance of the regret which ever in patriotic bosoms attends the neglect of a public duty."

Chapter XVII

"* * * It also showeth, for the instruction of Men and States, the connection between democratic opinion and wounded