Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/131



by no means befits the low-heeled buskin of modern fiction. The painter put a veil over Agamemnon's face when called on to depict the father's grief at the early doom of his devoted daughter. The god, when he resolved to punish the rebellious winds, abstained from mouthing empty threats. We will not attempt to tell with what mighty surgings of the inner heart Mr. Slope swore to revenge himself on the woman who had disgraced him, nor will we vainly strive to depict his deep agony of soul.

"There he is, however, alone in the garden-walk, and we must contrive to bring him out of it. * * * He stood motionless, undecided, glaring with his eyes, thinking of the pains and penalties of Hades, and meditating how he might best devote his enemy to the infernal gods with all the passion of his accustomed eloquence. He longed in his heart to be preaching at her. 'Twas thus that he was ordinarily avenged of sinning mortal men and women. Could he at once have ascended his Sunday rostrum and fulminated at her such denunciations as his spirit delighted in, his bosom would have been greatly eased."

The routing of this clergyman is balanced by the triumph of another, in a later volume of the series, though in an entirely different cause. None of our novelists has given us a more delectable scene than the one which marked the culmination of those triangular interviews with which Bishop Proudie's study was so familiar. Here Mrs. Proudie, that mighty Amazon, is brought low, and that, through a dastardly blow of fate, by a foe unworthy of her steel, albeit she had not considered him unworthy of her persecution. She is now made to endure two kinds of anguish, both new and both terrible. The first is being ignored. The second is being talked back to and then left before she can reply. It is a glorious moment for all but the defeated when one weary badgered opponent