Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/135



"My wife's grandfather was put into Chancery just as he was growing up, and never grew afterwards—never got out o' it. Nout ever does. There's our church warden comes to me with a petition to sign agin the Pope. Says I, 'that old Pope is always in trouble—what's he bin doin' now?' Says he, 'Spreading! He's agot into Parlyment, and now he's got a colledge, and we pays for it. I doesn't know how to stop him.' Says I, 'Put the Pope into Chancery along with wife's grandfather, and he'll never spread agin.'"

The urban counterpart of this type is the child of the city streets, of which we have specimens in the sophisticated gamins, the Artful Dodger and Dick Swiveller. In this Dickens has a monopoly, such as it is.

Coming up from the ranks, we reach the intellectual aristocrat, whose culture enables him to add polish to his satiric pith and point. It happens that the two most representative characters of this type are furnished by the two authors who stand at chronological extremes, though the volumes in which they occur are only three years apart.

Kenelm Chillingly is the melancholy Victorian. After the initial lapse into a bit of grotesque caricature in the account of his babyhood,—a thing that would have been avoided by a writer of more restrained taste,—the author paints his portrait with skill, distinction, and truth. His Coming of Age speech to the assembled tenants and guests on that joyful occasion is truly startling, but far from incredible. The audacious youngster, with his grave, serene, matter of fact pessimism, exposes in a searching analysis the discrepancy between the supposed reality they were felicitating themselves and him upon and an ideal which is quite beyond their comprehension. Yet it is an unquestionably practical ideal, and it breaks like a