Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/148

 *fied creed which admits that the presence of this perverse element in existence does not prove that all life is of the same piece; that the mad pranks are those of destiny's underlings, dressed in a little brief authority, and not perpetrated by the ruler of the universe.

Such speculations lead into the realm of religion, and religion has had to provide a place in its pantheon for this spirit of disastrous caprice. There it lurks under various guises. Baal may fall asleep or go on a journey at a time most inauspicious for his followers. The behavior of the Olympians quite justifies the debate between Timocles and Damis, reported by Lucian, as to the theocratic mismanagement of the world. Setebos slays and saves with an eye single to the bewilderment of the human puppets. The presiding goddess in The House of Fame rewards and punishes with a similar unaccountability. "The gods," says Smollett "not yet tired with sporting with the farce of human government, were still resolved to show by what inconsiderable springs a mighty empire may be moved." Sport is a need also of the President of the Immortals, and where so agreeably found as in undermining the patient structure of poor little Tess, and bringing it to the ground with a splendid crash?

The essence of an ironic circumstance lies in its apparently wanton thwarting by a narrow margin of a normal sequence in itself logical and desirable, or in an imposition of calamity on the same exasperating terms. Either it frustrates not merely what might have been but what almost was, or it brings to pass the disaster that was almost averted. It might come under the simpler caption of bad luck, except that not all bad luck is ironic; only a particular brand of it. Irony is the obverse side of that happy