Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/154

 in the death of faithful old Harry Verney, concludes with this comment,—characteristic in that it breathes the spirit of irony but lacks its complete form.

"And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if the pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake!"

That Lytton should gain in poise and subtlety in the forty-five years intervening between Pelham and ''Kenelm Chillingly'' is to be expected, although the progression is by no means a steady one. Some of his most absurd sarcastic moralizing is found in My Novel, about midway in time,—particularly on the March of Enlightenment, with a smart sketch of half a dozen typical Marchers; and on liberal notions generally. And in the youthful volume are some very good touches, as this concerning his country uncle:

"He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man: built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his farmers' rents; indeed, on account of these and similar eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by others."

This pales perceptibly, however, by the side of Peacock's firm and vivid treatment of the same subject, embodied in Squire Crochet:

"He could not become, like a true-born English squire, part and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he could not find in