Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/240

 *pline. These are too sad for satire. Butler, no less sad, is also angry enough to brand it with his caustic wit. Theobald and Christina Pontifex are texts for a satiric sermon on parental incompetence, no less disastrous although "All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience." After the scene in which Theobald, having punished little Ernest severely and quite wantonly, rang the bell for prayers, "red-handed as he was," his visitor reflects that perhaps it was fortunate for his host—

"* * * that our prayers were seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of response, for if I had thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard I should have prayed that some one might ere long treat him as he had treated Ernest."

The keynote of this most Christian system is unconsciously hit upon by the bewildered little lad himself, who later concludes,—

"* * * that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him upon every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him."

Formal education naturally falls into the school and college divisions. We have the former presented dramatically by Brontë in Jane Eyre (and more impressionistically in Villette), by Thackeray in The Fatal Boots and Vanity Fair, by Butler in The Way of All Flesh, and by the zealous specialist in that field. It has been counted up that Dickens deals with twenty-eight schools and mentions a dozen others. The most important are in Nicholas Nicleby, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Hard Times.