Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/332



"The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike."

But at the same time she warns his judges:

"Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character."

Elsewhere, on the same theme, she indicates her general impression of the relative amounts of human wisdom and folly:

"And to judge wisely I suppose we must know how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part of the world's history."

This is in agreement with the point of the lines written on the portrait of Beau Nash at Bath, placed between the busts of Newton and Pope:

"This picture placed these busts between, Gives satire all its strength: Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length."

But this Victorian painter of Folly, and at least some of her contemporaries, endeavored to make satire realistic by drawing Wit and Wisdom on a proportionate scale. It was in recognition of this that Stevenson said,