Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/62

 than their forerunners with the early dictum that satire was "invented for the purging of our minds," rather than for the practical consequences sometimes claimed for it, yet they would not adopt the suceeding phrase of the definition,—"in which human vices, ignorance and errors, * * * are severely reprehended;" for they would qualify more carefully the objects, and abstain from severity in their reprehension.

This dividing line among objects would make, however, a scientific rather than an ethical bisection. The "stolidly conscientious performance" of confining the practice of satire to a moral issue, does indeed, as Dr. Alden points out, argue a "deficiency in wit" that marks the Anglo-Saxon mind. But as the Englishman became more cosmopolitan, he learned to disguise such of his innate solemnity as he could not shed. That he has absorbed more completely the more easily assimilated Hebrew and Roman traits, has not prevented him from acquiring some also from the Greek and the French. The Victorian is naturally a multiplex compound, and in him we see all these elements in various stages of conflict and combination.