Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/69

 later, and Disraeli's beyond seven. Of those, only Reade published novels after 1880.

This main group is one of those remarkable concentrations in which destiny seems to delight. When the second decade of the century gave to the world eight great names in this field alone, and some equally distinguished ones in others, it surely filled its quota toward the advance of civilization.

Meredith comes enough later than this outpouring of God's plenty to be classed by himself chronologically, especially as he must be by the character of his work also, in spite of the fact that his first novel belongs to the same prolific year as the first of George Eliot's.

The middle of the century is thus also the center of a circle of activity whose radius extends for about two decades on either side, passing thence into thinner aired intermediate zones,—transition periods from the eighteenth and to the twentieth centuries, seasons whose energies are potential, or spent, rather than vigorously kinetic.

But this central period, something more than a generation, and less than a half century, is dynamic enough. It has frequently been described, and its activities—Chartism, the Oxford Movement, Utilitarianism, Positivism, the Industrial Revolution, Christian Socialism, Darwinism, Pre-Raphaeliteism—are an oft-told tale. It is only to be remembered that this was the atmosphere breathed by the majority of our novelists, and these the vital interests which would concern them in so far as they were concerned with the public affairs of their time.

A review of the satiric strain in literature gives an interesting clew both to the fact and the significance of the relation of satire to the total literary product.