Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/81

 CHAPTER I

THE ROMANTIC

The implication behind that sage instruction, "First catch your hare," is that after the catching the rest will be easy. But, admitting that the second step cannot antedate the first, we are still confronted by the fact that the achievement of the first must be followed by the second in order to be rendered efficacious. "How serve him up?" is the next question.

It is the question of method, the problem of ways and means, and a most important one it is in the case of satire, for it is here that the element of humor finds its field of operations. In its cause and effect satire is serious, nominally at least. In the connecting link, the means reaching from design to end, it must use wit or humor.

A certain object is perceived by a certain observer to be ridiculous. How is he to make it seem ridiculous to other observers, whose unaided perception may not equal his? He is able to do it by drawing upon the common fund of human experience and idea in regard to humor. If the satirist can subsume his object under one of the universally recognized categories, he makes it ipso facto absurd. So automatic is this effect that only the analytic spectator will stop to question the justice of the classification. Socrates dangling in a basket, Volpone caught in his own trap, Hudibras gawkily playing the Cavalier, Atticus monoplizing the throne but fearful of pretenders, Southey routing infernal legions by the mere offer to read aloud his