Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/87

 banter his age into calming down, and of the other to prick his into waking up.

An additional difference, and the main one, is that Butler is the bigger man in every way more searching and earnest, more constructive, more versatile, more profound. An additional resemblance is that their fiction is so entirely in the romantic field that they alone of all on this list will not come up for consideration when we reach the other.

Peacock's novels form probably the most monomorphic little group to be found in literature. His seven fantasies have the strong family resemblance of the seven vestal maidens in Gryll Grange. Six of the Pleiades appeared in a compact series within a fifteen-year period; and the apparently lost sister joined the constellation thirty years later than the latest preceding one.

Two of them, Maid Marian and The Misfortunes of Elphin, are in historic costume, and thus afford a chance for the inverted satire that comes from a contrast between past and present, not to the advantage of the latter. The other five are all domiciled in contemporary English house parties; in Hall, Court, Abbey, Castle, or Grange. These are not, however, the habitations of the conven-*