Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/94



all others, belonged to no school, was traceable, it may fairly be said, to no influence at all direct in character, looking back to, and fitting in with, none of those particular habits of thought at any rate in the age just preceding and merging into his own? On an external view, of course, it might be maintained that Butler harmonized with the solid, scientific background of Victorian thought—harmonized with it, yet was not of it. Again * * * one might quite easily say that Samuel Butler stood outside the Victorian system. And this would be the truest description of him."

The parallel noted above between the next two on the list, Lytton and Disraeli, is more applicable to their work in the realistic field than in this, for the reason already stated, that Lytton's one contribution, The Coming Race, is more akin to Butler's, both in date and design.

Accident rather then enterprise led to the discovery of Lytton's Utopian people, the Vril-ya, for they inhabit the concave inner surface of our own planet, and are to be reached only through a subterranean chasm leading down from the depths of a mine. The citizens of this highly cultivated nation regard the English intruder as a primitive barbarian, and despise him for his ignorance and his crude, carnivorous habits. Deciding, however, to spare his life and risk his presence until proved contaminating and pernicious, they proceed to educate him by means of the Vril Trance, a sort of telepathic radio-activity. The process is mutual, except that they accomplish more,—"partly because my language was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and partly because their organization was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile, and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine."