Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/96

 Disraeli's Popanilla was a jeu d'esprit of his youth, and develops an opposite situation from that of the preceding. Instead of the Britisher abroad, he pictures the foreigner in England, thus affording us a chance to see ourselves as others see us.

The mechanism by which this new scrutiny is brought to bear upon our old establishments is well worn and familiar, but has some novelty in the application. A sailor's chest is washed ashore on a remote island, and found by one of the aborigines, Popanilla, who becomes inoculated with ambition through perusal of some documents discovered therein. He immediately organizes a proselyting campaign, but encounters too much opposition from a recalcitrant public to make much headway. The people are well content with their present peaceful existence, and quite averse to receiving the serpent of aspiration in their idyllic though socially sophisticated Garden of Eden. They are provokingly obtuse even to the argument that "they might reasonably expect to be the terror and astonishment of the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation of any consequence." Finally to settle the trouble caused by the convert's tactless propaganda, which has had the lamentable effect of inducing the young men to desert society for politics, the king orders the disturber of the peace to be set adrift, and bids him farewell with this encouraging prophecy:

"As the axiom of your school seems to be that everything can be made perfect at once, without time, without experience,