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On the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-coloured blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his catalogue: "No. 32 'The Future Town' Paul Post." 'I suppose that's satiric too, he thought. 'What a thing! But his second impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly.
We long to strike back at the human traits which have wronged us, and the satiric depiction of hateful characters whose seeming virtues are turned upside down to expose their impossible hearts feeds our craving for vicarious revenge. We dote upon vinegarish old maids, self- righteous men, and canting women when they are exposed by narrative art, and especially when poetic justice wrecks them.
Everywhere else the ideas of contrast appear and the enjoyment of nature is elegiac or satiric. It is true that these sentiments exist only for us. To Horace, Tibur seemed more modern than does Tivoli to us, as is proved by his 'Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, but it is only an illusion to imagine that we ourselves would like to be inhabitants of Athens or Rome.
Above these, again, ran a frieze of gold and silver shields, while in the higher niches were placed comic, tragic, and satiric sculptured groups 'dressed in real clothes, says the historian, much admiring this realism. It is impossible to number the tripods, and flagons, and couches of gold, resting on golden figures of sphinxes, the salvers, the bowls, the jewelled vases.
Just as Beaumarchais in the eighteenth century found his profit in a study of Le Sage's satiric attitude, so Augier in the nineteenth century, and still more, Dumas fils, responded to the sharp stimulus of Balzac.
Miss Denham could interpret looks, and said, 'Dr. Shrapnel is very fond of those verses. Rosamund's astonishment caused her to say, 'Are they his own? a piece of satiric innocency at which Miss Denham laughed softly as she answered, 'No. Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness. 'Are they written by the gentleman at his side? 'Mr. Lydiard? No.
But young fellows get over these things, and Clive won't die this time, I dare say." While Hobson Newcome made these satiric and facetious remarks, his half-brother paced up and down the glass parlour, scowling over the panes into the bank where the busy young clerks sate before their ledgers. At last he gave an "Ah!" as of satisfaction. Indeed, he had seen Sir Barnes Newcome enter into the bank.
Doubtless the early satiric chapter in Our Mutual Friend is of a more strategic and ingenious kind of satire than can be found in these early and explosive parodies. Still, there is a quality common to both, and that quality is the whole of Dickens. It is a quality difficult to define hence the whole difficulty of criticising Dickens.
Much as I enjoy the satiric comedy of 'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court', I have always felt that it set before Europe an American type which is neither elevating nor inspiring nor national. It tends to the gratification of England and Europe, even in the face of its democratic demolition of feudalistic survival, by sealing a certain cheap type of vulgarity with the national stamp.
There was first wild gaiety, exuberant in a wreathing of life-like imageries, from which nothing really present in nature was excluded. That, as the soul of Denys darkened, had passed into obscure regions of the satiric, the grotesque and coarse.
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