like a chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach’s champagne music.

In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler’s prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the “gushing” order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane “yes’s” and lisping “no’s” having an opportunity of being “weighed in the balance,” and consequently, in my opinion, “found wanting.” All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me singularly silly.

From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.

To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his assertions; and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that is grand and good in a writer and in man.

“You make a great mistake,” I said, “for Thackeray is a satirist pur et simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods—indeed I would rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term.”

“Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference lies between the two?” the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and wishing, as usual, to display his critical acumen by demolishing me.

“I will tell you with pleasure,” said I, not a bit “put out,” according to his evident wish and expectation, “and I will use the plainest language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society—in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given 

 Prev. P 29/126 next