The Honorable Mr. Listless finds the volumes of modern literature “very consolatory and congenial” to his feelings:[347] “There is, as it were, a delightful north-east wind, an intellectual blight breathing through them; a delicious misanthropy and discontent, that demonstrates the nullity of virtue and energy, and puts me in good humour with myself and sofa.” Pelham perceives--[348] “* * * an unaccountable prepossession among all persons, to imagine that whatever seems gloomy must be profound, and whatever is cheerful must be shallow. They have put poor Philosophy into deep mourning, and given her a coffin for a writing desk, and a skull for an inkstand.” Ganymede anticipates that Apollo’s new poem will be very popular, for “it is all about moonlight and the misery of existence.”[349] It is in Meredith that we find the greatest point and depth in literary criticism, as in most other things. Under cover of apology for his own method of psychological analysis, he manages to convey his impression of those who tell and who love the story for the story’s sake. He cannot avoid, he explains, the slow start and detailed exposition in which he unfolds the situation, and adds:[350] “This it is not necessary to do when you are set astride the enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves the man’s mind at home while he performs the deeds befitting him: he can indeed be rapid. Whether more active, is a question asking for your notions of the governing element in the composition of man, and of his present business here. * * * All ill-fortuned minstrel who has by fateful direction been brought to see with distinctness that man is not as much comprised in external features as the monkey, will be devoted to the task of the fuller portraiture.” It is Meredith also who says the last word on the English, as English. They are indeed the real objects under all these disguises of their activities, but they are not often synthesized and called by name. Yet--[351] “An actually satiric man in an English circle, that does not resort to the fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate the excessive fury roused in his mind by an illogical people of a provocative prosperity, * * * They give him so many opportunities.” He seizes one of them by symbolizing England in the Duvidney sisters; composed of such, it becomes--[352] “* * * a vast body of passives and negatives, living by precept, according to rules of precedent, and supposing themselves to be righteously guided because of their continuing undisturbed. * * * mixed with an ancient Hebrew fear of offense to an inscrutable Lord, eccentrically appeasable through the dreary iteration of the litany of sinfulness. * * * Satirists in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if they could be moved to moral distinctness, mental intention, with a preference of strong plain speech over the crack of their whips.”