That there are more of these fitful gleams and partial visions than of an inclusive view of the cosmos, is not astonishing. The wide, clear outlook requires not only an infinite radius but a lens of powerful magnitude. To train a small telescope on a remote object achieves nothing. None of the novelists evinces the cosmic perspective that reports back in terms of a universe. That, indeed, is the function of the seer,--poet, prophet, or philosopher. But if only these see life in all its panoramic vastness, there are others who at least splash at a ten-league canvas, and insist on having real figures to draw from, whether saint or sinner. These have no use for the trivial and frivolous, yet they know better than to scorn the small and unpretentious. They delight in spaciousness, but are not enamored with mere bulk or nebulous vagueness. Such are our satiric novelists at their best, those among them ranking highest whose philosophical humor is greatest in proportion to their love of the comic, and who are granted sufficient wit to transmute their perception of the absurd into effective expression. The value of a sense of humor lies largely in a certain duality about it, in that it springs from the intellectual side of one’s nature and is reinforced by the emotional. It thus brings into play both of the supplementary factors, and in so doing tests them both. To have a sense of humor is an intellectual asset, but the enjoyment of it, which is inseparable from its possession, is an emotional state. This combination, as well as the order of procedure, affects the quality of the resulting satire. The best satirists are those most fully developed in head and heart, with the proviso that they keep the latter subordinate to the former, by making reason the final tribunal, and awarding the decision to intellectual judgment rather than emotional prejudice. Among our novelists the greatest in other things is greatest in this also. The most generous endowment along both lines, and the nicest balance between them is Meredith’s. With him are again associated Eliot and Butler. Nor is it by accident that we find the lowest extreme of the list still occupied by the same representatives. The test of course is one of control. It is not that Reade, Kingsley, and Charlotte Brontë are deficient in intellection. They do considerable thinking and sometimes reach conclusions that are rational and true. But when truth and rationality do dominate, it is by a happy good fortune rather than the inevitability that marks the ratiocination of a capable mind. This last cannot guarantee infallibility, to be sure, but the errors are reduced to a minimum, and moreover left open to correction. This is the case with Meredith, Eliot, and Butler, in whom a warm and sincere emotion is directed by the light of reason.