Cf. _Evan Harrington_, 208, for the muddled state of a young woman’s mind, only to be penetrated by “that zigzag process of inquiry conducted by following her actions, for she can tell you nothing, and if she does not want to know a particular matter, it must be a strong beam from the central system of facts that shall penetrate her.” [140] _The Egoist_, 156. [141] _The Egoist_, 5. [142] _The Egoist_, 5. [143] _Our Mutual Friend_, I, 166. [144] Trollope: _Barchester Towers_, 299. [145] _The Egoist_, 4. The “her” refers to Comedy. [146] _Barchester Towers_, 472–3. [147] _Last Chronicles of Barset._ [148] Book II, Chapter I. [149] Vol. I, 78–9. [150] Lytton’s _Kenelm Chillingly_, 1873, and Meredith’s _Beauchamp’s Career_, 1876. [151] Lytton’s _Kenelm Chillingly_, 38. [152] _Ibid._, 39. An echo from _The Coming Race_, published two years earlier. [153] _Ibid._, 40. [154] _Ibid._, 90. Later he imagines a hypothetical contribution to _The Londoner_, bringing “that highly intellectual journal into discredit by a feeble attempt at a good-natured criticism or a generous sentiment.” 161. Kenelm grows into some likeness to his old tutor Welby, an unpedantic, versatile scholar, who belonged to “the school of Eclectical Christology.” The Rev. John Chillingly, for instance, did not perceive Welby’s realism, for the latter listened to idealistic eulogies without contradicting them; having “grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished cruelty of sarcasm.” 34. [155] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 167. [156] _Shirley_, II, 90. [157] _Ibid._, II, 351. [158] _Ibid._, II, 250. [159] It is not in a novel but the shortest of his Short Stories that Meredith has presented to us his truly wittiest character, shown with the brief but startling distinctness of a flash-light. Nowhere is there a more perfect embodiment of the satiric spirit than Lady Camper. It required a malicious imagination to produce the cartoons of the City of Wilsonople, and to use them with such wicked effectiveness. Yet this Limb of Satan was maleficent only to bless, ultimately. The fine military figure upon which she turned the shaft of illumination is equally perfect as the incarnate satirizible; not a sinner, not a villain, but a complacent, fatuous, selfish gentleman, “open to exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies,” but capable of an improvement that amounted to regeneration. “Well, General,” his teleological tormentor finally explains, “you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I would assist you. I gave you plenty of subject-matter. I will not say I meant to work a homœopathic cure.”