[425] The relation between Kenelm and his father is particularly fine, and is reflected in the youth’s remark to a comrade,--“If human beings despise each other for being young and foolish, the sooner we are exterminated by that superior race which is to succeed us on earth, the better it will be.” [426] Cecil Headlam, in his Introduction to _Selections from the British Satirists_. [427] _Satire_ I, 85. [428] One may generalize that the object of satire is deceit as one may call the sky blue. It does not always appear so. Indeed, it shows at times almost every other color. [429] The motto of _Erewhon Revisited_ is from the _Iliad_: “Him do I hate, even as I hate hell fire, who says one thing, and hides another in his heart.” But while Butler is vehement enough, he is less fervent than this would indicate. [430] _Middlemarch_, III, 264. [431] _Ibid._, 271. [432] _Silas Marner_, 26–27. In the same narrative the author uses the misfortunes of Godfrey to illustrate the truth that “Favorable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. * * * The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.” 91. [433] _Felix Holt_, I, 6. [434] _Daniel Deronda_, I, 395. [435] _Middlemarch_, III, 288. [436] _Ibid._, 329. [437] Burton, _Masters of the English Novel_, 290. [438] _Essay on Comedy_, 21. [439] Prelude to _The Egoist_. [440] _Mary Barton_, 6. [441] _Ibid._, 317. [442] _Diana of the Crossways_, 48. [443] _Yeast_, 34. [444] _Yeast_, 236. He also has a sneer for the patronizing scheme of Vieuxbois, in which “of course the clergy and the gentry were to educate the poor, who were to take down thankfully as much as it was thought proper to give them: and all beyond was ‘self-will’ and ‘private judgment,’ the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, Trades-union strikes, and French Revolutions.” 117. [445] He reflects, “I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons.” _David Copperfield_, II, 44. The counter argument brought forward to dampen his enthusiasm was that more good was done to the sinecurists than harm to the public,--whose ignorance was its bliss. “Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious, He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them.” [446] _Put Yourself in his Place_, 401. [447] _Never too Late to Mend_, 411. In the same story Reade lays great stress on the importance of the inspector’s duty: “Only for this task is required, not the gullibility that characterizes the many, but the sagacity that distinguishes the few.” 360.