It was this sagacity, combined with keen imagination, quick sympathy, and prompt and efficient action, that rendered the chaplain Eden a success under discouraging difficulties. The very foundation of his success was laid when he insisted on experiencing for himself the straight jacket and the solitary confinement, to the unbounded but amused mystification of the jail officials. And the shrewd _coup d’état_ by which he converted one of them revealed the profound truth that “ignorance is the mother of cruelty.” [448] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 40. [449] _Beauchamp’s Career_, 7. [450] _Diana of the Crossways_, 153. [451] _One of Our Conquerors_, 70. Etymologically, it is only the sarcastic variety which pushes the attack so far. [452] _Autobiography_, 86. Even the ingenuous Mr. Brooke of Middlemarch had made the subtle discovery that “Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point.” And a century before, satire’s warmest defender, John Brown, had cautioned the wits against degrading her “to a scold.” [453] _Sense and Sensibility_, 244. [454] Raleigh: _The English Novel_, 112. [455] _Middlemarch_, I, 174. Cf. the taunt of the practical young Radical to Esther Lyon, on her choice of literature: “* * * gentlemen like your Rénés, who have no particular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the infinite is the right thing for them.” _Felix Holt_, II, 34. [456] _Romola_, I, 287. [457] In his initial pleasure over Wickham, he defies “even Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law,” but later, after reading a letter from Collins, he concludes,--“I cannot help giving him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my son-in-law.” [458] “God forgive you,” he exclaims to Carrasco, “the injury you have done the whole world, in endeavouring to restore to his senses the most diverting madman in it. Do you not see, sir, that the benefit of his recovery will not counterbalance the pleasure his extravagancies afford?” III, 449. [459] _Evan Harrington_, 457. Cf. a similar idea in _The Shaving of Shagpat_. The narrator of _The Newcomes_ speaks in the Preface of the “pert little satirical monitor” which sprang up inwardly and upset the fond humbug he was cherishing. It is a curious circumstance that neither Dickens nor Thackeray, with all their humor, could create characters with that quality. Even of Becky it might be said that she never did a foolish thing, nor ever said a wise one. [460] _Note Books_, 189. [461] _Evan Harrington_, 368. [462] _Framley Parsonage_, 306. [463] _Adam Bede_, II, 37. Cf. Lord Fleetwood’s complaint to Carinthia that she has hit him hard and justly, followed by his acknowledgment,--“Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground--no recovery of it, none!” _An Amazing Marriage_, 439. [464] _Daniel Deronda_, II, 86.