The various kinds of artifice employed in this artificial process are all found in the examples on our list. Remoteness of time lends illusion to _Maid Marian_, _Legend of the Rhine_, _Farina_; remoteness of place, to _The Coming Race_, and the _Erewhons_; non-human characters, to _Melincourt_, _Ixion_, _The Shaving of Shagpat_; anomalous situations, to _Misfortunes of Elphin_ and _Popanilla_. Some are able to combine them all, notably Lytton and Butler.[116] Some, on the other hand, manage to create a maximum impression with a minimum use of the spectacular. Peacock, for instance, never leaves England nor gives us any but English characters, quiet if not actually subdued, and usually unexceptionable in behavior. Disraeli is really as circumscribed. He apparently transports us to Heaven, Hades, some unsuspected isle in the far seas, but he actually conveys all these to the isle where he was born. Thackeray and even Meredith keep strictly to _terra firma_. If it were desirable to make comparisons with a view to determining whether any particular ingredient made for success in this sort, we might observe the connection between originality and exaggeration in their relation to effectiveness. Evidence from the data seems to indicate that satiric value, estimated by weight and pertinence of ideas, is in direct proportion to the amount of inventive wit; but in irregular or even inverse ratio to extravaganza or caricature. For example, the general order of both satiric and constructive excellence, is approximately as follows,--listed in an ascending series: Meredith, Thackeray, Lytton, Disraeli, Peacock, Butler. But to reach a climax of pure fantasy we would pass from Thackeray through Peacock, Disraeli, Butler, and Lytton, to Meredith. Exaggeration does not seem, therefore, to inhere in satire though it may enhance it. The chief advantage of the fantastic is that it gives unfettered play to whatever fancy the mind is endowed with; and it enlists a naturally too serious Criticism under the brilliant banner of Wit. That its attractions are many is proved by its distinguished history; for enrolled among the members of this versatile society are such names as _Reynard the Fox_, _Romance of the Rose_, _Piers Plowman_, _Don Quixote_, _Dunciad_, _Gulliver_, _Don Juan_. Few on our list deserve comparison with these; none perhaps except _Erewhon_. Peacock’s name might have a place, not for any one tale but for the _toute ensemble_. What one of Disraeli’s biographers[117] says of _Popanilla_, that it is “a work of the same kind as Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_” is true enough, but would be more to the point if the Travels had been confined to Laputa.