Verbal and philosophic irony. Banter and sarcasm. The Irony of Fate. Relation of irony to satire. Differing opinions. Distribution of irony among the novelists. Direct or verbal: present in varying degrees in practically all. Crystallized and pervasive forms. Irony in circumstance: Trollope, Eliot, and Meredith. Subdivisions: dramatic irony; the reversed wheel of fortune, the granted desire; the lost opportunity. Meredithian irony directed against the ironic interpretation of life 121 _PART III_ OBJECTS CHAPTER I INDIVIDUALS Personalities the original and primitive element in satire. Effect of this influence upon the satiric product, and of this in turn upon the attitude toward satire. Citations. In fiction no hard and fast line between real and imaginary characters. Lack of personal satire among the novelists. Its prevalence limited to the earlier writers: Peacock, Lytton, Disraeli, and Thackeray before 1850 167 CHAPTER II INSTITUTIONS Victorian attitude toward established institutions. Satire directed against the following: Society, including the home, woman, marriage; the State, including politics, sociology, law, charities and corrections, war; the Church, treated both by partisans on the inside, and pagans on the outside; the School, signifying education, from the fireside to the college; Literature and the Press; the English as a nation. Lack of complementary reconstruction 179 CHAPTER III TYPES Impossibility of maintaining fixed classes. Unity and emphasis secured by artificial devices. Several human traits temptingly vulnerable, though all some form of deceit. Hypocrisy the specialty of Dickens, Folly, of Dickens and Meredith, Snobbishness, of Thackeray, Sentimentality and Egoism, of Meredith. Scattered fire against vulgarity, fanaticism, and other targets. Combination and interplay of traits in one character exemplified by Trollope’s Lady Carbury 229 _PART IV_ CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER I RELATIONSHIPS The various novelists compared as to respective quality, quantity, and range of satirical element. Discussion of the merging of satire into cynicism, tragedy, and idealism on the critical side, and into comedy, wit, and philosophic humor, on the humorous. Relation to intellect and emotion. Relative ranking of satirists influenced by these considerations 269