Neither that astigmatic visualizer, the cynic, who regards life itself as a huge joke on its victims, nor that myopic spectator, the misanthrope, who conceives humanity as an unmitigated jest on creation, was a Victorian favorite. Both are blind to certain phenomena,--beauty, power, exquisite delicacy, tremendous strength,--which also exist, which even the pessimist grants to be compensatory, and which, when genuine, are utterly beyond the reach of any ridicule that pretends to sanity or justice. Such then,--humorously truthful and suitably proportioned,--is the general character of the satiric stratum which runs, widening and narrowing, through the great vein of Victorian fiction. In the legitimate novel there are two main devices of revealing the ludicrous; the direct, whereby the author in his own reflections and comments points it out; and the dramatic, whereby he shows it by means of incident and character. The latter method is again subdivisible into two modes, by the use of the two contrasting types of actors, humorous and humorists. The first are allowed to betray themselves, their very unconsciousness adding to the piquancy of the situation. For this the favorite technical tool is the dramatic monologue. The second are the witty protagonists. They stand _in loco scriptoris_ and express that detection of absurdity for which the humorless humorous furnish the occasion.[120] When we consult our original list, we find the two extremes have been cut off, as Peacock and Butler belong entirely to the other department. The remaining eleven have produced about one hundred twenty novels in the stricter sense, not including short stories, tales, sketches, or burlesques. It must be noted that this restriction rules out some items important as literature, and in certain cases as satire,--_Cranford_, _Pickwick_, _Peg Woffington_, _Scenes from Clerical Life_. Of the grand total, approximately one-quarter is eliminated as being essentially and thoroughly serious. Here again are found some notable names,--_Last Days of Pompeii_, _Mary Barton_, _Henry Esmond_, _Tale of Two Cities_, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, _Jane Eyre_, _Hypatia_. Three-fourths is a large majority, from which one might deduce that the novel of this period was prevailingly satirical. But the other extreme, those so strongly saturated as to deserve the name of satires, are far fewer than the unsatirical. _Vanity Fair_, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _The Egoist_, possibly _Barchester Towers_, and _Beauchamp’s Career_, practically exhaust the list. This leaves about four score of novels in which the spirit of satire exists, manifesting itself showily, coyly, in wide range and diversity.