l the patriotism and all the public interest of the
English constitutional party conflict have been fully allowed for, there
does remain the bold, bleak question which Dickens in substance asks,
"Suppose I want somebody else who is neither Coodle nor Doodle." This is
the great quality called satire; it is a kind of taunting
reasonableness; and it is inseparable from a certain insane logic which
is often called exaggeration. Dickens was more of a satirist than
Thackeray for this simple reason: that Thackeray carried a man's
principles as far as that man carried them; Dickens carried a man's
principles as far as a man's principles would go. Dickens in short (as
people put it) exaggerated the man and his principles; that is to say
he emphasised them. Dickens drew a man's absurdity out of him; Thackeray
left a man's absurdity in him. Of this last fact we can take any example
we like; take for instance the comparison between the city man as
treated by Thackeray in the most satiric of his novels, with the city
man as treated by Dickens in one of the mildest and maturest of his.
Compare the character of old Mr. Osborne in _Vanity Fair_ with the
character of Mr. Podsnap in _Our Mutual Friend_. In the case of Mr.
Osborne there is nothing except the solid blocking in of a brutal dull
convincing character. _Vanity Fair_ is not a satire on the City except
in so far as it happens to be true. _Vanity Fair_ is not a satire on the
City, in short, except in so far as the City is a satire on the City.
But Mr. Podsnap is a pure satire; he is an extracting out of the City
man of those purely intellectual qualities which happen to make that
kind of City man a particularly exasperating fool. One might almost say
that Mr. Podsnap is all Mr. Osborne's opinions separated from Mr.
Osborne and turned into a character. In short the satirist is more
purely philosophical than the novelist. The novelist may be only an
observer; the satirist must be a thinker. He must be a thinker, he must
be a philosophical thinker for this simple reason; that he exercises his
philosophical thought in deciding what part of his subject he is to
satirise. You may have the dullest possible intelligence and be a
portrait painter; but a man must have a serious intellect in order to be
a caricaturist. He has to select what thing he will caricature. True
satire is always of this intellectual kind; true satire is always, so
to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pur