Note 100 — Chapter I · THE ROMANTIC

One’s astonishment that it was Meredith who had the honor of rejecting the manuscript of Erewhon, submitted to Chapman and Hall, is exceeded only by the astonishment at the reason given,—that it was a philosophical treatise, not likely to interest the general public. One would hardly accuse this critic of a conservative reluctance to expose the public to iconoclastic bacilli, though he had not yet become the author of Beauchamp’s Career, nor would one suppose his “public” to be composed entirely of tired business men and sentimental school girls. There remain the two cruxes in the history of satire: failure of the satirist Thackeray to appreciate the satirist Swift, and of the satirist Meredith to appreciate the satirist Butler. If they prove anything it is the diversity among satirists.