It sets
these evils up as benefits and blessings representing the highest
attainable degree of honor and virtue, whilst any criticism of or
revolt against them is savagely persecuted as the extremity of
vice. The revolt, driven under ground and exacerbated, produces
debauchery veiled by hypocrisy, an overwhelming demand for
licentious theatrical entertainments which no censorship can stem,
and, worst of all, a confusion of virtue with the mere morality
that steals its name until the real thing is loathed because the
imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring up in which the
libertine and profligate--Tom Jones and Charles Surface are the
heroes, and decorous, law-abiding persons--Blifil and Joseph
Surface--are the villains and butts. People like to believe that
Nell Gwynne has every amiable quality and the Bishop's wife every
odious one. Poor Mr. Pecksniff, who is generally no worse than a
humbug with a turn for pompous talking, is represented as a
criminal instead of as a very typical English paterfamilias
keeping a roof over the head of himself and his daughters by
inducing people to pay him more for his services than they are
worth. In the extreme instances of reaction against convention,
female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage; and when
Nature throws up that rare phenomenon, an unscrupulous libertine,
his success among "well brought-up" girls is so easy, and the
devotion he inspires so extravagant, that it is impossible not to
see that the revolt against conventional respectability has
transfigured a commonplace rascal into a sort of Anarchist
Saviour.
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