Why then, in this country at any rate, is its
application to living persons only considered legitimate when associated
with caricature? So sponsored, in the pages of _Punch_ and the
composition of Mr. Max Beerbohm, it has become an accepted convention too
habitual for remark. Yet caricature and verbal parody may be as critical
both of personality and character as dialogue more seriously designed, and
may have as important an influence not merely upon a public opinion, but
upon its moral judgment as well.
The defection of _Punch_ was felt by Gladstone to be a serious
set-back to the fortunes of his Home Rule policy; and Tenniel's cartoon
of "the Grand old Janus," saying "Quite right!" to the police who were
bludgeoning an English mob, and "Quite wrong!" to the police who were
bludgeoning an Irish one, was a personal jibe which hit him hard.
The customary device, where contemporaries are concerned, of
disembowelling the victim's name, and leaving it a skeleton of consonants,
is a formal concession which in effect concedes nothing. Nor is there any
reason why it should; for the only valid objection to the medium of
dialogue is in cases where its form might mislead the reader into
mistaking fiction for fact, and the author's invention for the
_ipsissima verba_ of the characters he portrays. I hope that this
book will attract no readers so unintelligent. Having chosen dialogue for
these studies of historical events because I find in it a natural and
direct means to the interpretation of character, my main scruple is
satisfied when I have made it plain that they have no more authenticity
because they happen to be written in dramatic form, than they would have
were they written as political essays.
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