When he says they are “made to speak and behave according to the order of Nature,” “Nature” must be understood to mean the “natural” result of Theory; for it is only the Bad Boy who, in his naughtiness, is a real child of Nature. The Good Boy of the Moralist is a stock figure of allegory, but the Bad Boy lives; a hundred models will serve for his portrait. He is the real hero of _Sandford and Merton_, as Satan is of _Paradise Lost_.