Again, like his, her irony and her raillery and her satire are sometimes
so delicate that it quite eludes you for the first two or three readings
of the exquisite page. And then, when you turn the leaf, she is as
ostentatiously stupid and ignorant and dependent on your superior mind as
ever Socrates himself was. Till I shrewdly suspect that no little of
that 'obedience' which so intoxicated and fascinated her inquisitors, and
which to this day so exasperates some of her biographers, was largely
economical and ironical. Her narrow cell is reported to have often
resounded with peals of laughter to the scandal of some of her sisters.
In support of all that, I have marked a score of Socratic passages in
Woodhead, and Dalton, and Lewis, and Father Coleridge, and Mrs.
Cunninghame Graham. They are very delicious passages and very tempting.
But were they once begun there would be no end to them. You will believe
Froude, for he is an admitted judge in all matters connected with the
best literature, and he says in his _Quarterly_ article on Teresa's
writings, 'The best satire of Cervantes is not more dainty.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28