... When
things ring false it is because they have got by exaggeration or by some
other form of falsity _beside_ themselves. Appreciation of rank or
even of worth becomes snobbishness; appreciation of another's judgment
false taste; and patriotism, the most beautiful, the noblest, the most
necessary of the great emotions, corrupts into something very vile
indeed.
Well, the Victorians, and notably this man of whose power of the pencil
I am speaking, did lack that false savour, that savour of just missing
what one wishes to say or to feel, which haunts us to-day; and I should
imagine that whether it were cause or effect the salt present in the
preservation of the moral health of that society was humour. Let us
enjoy it like an heirloom. It is more national than the language; at
least it is more national than what the language has become under
foreign pressure; it is infinitely more national than our problems and
our tragedies. It is so national that--who knows?--it may crop up again
of itself one of these days; and may that not be long.
The Old Gentleman's Opinions
I had occasion about a fortnight ago to meet a man more nearly ninety
than eighty years of age, who had had special opportunity for
discovering the changes of Europe during his long life. He was of the
English wealthier classes by lineage, but his mother had been of the
French nobility and a Huguenot.
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