Douglas, when he hurled the heart of Bruce in front of him
in his last battle, cried out, 'Pass first, great heart, as thou wert
ever wont.' A Spanish nobleman, when commanded by the King to receive a
high-placed and notorious traitor, said: 'I will receive him in all
obedience, and burn down my house afterwards.' This is literature
without culture; it is the speech of men convinced that they have to
assert proudly the poetry of life.
Anyone, however, who should seek for such pearls in the conversation of
a young man of modern Belgravia would have much sorrow in his life. It
is not only impossible for aristocrats to assert proudly the poetry of
life; it is more impossible for them than for anyone else. It is
positively considered vulgar for a nobleman to boast of his ancient
name, which is, when one comes to think of it, the only rational object
of his existence. If a man in the street proclaimed, with rude feudal
rhetoric, that he was the Earl of Doncaster, he would be arrested as a
lunatic; but if it were discovered that he really was the Earl of
Doncaster, he would simply be cut as a cad. No poetical prose must be
expected from Earls as a class. The fashionable slang is hardly even a
language; it is like the formless cries of animals, dimly indicating
certain broad, well-understood states of mind.
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