of Moslem culture has passed
permanently into our own modern culture. You will find the one Moslem
poem that has really pierced is a Moslem poem in praise of wine. The
crown of all the victories of the Crescent is that nobody reads the
Koran and everybody reads the Rubaiyat.

Most of us remember with satisfaction an old picture in _Punch_,
representing a festive old gentleman in a state of collapse on the
pavement, and a philanthropic old lady anxiously calling the attention
of a cabman to the calamity. The old lady says, 'I'm sure this poor
gentleman is ill,' and the cabman replies with fervour, 'Ill! I wish I
'ad 'alf 'is complaint.'

We talk about unconscious humour; but there is such a thing as
unconscious seriousness. Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often
underground in the subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he
thinks he is talking nonsense; touches on a conflict of ideas as if it
were only a contradiction of language, or really makes a parallel when
he means only to make a pun. Some of the _Punch_ jokes of the best
period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a very strong
example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great deal
more than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines
and distinctions of which he was not perhaps entirely conscious. The
spirit of the English language, the tragedy and comedy of the condition
of the English people, spoke through him as the god spoke through a
teraph-head or brazen mask of oracle. And the oracle is an omen; and in
some sense an omen of doom.

Observe, to begin with, the sobriety of the cabman. Note his measure,
his moderation; or to use the yet truer term, his temperance. He only
wishes to have half the old gentleman's complaint. The old gentleman is
welcome to the other half, along with all the other pomps and luxuries
of his superior social station. There is nothing Bolshevist or even
Communist about the temperance cabman. He might almost be called
Distributist, in the sense that he wishes to distribute the old
gentleman's complaint more equally between the old gentleman and
himself. And, of course, the social relations there represented are very
much truer to life than it is fashionable to suggest. By the realism of
this picture Mr. Punch made amends for some more snobbish pictures, with
the opposite social moral. It will remain eternally among his real
glories that he exhibited a picture in which the cabma