travellers in America, with some of whom
I am myself acquainted. I myself have the luck to be a little more
stodgy and less sensitive than many of my countrymen; and certainly less
sensitive than Dickens. But I know what it was that annoyed him about
that unending and unchanging stream of American visitors; it was the
unending and unchanging stream of American sociability and high spirits.
A people living on such a lofty but level tableland do not understand
the ups and downs of the English temperament; the temper of a nation of
eccentrics or (as they used to be called) of humorists. There is
something very national in the very name of the old play of _Every Man
in His Humour_. But the play more often acted in real life is 'Every Man
Out of His Humour.' It is true, as Matthew Arnold said, that an
Englishman wants to do as he likes; but it is not always true even that
he likes what he likes. An Englishman can be friendly and yet not feel
friendly. Or he can be friendly and yet not feel hospitable. Or he can
feel hospitable and yet not welcome those whom he really loves. He can
think, almost with tears of tenderness, about people at a distance who
would be bores if they came in at the door.

American sociability sweeps away any such subtlety. It cannot be
expected to understand the paradox or perversity of the Englishman, who
thus can feel friendly and avoid friends. That is the truth in the
suggestion that Dickens was sentimental. It means that he probably felt
most sociable when he was solitary. In all these attempts to describe
the indescribable, to indicate the real but unconscious differences
between the two peoples, I have tried to balance my words without the
irrelevant bias of praise and blame. Both characteristics always cut
both ways. On one side this comradeship makes possible a certain
communal courage, a democratic derision of rich men in high places,
that is not easy in our smaller and more stratified society. On the
other hand the Englishman has certainly more liberty, if less equality
and fraternity. But the richest compensation of the Englishman is not
even in the word 'liberty,' but rather in the word 'poetry.' That humour
of escape or seclusion, that genial isolation, that healing of wounded
friendship by what Christian Science would call absent treatment, that
is the best atmosphere of all for the creation of great poetry; and out
of that came 'bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang' and
'T