ead spiritually or sensually, always
shrinkingly apart from him. They swell to a resemblance of their patron
if they stoop to woo his purse. He has, on hearing how that poets bring
praise to nations, as in fact he can now understand his Shakespeare
to have done, been seen to thump the midriff and rally them for their
shyness of it, telling them he doubts them true poets while they abstain
from singing him to the world-him, and the things refreshing the centre
of him. Ineffectual is that encouragement. Were he in the fire, melting
to the iron man, the backbone of him, it would be different. At his
pleasures he is anti-hymnic, repellent to song. He has perceived the
virtues of Peace, without the brother eye for the need of virtuousness
to make good use of them and inspire the poet. His own enrolled
unrhythmical bardic troops (humorous mercenaries when Celts) do his
trumpeting best, and offend not the Pierides.

This interlude, or rather inter-drone, repulsive to write, can hardly be
excluded from a theme dramatising Celtic views, and treating of a blood,
to which the idea of country must shine resplendently if we would have
it running at full tide through the arteries. Preserve your worship, if
the object fills your optics. Better worship that than nothing, as it is
better for flames to be blown out than not to ascend, otherwise it will
wreak circular mischief instead of illumining. You are requested simply
to recollect that there is another beside you who sees the object
obliquely, and then you will not be surprised by his irreverence.
What if, in the end, you were conducted to a like point of view?
Self-worship, it has been said, is preferable to no trimming of the
faculty, but worship does not necessarily cease with the extinction of
this of the voraciously carnal. An ideal of country, of Great Britain,
is conceivable that will be to the taste of Celt and Saxon in common,
to wave as a standard over their fraternal marching. Let Bull boo his
drumliest at such talk: it is, I protest, the thing we want and can
have. He is the obstruction, not the country; and against him, not
against the country, the shots are aimed which seem so malignant. Him
the gay manipulators propitiate who look at him through Literature
and the Press, and across the pulpit-cushions, like airy Macheath at
Society, as carrion to batten on. May plumpness be their portion, and
they never hanged for it! But the flattering, tickling, pleasantly
pinching