Fancy Sir Charles Dickens, or Lord Dickens, or
Lord Darwin, or Lord Carlyle, or Lord Shakespeare, or John Milton
masquerading as the Marquis of Oxfordshire. Yes, Tennyson became a lord and
was the smaller man for the fact. Who does not recall Swinburne's scornful
comment:
Stoop, Chaucer, stoop;
Keats, Shelley, Burns bow down.
And who did not share the feeling of Mark Pattison at the pitiful
anti-climax? "There certainly is something about Tennyson," he said, "that
you find in very few poets; in saying what he says in the best words in
which it can be said, he is quite Sophoclean. But this business of the
peerage! It is really so sad that I hardly like to speak of it. Compare
that with Milton's ending and mark the difference."
But it is the corrupting effect of titles on the national currency that is
their real offence. They falsify our ideals. They set up shams in place of
realities. They turn our minds from the gold to the guinea stamp and make
us worship the false idols of social ambition.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146