His precise terms of reproach are, "Mr. G.
K. Chesterton is not a humourist: not even a Cockney humourist." I do
not mind his saying that I am not a humourist--in which (to tell the
truth) I think he is quite right. But I do resent his saying that I am
not a Cockney. That envenomed arrow, I admit, went home. If a French
writer said of me, "He is no metaphysician: not even an English
metaphysician," I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics, but I
should feel angry about the insult to my country. So I do not urge that
I am a humourist; but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a
humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney humourist; if I were a saint,
I should certainly be a Cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid
catalogue of Cockney saints who have written their names on our noble
old City churches. I need not trouble you with the long list of the
Cockney humourists who have discharged their bills (or failed to
discharge them) in our noble old City taverns. We can weep together
over the pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county has never
produced some humour not intelligible to the rest of the world. And we
can smile together when he says that somebody or other is "not even" a
Cockney humourist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb.
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