The man who writes the notes in the weekly paper called the
_Outlook_ feels that it is his business to restrain it. The passage has
such simple sublimity that I must quote it--
"Dr. Gore talked unworthily of his reputation when he spoke of the
older Universities as playgrounds for the rich and idle. In the first
place, the rich men there are not idle. Some of the rich men are, and so
are some of the poor men. On the whole, the sons of noble and wealthy
families keep up the best traditions of academic life."
So far this seems all very nice. It is a part of the universal principle
on which Englishmen have acted in recent years. As you will not try to
make the best people the most powerful people, persuade yourselves that
the most powerful people are the best people. Mad Frenchmen and Irishmen
try to realise the ideal. To you belongs the nobler (and much easier)
task of idealising the real. First give your Universities entirely into
the power of the rich; then let the rich start traditions; and then
congratulate yourselves on the fact that the sons of the rich keep up
these traditions. All that is quite simple and jolly. But then this
critic, who crushes Dr. Gore from the high throne of the _Outlook_, goes
on in a way that is really perplexing.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94