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"I hope you will not include yourself in it," answered Lady Davenant: "it is contrary to your nature, and if you join the nil admirari coxcombs, it can be only for fashion's sake mere affectation."
Yet, as the too evident plaything of an over-permeable moral constitution, he might set up some plea in explanation of his ethical vagaries. He might urge, for instance, that the high culture of which his books are all so redolent has utterly failed to imbue him with the nil admirari sentiment, which Horace commends as the sole specific for making men happy and keeping them so.
The humour of 'The Jumping Frog' and 'The Innocents Abroad' is the savage and naive humour of the mining camp, not the sophisticated humour of civilization. It is significant that Mme. Blanc, a polished and refined intelligence, found the nil admirari attitude of "Mark Twain" no more enlightening nor suggestive than the stoicism of the North American Indian.
"Well," said Philip, "isn't it quite in the line of the new movement that we should have an introspective hostler, who perhaps obeys Sir Philip Sidney's advice, 'Look into your heart and write'? I chanced the other night in a company of the unconventional and illuminated, the 'poster' set in literature and art, wild-eyed and anaemic young women and intensely languid, 'nil admirari' young men, the most advanced products of the studios and of journalism.
I am sure, that, if I were to plant her in Madison Square to-morrow, she would, after one quick, all-compassing glance, assume the nil admirari in a manner to drive the greatest lady of them all to despair. Johnson is a man of excellent intentions, but no taste. Two or three times I looked at Miss Blunt to see what impression his sallies were making upon her. They seemed to produce none whatever.
He had only good-humored banter for the Abolitionists, just as he had for non-resistants and spirit-rappers. Holmes, fully master of himself, and holding instinctively to his nil admirari, trained his light batteries on the new schools, and hit their eccentricities and foibles with a comic fusillade.
"I believe," said he, "that 'Nil admirari' is the devil's favorite text; and he could not choose a better to introduce his pupils into the more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore I have always looked upon a man infected with the disorder of anti-romance as one who has lost the finest part of his nature and his best protection against everything low and foolish."
The perpetual and universal admiration of enthusiastic travellers has produced a sort of reaction, and many tourists, in their desire to appear singular, now take the nil admirari of Horace for their motto. To this dissatisfied class the colonel's only daughter, Miss Lydia, belonged.
"Not possible!" and he eyed the impassive individual in question with a certain compassionate amusement, "Why, if he cannot admire such a magnificent artist as Sarasate, what is there in the world that WILL rouse his admiration!" "Nothing!" rejoined Heliobas, his eyes twinkling humorously as he spoke "Nothing, unless it is his own perspicuity! Nil admirari is the critic's motto.
Paracelsus, a bold empiric and wild Caballist, asserted that he had discovered it, and called it his 'Alkahest'. Why or wherefore, God knows; only that those madmen call nothing by an intelligible name. You may easily get this book from The Hague: read it, for it will both divert and astonish you, and at the same time teach you 'nil admirari'; a very necessary lesson.
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