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We may look back to the old system of endless catechisms, apophthegms, moral fables, and the rest of the paraphernalia of moral didactics, with the same horror with which we regard the gags, strait-waistcoats, chains, and dark cells, of poor mad people before the intervention of Pinel.
Constance, Whig by profession, ultra-Liberal in reality, still however gave the character to the politics of the house; and the easy Godolphin thought politics the veriest of all the trifles which a man could leave to the discretion of the lady of his household. We may judge, therefore, of the quiet, complacent amusement he felt in the didactics of Radclyffe or the declamations of Constance.
He saw his own miserable logic and affected didactics, but he went on lightly, "But why do you ask such a question? You haven't any one in your mind for me, have you?" She had risen thoughtfully and was moving towards the door. Suddenly she turned with a quick, odd vivacity: "Perhaps I had. Oh, Peter, there was such a lovely little squaw I saw the last time I was at Oak Bottom!
Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say assuredly this Nation hath extreme need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not.
The old didactics have long gone out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, ore retundo, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as he might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French that would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish. He had been ordained some two years before this date.
That this diversion into the region of didactics is accompanied, on our poet's part, with every ingenuity of ornament, and every grace of a style which people have learned to like and which he has made his own, need not be said. The Tennysonian beauties are all there.
But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a distinct object with me an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete muses from childish lips.
"But this good- nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehemently displeased my English friends; and they sought to draw me back from any bargain by a long epistle, most full of reasons. 'A sufficient specimen, they argued, 'had been given in Didactics; the path of farther rectification in that department was open enough: not yet so in Real Science.
If I had kept my didactics for my own sex, all might have gone well: I have never doubted but that I had things to teach my generation which it would be the happier of knowing. But it's a dangerous power to put into a man's hands that he shall instruct his betters. I was tempted by that deadliest flattery of all, and I fell.
Constance, Whig by profession, ultra-Liberal in reality, still however gave the character to the politics of the house; and the easy Godolphin thought politics the veriest of all the trifles which a man could leave to the discretion of the lady of his household. We may judge, therefore, of the quiet, complacent amusement he felt in the didactics of Radclyffe or the declamations of Constance.
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