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He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case of In Memoriam. "That we may lift from out the dust, A voice as unto him that hears A cry above the conquered years Of one that ever works, and trust." The poem should have been a cry above the conquered years.
We know that he was dissipated and idle, for he tells us so, but his confession is marred by no sort of priggishness, and it is very important to insist that this greatest of moralists never exaggerated the capacity of ordinary human virtue. He pretended to no exceptional loftiness in his own conduct; he demanded no excessive sacrifice on the part of others.
The play-producing societies have nothing to produce that is worth producing, because the atmosphere which causes such plays as are written to be produced privately is not the healthy atmosphere from which masterpieces arise. It is an atmosphere impregnated with priggishness and a sense of superiority. It is an atmosphere, if there can be such a thing, of sterility.
The fourth quality that I should like to see raised to the highest rank among Christian graces is the Grace of Humour. I do not think that Humour has ever enjoyed its due repute in the ethical scale. The possession of it saves a man from priggishness; and the possession of faith, hope, and charity does not.
You pass it to the lower classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call 'social intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour, when it's mutual priggishness if it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see this. They say one ought to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice " "Lower classes," interrupted Mr. Wilcox, as it were thrusting his hand into her speech.
And it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the democracy condescends to joke. Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes about marriage, because marriage is a part of mankind. But the democracy would never deign to joke about Free Love, because Free Love is a piece of priggishness.
"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work? That's very nice of you, indeed." "Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested Ellsworth, testily. "Have we asked you to do anything but straight business?" "Exactly," said Barkley. They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face did not show it.
The development of the new ideas in Erewhon is a familiar one, but there is no more likeness between Higgs and the founder of any other religion, than there is between Jesus Christ and Mahomet. He is a typical middle- class Englishman, deeply tainted with priggishness in his earlier years, but in great part freed from it by the sweet uses of adversity.
"Why should the rotten apple have been swallowed? or, if it was, I should think a joke over it might have been wholesome." "Hindering priggishness in the mortified Sister," said Gillian. "The fact is," said Lady Merrifield, "that if you vow yourself to an unnatural life, so to speak, you must submit to the rules that have been found best to work for it."
She was right though he hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional, and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his buttonhole.
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