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But it was not merely the changes that came over the general mind of the nation that went against Johnson; it was still more the revolution in his own special branch of literature. He was the last great English critic who treated poets, not as great men to be under stood, but as school-boys to be corrected.
The school-boys had made steps up the sides of some of the biggest stumps, and lots of times in political meetin's men had riz up on 'em to talk to the masses below. Why I s'poze a crowd of as many as 45 or 48, had assembled there at one time durin' the heat of the campain. But them politicians had on their usual run of clothes, they didn't have on white book muslin robes. Good land!
Like all school-boys, I had a sweetheart with whom I was "dead in love" in a juvenile way. Her name was Mary Hyatt. Of course I had a rival, Stephen Gobel, a boy about three years my senior the "bully" of the school. He was terribly jealous, and sought in every way to revenge himself upon me for having won the childish affections of sweet little Mary.
That bareheaded mass of work people, youths of the University, women at the windows, school-boys on the pavement, could have known nothing positive about him except the fame of his fidelity to the one guiding emotion in their hearts. I had nothing but that knowledge myself; and this great silent demonstration seemed to me the most natural tribute in the world not to the man but to the Idea.
Here Carlo had the advantage of me, I anticipated the morrow. Strange and boisterous school-boys, tight-pantalooned ushers, with menacing canes, were, to my yet unsophisticated mind, anything but agreeable subjects for a reverie, and I felt proportionately doleful; I turned my thoughts on the past, and I was very miserable.
But, on the other hand, we can claim progress as compared with even the Greeks in some respects, though there is no evidence whatever that, so far as the individual is concerned, there is any natural, inherent, organic progress. But we know more. Our school-boys know more than Aristotle. We stand upon Greek shoulders.
I think Ashton is right, after all, in saying that when he was at school he did as school-boys did, and when he came to London he did as the Londoners do. Far be it from me to be undutiful to those who care for me; but I think, as a young man, I do owe a duty to myself, different altogether from that which belonged to me as a schoolboy."
What are the spots on the sun? Have they anything to do with commercial crises? Should we spoil the Court if we spared the Black Rod? or the City if we spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial bearings be taxed? or a tradesman's holiday use of his cart? Should classical texts be Bowdlerised for school-boys? Is the confessional of value?
But I would not have you too sanguine about the result, if you sound the minds of the existing generation of public school-boys, on such topics as those I have mentioned. Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of affairs; for the time will come when Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of the stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nineteenth century.
He described the alarms, in which the inhabitants of our own islands were kept, lest similar scenes should occur from the same cause. He ridiculed the petitions on the table. Itinerant clergymen, mendicant physicians, and others, had extorted signatures from the sick, the indigent, and the traveller. School-boys were invited to sign them, under the promise of a holiday.
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