late the giraffe on his
feathers, and the whale on the elegance of his legs, we find ourselves
confronted with that social element which we call flattery. The middle
and lower orders of London can sincerely, though not perhaps safely,
admire the health and grace of the English aristocracy. And this for
the very simple reason that the aristocrats are, upon the whole, more
healthy and graceful than the poor. But they cannot honestly admire the
wit of the aristocrats. And this for the simple reason that the
aristocrats are not more witty than the poor, but a very great deal
less so. A man does not hear, as in the smart novels, these gems of
verbal felicity dropped between diplomatists at dinner. Where he
really does hear them is between two omnibus conductors in a block in
Holborn. The witty peer whose impromptus fill the books of Mrs.
Craigie or Miss Fowler, would, as a matter of fact, be torn to shreds
in the art of conversation by the first boot-black he had the
misfortune to fall foul of. The poor are merely sentimental, and very
excusably sentimental, if they praise the gentleman for having a ready
hand and ready money. But they are strictly slaves and sycophants if
they praise him for having a ready tongue. For that they have far more
themselves.

The element of oligarchical sentiment in these novels, however, has, I
think, another and subtler aspect, an aspect more difficult to
understand and more worth understanding. The modern gentleman,
particularly the modern English gentleman, has become so central and
important in these books, and through them in the whole of our current
literature and our current mode of thought, that certain qualities of
his, whether original or recent, essential or accidental, have altered
the quality of our English comedy. In particular, that stoical ideal,
absurdly supposed to be the English ideal, has stiffened and chilled
us. It is not the English ideal; but it is to some extent the
aristocratic ideal; or it may be only the ideal of aristocracy in its
autumn or decay. The gentleman is a Stoic because he is a sort of
savage, because he is filled with a great elemental fear that some
stranger will speak to him. That is why a third-class carriage is a
community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits. But
this matter, which is difficult, I may be permitted to approach in a
more circuitous way.

The haunting element of ineffectualness which runs through so much of