hope shrivels to nothing the moment we compare their little
failures with the enormous imbecilities of Byron or Shakespeare.

For a hearty laugh it is necessary to have touched the heart. I do not
know why touching the heart should always be connected only with the
idea of touching it to compassion or a sense of distress. The heart can
be touched to joy and triumph; the heart can be touched to amusement.
But all our comedians are tragic comedians. These later fashionable
writers are so pessimistic in bone and marrow that they never seem able
to imagine the heart having any concern with mirth. When they speak of
the heart, they always mean the pangs and disappointments of the
emotional life. When they say that a man's heart is in the right place,
they mean, apparently, that it is in his boots. Our ethical societies
understand fellowship, but they do not understand good fellowship.
Similarly, our wits understand talk, but not what Dr. Johnson called a
good talk. In order to have, like Dr. Johnson, a good talk, it is
emphatically necessary to be, like Dr. Johnson, a good man--to have
friendship and honour and an abysmal tenderness. Above all, it is
necessary to be openly and indecently humane, to confess with fulness
all the primary pities and fears of Adam. Johnson was a clear-headed
humorous man, and therefore he did not mind talking seriously about
religion. Johnson was a brave man, one of the bravest that ever
walked, and therefore he did not mind avowing to any one his consuming
fear of death.

The idea that there is something English in the repression of one's
feelings is one of those ideas which no Englishman ever heard of until
England began to be governed exclusively by Scotchmen, Americans, and
Jews. At the best, the idea is a generalization from the Duke of
Wellington--who was an Irishman. At the worst, it is a part of that
silly Teutonism which knows as little about England as it does about
anthropology, but which is always talking about Vikings. As a matter of
fact, the Vikings did not repress their feelings in the least. They
cried like babies and kissed each other like girls; in short, they
acted in that respect like Achilles and all strong heroes the children
of the gods. And though the English nationality has probably not much
more to do with the Vikings than the French nationality or the Irish
nationality, the English have certainly been the children of the
Vikings in the matter of tears and kis