sure, Mr.
Mill[486] and others have shown that a law of bequest fixing the
maximum, whether of land or money, which any one individual may take by
bequest or inheritance, but in other respects leaving the testator quite
free, has none of the inconveniences of the French law, and is in every
way preferable. But evidently these are not questions of practical
politics. Just imagine Lord Hartington[487] going down to Glasgow, and
meeting his Scotch Liberals there, and saying to them: "You are ill at
ease, and you are calling for change, and very justly. But the cause of
your being ill at ease is not what you suppose. The cause of your being
ill at ease is the profound imperfectness of your social civilization.
Your social civilization is, indeed, such as I forbear to characterize.
But the remedy is not disestablishment. The remedy is social equality.
Let me direct your attention to a reform in the law of bequest and
entail." One can hardly speak of such a thing without laughing. No, the
matter is at present one for the thoughts of those who think. It is a
thing to be turned over in the minds of those who, on the one hand, have
the spirit of scientific inquirers, bent on seeing things as they really
are; and, on the other hand, the spirit of friends of the humane life,
lovers of perfection. To your thoughts I commit it. And perhaps, the
more you think of it, the more you will be persuaded that Menander[488]
showed his wisdom quite as much when he said _Choose equality_, as when
he assured us that _Evil communications corrupt good manners_.

NOTES

POETRY AND THE CLASSICS

PAGE 1

[1] ~Poetry and the Classics~. Published as Preface to _Poems_: 1853
(dated Fox How, Ambleside, October 1, 1853). It was reprinted in Irish
Essays, 1882.

[2] ~the poem~. _Empedocles on Etna_.

[3] ~the Sophists~. "A name given by the Greeks about the middle of the
fifth century B.C. to certain teachers of a superior grade who,
distinguishing themselves from philosophers on the one hand and from
artists and craftsmen on the other, claimed to prepare their pupils, not
for any particular study or profession, but for civic life."
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

PAGE 2

[4] _Poetics_, 4.

[5] _Theognis_, ll. 54-56.

PAGE 4

[6] ~"The poet," it is said~. In the _Spectator_ of April 2, 1853. The
words quoted were not used with reference to poems of mine.[Arnold.]

PAGE 5

[7] ~Dido~. See the _Iliad_, the _Oresteia_ (_Agamemno