No doubt there is a noticeable difference between the poet and the people in every land and every race, but in England it is so staggering. The hair of the English poet is so very long, his eye so very frenzied, his voice so steeped in emotion, so buoyed by melody. Even his prose appeals to the heart rather than to the head. Thackeray weeps as he writes of good women; Scott blushes as he writes of bad. No one is cynical but the villains. The heroines are all pure as the best cocoa.
Then look at the check suits and the stony eyes of Mr. Cook's protégées. Do they understand what Tennyson has written for them? If not, why do they pay for it?
John Bull and John Milton; William Bull and William Shakespeare; Lord Bull and Lord Byron; Charles Bull and Charles Dickens; how are these couples related? By this religious, moral, sentimental stream; welling in one, hidden in another under ten tons of shyness and roast beef; a torrent here, a trickle there, sometimes almost dry in a dusty season. That is how.
Does Dick again recommend teetotalism as a cure for these speculations? Come with me to your rooms, my friend, and let us glance through your library.
I take up a volume of Shakespeare and find it contains the sonnets.
“Ah, Shakespeare's sonnets,” I say, with an air of patronage towards that eminent poet. “You know them?”
“Used to know 'em a little.” He is giving me another taste of that characteristic British stare. Evidently he is offended by my tone, and will fall an easy victim to my next move.
“They are much overrated,” I say, putting the book away.
“You should write to the Times about it,” he replies, sarcastically, and then adds, with conviction, “They are about the finest things in English.”
“Yet no Englishman reads them,” I remark, lightly.