The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, "Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse.
There you have the fable of Walpole's life. He always in the end sank down into his box or clambered back to his mantelpiece. Other men might save the situation. As for him, he had to look after his squirrels and his friends.
This means no more than that he was not a statesman, but an artist. He was a connoisseur of great actions, not a practiser of them. At Strawberry Hill he could at least keep himself in sufficient health with the aid of iced water and by not wearing a hat when out-of-doors to compose the greatest works of art of their kind that have appeared in English. Had he written his letters for money we should have praised him as one of the busiest and most devoted of authors, and never have thought of blaming him for abstaining from statesmanship as he did from wine. Possibly he had the constitution for neither. His genius was a genius, not of Westminster, but of Strawberry Hill. It is in Strawberry Hill that one finally prefers to see him framed, an extraordinarily likeable, charming, and whimsical figure.
Back in Strawberry Hill, he is the Prince Charming among correspondents. One cannot love him as one loves Charles Lamb and men of a deeper and more imaginative tenderness. But how incomparable he is as an acquaintance! How exquisite a specimen—hand-painted—for the collector of the choice creatures of the human race!
THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH
By J. C. STOBART
THERE is no doubt whatever about the need for it. Search high or low in our social world, you will find it full of laments and dissatisfaction. In the Services Commanding Officers complain that their subalterns, even though they have been through the Classical course at Public Schools and Universities, cannot write a clear report. Headquarters themselves issue their orders and regulations in barbarous, unintelligible jargon. Government Departments, manned by Greatsmen, wrap themselves in phrases of pompous obscurity, and Cabinet Ministers couch their decisions or agreements in terms of such ambiguity as to leave nobody certain of their meaning. It would, however, be unjust to attribute bad English entirely to upper-class education, classical or modern. The business man in his "esteemed favours," though he may be more terse and polite, is not always able to convey what he intends. He lays the blame, when he fails to do so, upon the faulty education of his clerks and stenographers. The masses of the public too often show in practice that they simply cannot understand printed rules and directions. It is naturally too much to expect a universal diffusion of taste or elegance in the use of our language; but even when we feel the need of fine words to express deep feeling we choose for an obituary lines like these:
There's a lonely grave somewhere,
Where our dear and brave boy sleeps;
There's a little home in England,
Where mother and all of us weep.