It is the applause of a
nation, the approbation of connoisseurs, the heart-felt gratitude of
idealists if you win; and if you fail, a contemptuous pity for gifts
wasted and misapplied. But one of the reasons why we are so
unintellectual, so conventional, so commonplace a nation is because we
do not care for ideas, we do not admire originality, we do not want to
be made to think and feel; what we admire is success and
respectability; and if a poet can so far force himself upon the
attention of timid idealists, who worship beauty in secret, as to sell
large editions of his works and make a good income, then we reward him
in our clumsy way with glory and worship. It is horrible to reflect
that if Shelley had succeeded to his father's baronetcy he would
probably have had at once an increased circulation. If Keats had been a
peer like Byron, he would have been loaded with vapid commendation. We
still cling pathetically in our seats of education to the study of
Greek, but whenever the Greek spirit appears, that insatiable appetite
for impressions of beauty, that intense desire for mental activity, we
think it rather shocking and disreputable. We are at heart commercial
Puritans all the time; we loathe experiments and originality and
independence; we think that God rewards respectability, because we
believe that material rewards--wealth, comfort, position--are the only
things worth having.
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