Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/116

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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

site in Europe: upon these and other texts he harped—perhaps with a little too much repetition—in the hope of bringing to us some sense of our defects. I must confess that, as a good Philistine, I often felt, and hope I profited by the feeling, that he had pierced me to the quick, and I submitted to his castigations as I have had to submit to the probings of a dentist—I knew they were for my good. And I often wished, I must also confess, that I too had a little sweetness and light that I might be able to say such nasty things of my enemies. We who were young radicals in the days when Arminius von Thunder-Ten Tronckh was writing to The Pall Mall Gazette, tried to retort by calling him a mere dandy, a kid-gloved Oxford coxcomb, who was thinking that revolutions could be made with rosewater. I can see now that we did not do justice to the real seriousness of his purpose. You do not, we said sometimes, propose any practical measure. He replied fairly enough that it was not his business, nor the business of philosophers and poets generally, to mix in actual politics and draft Acts of Parliament. They had to modify ideas. He might have added that in his own sphere, he had made very practical criticisms upon our educational