Page:Books and men.djvu/131

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THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT.
121

then silent altogether. "Soon he ceased to praise; he only wept." Yet Paul and Virginia has been pronounced morbid, strained, unreal, unworthy even of the tears that childhood drops upon its pages. But would Mr. Millais or Sir Frederick Leighton sit weeping over the delightful manuscripts of Henry Shorthouse or Mr. Louis Stevenson? Did the last flicker of genuine emotional enthusiasm die out with George Borrow, who lived at least a century too late for his own convenience? When a respectable, gray-haired, middle-aged Englishman takes an innocent delight in standing bare-headed in the rain, reciting execrable Welsh verses on every spot where a Welsh bard might, but probably does not, lie buried, it is small wonder that the "coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon"—we quote the writer's own words—should find the spectacle more amusing than sublime. But then what supreme satisfaction Mr. Borrow derived from his own rhapsodies, what conscious superiority over the careless crowd who found life all too short to study the beauties of Iolo Goch or Gwilym ab Ieuan! There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as