His Views and Principles
And yet, mark you, the works of this writer are not merely on sale, but they are on sale in cheap editions, and for two shillings and eightpence or some such sum you can buy more disgusting language than a magistrate in a low neighbourhood has to listen to in a month. And not merely is this book on sale at a cheap rate; it is actually made a text-book, it is propounded for the study of young men and girls, who are presently examined on their knowledge of one of the grossest and vilest writers that our country ever produced. Again, I suppose the plea is that perfection in the presentation makes the nature of the thing presented of little consequence; Chaucer, I suppose, was a "stylist" and an "artist," and all the rest of it; and again I must express my wonder that critics who would indignantly reject this plea in the case of a modern writer are ready to welcome it with applause in the case of a ruffian who has been dead for five hundred years.
I could mention many other instances of this extraordinary indulgence extended
165
