But this is the kind of thing that is very easy to say, and carries no especial weight when said. The "of course" adds, indeed, a faint flavor of unconscious humor to the enviable complacency of the whole, and there is always a certain satisfaction to a generous soul in the sight of a fellow-mortal so thoroughly enjoying the altitude to which he believes he has risen.
"Let us sit on the thrones
In a purple sublimity,
And grind down men's bones
To a pale unanimity,"
sings Mrs. Browning in one of her less luminous moments; and Señor Valdés and his friends respond with alacrity, "We will!" Unhappily, however, "the greater part of those who write literary criticism," while perhaps no more vulgar than their neighbors, are not generous enough nor humorous enough to appreciate the delicate irony of the situation. They rush forward to protest with energetic ill temper, and the air is dark with warfare. Alas for those who succeed, as Montaigne observed, in giving to their harmless opinions a fatal air of importance! Alas for those who
