Lord Beaconsfield Sent Lothair To Oxford; It Is With Great Pleasure
That I See He Did Not Send Endymion.
My friend Jones called my
attention to this, and we noted that the growth observable
throughout Lord Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end.
He
was one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would have been
always growing: this is what makes his later novels so much better
than those of Thackeray or Dickens. There was something of the
child about him to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger,
but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can? It is the
last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a
fair amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if Lord
Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, as
Jones pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars a
year or two later. We feel satisfied, therefore, that Endymion's
exclusion from a university was carefully considered, and are glad.
I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among the
North Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants
to learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever the
substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a
Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he
will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German
institutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a
finer people than they are now, will not pass muster with those who
know them.
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