One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
stand what does not resemble you. The French are in a state
of feverish patriotism. You refuse to treat them for a case of
fever. They are lopped of a limb: you tell them to be at rest!’
‘You know I am fond of them.’
‘And the Kelts, as they are called, can’t and won’t forgive
injuries; look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the Keltic Scot.
Have you heard them talk? It happened in the year 1400: it’s
alive to them as if it were yesterday. Old History is as dead to
the English as their first father. They beg for the privilege of
pulling the forelock to the bearers of the titles of the men who
took their lands from them and turn them to the uses of cattle.
The Saxon English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than
any people allowed to subsist ever received: you see it to this
day; the crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed
and denied, but they have it and betray the effects; and
it’s patent in their Journals, all over their literature. Where it’s
not seen, another blood’s at work. The Kelt won’t accept the
form of slavery. Let him be servile, supple, cunning, treacherous,
and to appearance time-serving, he will always remember
his day of manly independence and who robbed him: he is
the poetic animal of the races of modern men.’
‘You give him Pagan colours.’
‘Natural colours. He does not offer the other cheek or turn
his back to be kicked after a knock to the ground. Instead of
asking him to forgive, which he cannot do, you must teach
him to admire. A mercantile community guided by Political
Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its
Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. However, there ‘s the secret
of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy
or oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an
active spirit, not your negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible.
And his faults, short of ferocity, are amusing.’
‘But the fits of ferocity!’
‘They are inconscient, real fits. They come of a hot nerve.
He is manageable, sober too, when his mind is charged. As
to the French people, they are the most mixed of any European
nation; so they are packed with contrasts: they are full
of sentiment, they are sharply logical; free-thinkers, devotees;
affectionate, ferocious; frivolous, tenacious; the passion
of the season operating like sun or moon on these qualities;
and they can reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below your
level, they’re above it: a paradox is at home with them!’
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