What! You pride yourself on
your beautiful edition of Casaubon's translation of _Marcus Aurelius_,
and you savour the cadences of the famous:
This day I shall have to do with an idle, curious man, with an
unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious
man. All these ill qualities have happened unto him, through
ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I
that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only
is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only
is truly odious and shameful: who know, moreover, that this
transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same
blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason and of
the same divine particle--how can I be hurt?...
And with these cadences in your ears you go and quarrel with a cabman!
You would be ashamed of your literary self to be caught in ignorance
of Whitman, who wrote:
Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of
things that from any fruition of success, no matter what,
shall come forth something to make a greater struggle
necessary.
And yet, having achieved a motor-car, you lose your temper when it
breaks down half-way up a hill!
You know your Wordsworth, who has been trying to teach you about:
The Upholder of the tranquil soul
That tolerates the indignities of Time
And, from the centre of Eternity
All finite motions over-ruling, lives
In glory immutable.
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