The gods are come among us in the likeness of men.
An honest Iliad of English woes. Who is he that can trust
himself in the fray? Only such as cannot be familiarized, but
nearest seen and touched is not seen and touched, but remains
inviolate, inaccessible, because a higher interest, the politics
of a higher sphere, bring him here and environ him, as the
Ambassador carries his country with him. Love protects him from
profanation. What a book this in its relation to English
privileged estates! How shall Queen Victoria read this? how the
Primate and Bishops of England? how the Lords? how the Colleges?
how the rich? and how the poor? Here is a book as full of
treason as an egg is full of meat, and every lord and lordship
and high form and ceremony of English conservatism tossed like a
football into the air, and kept in the air with merciless
rebounds and kicks, and yet not a word in the book is punishable
by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal, and yet these
dire jokes, these cunning thrusts,--this flaming sword of
cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon and
shows to the eyes of the Universe every wound it inflicts.
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