It is not merely
that it is deficient in warmth, and depth, and breadth; that
it is always discussing persons instead of principles, and
cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas and its want of
feeling in superficial raillery; it is not merely that it has
neither imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling,
nor knowledge to recommend it; but it appears to me, even as
regards manner and expression, inferior in refinement and
phraseology; in short, trivial, uninteresting, stupid, really
vulgar.
It seemed to Egremont that, from the day he met these persons
in the Abbey ruins, the horizon of his experience had
insensibly expanded; more than that, there were streaks of
light breaking in the distance, which already gave a new
aspect to much that was known, and which perhaps was
ultimately destined to reveal much that was now utterly
obscure. He could not resist the conviction that from the
time in question, his sympathies had become more lively and
more extended; that a masculine impulse had been given to his
mind; that he was inclined to view public questions in a tone
very different to that in which he had surveyed them a few
weeks back, when on the hustings of his borough.
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