Vulgar words in Ireland and the Home Rule Movement (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,034 ~ ~ ~
It seems to me unworthy of a gentleman in Sir Horace's position, and with his acknowledged good intentions to adopt an attitude which can only be compared to that which Pope satirised in the lines:-- "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer, Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,468 ~ ~ ~
In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case, since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the fact that the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,633 ~ ~ ~
From the impression made by a few wits, English people have jumped to the conclusion that as a people we are specially blessed with a sense of humour, a curious _non sequitur_ which the restraint, consciously or unconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make more apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors, to whom "mere Irish" was a term of opprobrium.