Adams, too, was Bostonian, and the Bostonian's uncertainty of
attitude was as natural to him as to Lodge. Only Bostonians can
understand Bostonians and thoroughly sympathize with the
inconsequences of the Boston mind. His theory and practice were
also at variance. He professed in theory equal distrust of
English thought, and called it a huge rag-bag of bric-a-brac,
sometimes precious but never sure. For him, only the Greek, the
Italian or the French standards had claims to respect, and the
barbarism of Shakespeare was as flagrant as to Voltaire; but his
theory never affected his practice. He knew that his artistic
standard was the illusion of his own mind; that English disorder
approached nearer to truth, if truth existed, than French measure
or Italian line, or German logic; he read his Shakespeare as the
Evangel of conservative Christian anarchy, neither very
conservative nor very Christian, but stupendously anarchistic. He
loved the atrocities of English art and society, as he loved
Charles Dickens and Miss Austen, not because of their example,
but because of their humor. He made no scruple of defying
sequence and denying consistency -- but he was not a Senator.
Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they
are apt to be fatal to politicians. Adams had no reason to care
whether his standards were popular or not, and no one else cared
more than he; but Roosevelt and Lodge were playing a game in
which they were always liable to find the shifty sands of
American opinion yield suddenly under their feet.
Pages:
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618