MR TOOBAD
That is, because the devil is come among us, and finds it for his
interest to destroy all our perceptions of the distinctions of right
and wrong.
MARIONETTA
I do not precisely enter into your meaning, Mr Flosky, and should be
glad if you would make it a little more plain to me.
MR FLOSKY
One or two examples will do it, Miss O'Carroll. If I were to take all
the mean and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and tack on to
them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme benevolence, I should
have a very decent hero for a modern novel; and should contribute my
quota to the fashionable method of administering a mass of vice, under
a thin and unnatural covering of virtue, like a spider wrapt in a
bit of gold leaf, and administered as a wholesome pill. On the same
principle, if a man knocks me down, and takes my purse and watch by
main force, I turn him to account, and set him forth in a tragedy as
a dashing young fellow, disinherited for his romantic generosity, and
full of a most amiable hatred of the world in general, and his own
country in particular, and of a most enlightened and chivalrous
affection for himself: then, with the addition of a wild girl to fall
in love with him, and a series of adventures in which they break all
the Ten Commandments in succession (always, you will observe, for some
sublime motive, which must be carefully analysed in its progress), I
have as amiable a pair of tragic characters as ever issued from that
new region of the belles lettres, which I have called the Morbid
Anatomy of Black Bile, and which is greatly to be admired and rejoiced
at, as affording a fine scope for the exhibition of mental power.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55