GLAZIERS’ HOUSES
It hath never had aught to say; but, then, how affectedly
it hath said it! .. .
Will not the late Vew Quarterly take note of this?
O these barbers, with their prattle, and their false ex-
pedients—and scarce even a safety razor among them!
For let each one who worships George Bernard Shaw,
while ignorant of that magnificent foundation of literature and
philosophy—the Cubical Stone of the Wise, on which a
greater than Auguste Rodin hath erected the indomitable
figure of Le Penseur—take these remarks individually to
himself, and—oh! Thinker, think again. Let not posterity
consider of this statue that its summit is no Overman, but a
gibbering ape! Not filth, not sorrow, not laughter of the
mocker is this universe; but laughter of a young god, a holy
and beautiful god, a god of love and light.
And thou, since thou hast the ear of the British ass at thy
lips, sing to it those starry songs. It can but bray... .
But why, as hitherto, shouldst thou bray also? Or if bray
thou must, let us have the virile and portentous bray of the
Ass of Apuleius, not (as hitherto) the plaintive bray of the
proverbial ass who hesitated so long between the two thistles
that he starved to death. I warn thee, ass! We who are gods
have laughed with thee these many years; beware lest in the
end we laugh at thee with the laughter of a mandrake torn up,
whereat thou shouldst fall dead.
A. QUILLER, JR.
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