As Matthew Arnold would have said, `What a set!'
My eye roves, for relief, to those shelves where the later annals are.
I take down a tome at random. Rome in the fifteenth century:
civilisation never was more brilliant than there and then, I imagine;
and yet--no, I replace that tome. I saw enough in it to remind me that
the Borgias selected and laid down rare poisons in their cellars with
as much thought as they gave to their vintage wines. Extraordinary!--
but the Romans do not seem to have thought so. An invitation to dine
at the Palazzo Borghese was accounted the highest social honour. I am
aware that in recent books of Italian history there has been a
tendency to whiten the Borgias' characters. But I myself hold to the
old romantic black way of looking at the Borgias. I maintain that
though you would often in the fifteenth century have heard the
snobbish Roman say, in a would-be off-hand tone `I am dining with the
Borgias to-night,' no Roman ever was able to say `I dined last night
with the Borgias.'
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the
supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be. Hence the
marked coolness of Scotsmen towards Shakespeare, hence the untiring
efforts of that proud and sensitive race to set up Burns in his stead.
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