I hate the parlour, and if I were to let
out according to my fancy I should use violent language. In that dull,
stupid place one learns to appraise the talk about sociality and
joviality at its correct value. I am afraid I must utter a heresy. I
have heard that George Eliot's chapter about the Raveloe Inn is
considered as equal to Shakespeare's work. Now I can only see in it the
imaginative writing of a clever woman who tried to dramatise a scene
without having any data to guide her. In all my life I never heard a
conversation resembling that of the farrier and the rest in the remotest
degree. In the first place, one element of public-house talk--the overt
or sly indecency--is left out. In an actual public-house parlour the man
who can bring in a totally new tale of a dirty nature is the hero of the
evening. Then the element of scandal is missing. When men of vulgar mind
meet together, you only need to wait a few minutes before you hear
someone's character pulled to pieces, and the scandal is usually of the
clumsiest sort.
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