Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/169

 not to be wondered at, if to the Free Churchman the word "classic" implies foul and deliberate nastiness. And yet, the very men who are most prompt in correcting any tendency of this kind in the work of to-day, are with the next breath ready to applaud the filth of some scoundrelly heathen, to smack their lips over some new edition of his plays or poems and to congratulate the editor on his notes—notes elucidating matter of which a Hottentot would be ashamed.

The case is much the same with writers who were at all events professing Christians. Take the case of Chaucer. Here is a man much of whose poetry is deliberately and brutally obscene; and not merely obscene in thought, idea, conception, but obscene in words. Not only are the images he presents to us of a profoundly disgusting and immoral character, but the words which he employs are such that if I uttered them in the public street I should with no long interval make my appearance in the nearest police station on the charge of using filthy and obscene language.