There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows
it with his usual picturesque candour. In a very interesting poem,
he says that--

"If England was what England seems"

--that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he believes)
she is--that is, powerful and practical--

"How quick we'd chuck 'er! But she ain't!"

He admits, that is, that his devotion is the result of a criticism,
and this is quite enough to put it in another category altogether from
the patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa.
In speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he has
some difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language.
The frame of mind which he really describes with beauty and
nobility is the frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seen
men and cities.

"For to admire and for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide."

He is a perfect master of that light melancholy with which a man
looks back on having been the citizen of many communities,
of that light melancholy with which a man looks back on having been
the lover of many women. He is the philanderer of the nations.
But a man may have learnt much about women in flirtations,
and still be ignorant of first love; a man may have known as many
lands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of patriotism.