and lightly equipped modern Philistine's testament was. Others can do
that too! And many could do it better. And even they who could have
done it best, i.e. those thinkers who are more widely endowed than
Strauss, could still only have made nonsense of it.

I take it that you are now beginning to understand the value I set on
Strauss the Writer. You are beginning to realise that I regard him as
a mummer who would parade as an artless genius and classical writer.
When Lichtenberg said, "A simple manner of writing is to be
recommended, if only in view of the fact that no honest man trims and
twists his expressions," he was very far from wishing to imply that a
simple style is a proof of literary integrity. I, for my part, only
wish that Strauss the Writer had been more upright, for then he would
have written more becomingly and have been less famous. Or, if he
would be a mummer at all costs, how much more would he not have
pleased me if he had been a better mummer--one more able to ape the
guileless genius and classical author! For it yet remains to be said
that Strauss was not only an inferior actor but a very worthless
stylist as well.

XI.

Of course, the blame attaching to Strauss for being a bad writer is
greatly mitigated by the fact that it is extremely difficult in
Germany to become even a passable or moderately good writer, and that
it is more the exception than not, to be a really good one. In this
respect the natural soil is wanting, as are also artistic values and
the proper method of treating and cultivating oratory. This latter
accomplishment, as the various branches of it, i.e. drawing-room,
ecclesiastical and Parliamentary parlance, show, has not yet reached