Now that's something I can get on board with!

Formby - I think that you mean that we tend choose to concentrate on the best of the past, not that 'it survives' outside our apprehensions. That must be right and, given that we cannot change the best or the worst, that says something positive about our aspirations. This selectivity becomes problematic if we go on to imagine ourselves back in some other time, shorn of its own ills, or choose to ignore the fact that, as Brummell was bowing in the bay window at White's, some poor beggar was dying in an alleyway ten yards away, or eight year old children were sweeping the chimneys. This aside, I see no evil in retrospection, even if, as Spode tells us ''the future lies ahead!''

I am never very convinced by Wilde's witticisms. Much of his writing exhibits cloying sentimentality, of a mawkish kind, and the man who could never cease to laugh at the death scene of Dickens' Little Nell, churned out tales such as the Nightingale and the Rose. Moreover, what emotional depth can we discern in his abandonment of Florence and his sons (to an indigent fate), to run off with Douglas?

NJS

Last edited by NJS (2013-03-19 19:24:41)

This is the wrong forum for philological debate, but I think you will find that the second meaning came after WWI

'Ere ya go guv'nah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTknLD9eWw

PLUS - AT A CINEMA NEAR YOU NOW -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqy6RBj6u6A

Last edited by Reckless Reggie (2013-03-21 05:58:05)