But they are not nearly so hypocritical as they are uneducated and unintelligent, rebellious to the humanising influence of art and literature.

The ordinary Englishman would much prefer to be called an athlete than a poet.

The Puritan Commonwealth Parliament ordered the pictures of Charles I.to be sold, but such of them as were indecent to be burnt; accordingly half a dozen Titians were solemnly burnt and the nucleus of a great national gallery destroyed.

One can see Sir A.de Rutzen solemnly assisting at this holocaust and devoutly deciding that all the masterpieces which showed temptingly a woman's beautiful breasts were "foul and filthy black spots" and must be burnt as harmful.

Or rather one can see that Sir A.de Rutzen has in two and a half centuries managed to get a little beyond this primitive Puritan standpoint: he might allow a pictorial masterpiece to-day to pass unburnt, but a written masterpiece is still to him anathema.
A part of this prejudice comes from the fact that the English have a special dislike for every form of sexual indulgence.