I want to choose the nourishment which suits _my_ body and _my_ soul." I can almost hear him say the words with his charming humorous smile and exquisite flash of deprecation, as if he were half inclined to make fun of his own statement.
It was not his views on art, however, which recommended him to the aristocratic set in London; but his contempt for social reform, or rather his utter indifference to it, and his English love of inequality.

The republicanism he flaunted in his early verses was not even skin deep; his political beliefs and prejudices were the prejudices of the English governing class and were all in favour of individual freedom, or anarchy under the protection of the policeman.
"The poor are poor creatures," was his real belief, "and must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water.

They are merely the virgin soil out of which men of genius and artists grow like flowers.

Their function is to give birth to genius and nourish it.

They have no other _raison d'etre_.