The Central People of the World, by William Monypenny

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AND there is in truth, with many faults, a certain μεσότης* about the English character — in spite of their insularity, a certain Shakespearean breadth about the English people which has peculiarly fitted them for the part they have had to play in Europe in the past, and peculiarly fits them for its continuance under the different conditions of the future.

The very things that, up to a certain point, contributed to their insularity, the comparatively isolated course of English history, the national love of the via media* in politics and religion, the recoil from either of the rival fanaticisms* into which our continental neighbours have so often fallen — all these things, corrected by the cosmopolitanism which the growth of a vast Empire has brought with it, have helped to make the English people what they are, in a sense, to-day — the central people of the world.

by William Monypenny 1866-1912

From ‘The Imperial Ideal’ by William Flavelle Monypenny (1866-1912), ‘The Empire and the Century’ (1905), edited by Charles Sydney Goldman.

A Greek word, mesótis, meaning central position, middle ground.

A Latin phrase meaning middle way. Monypenny’s appeal to avoid extremes recalls William Pitt the Younger a century earlier: see The Temperate Zone.

In Monypenny’s own terms, ‘exaggerated nationalism’ and ‘exaggerated imperialism’. This essay appeared in 1905.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Questions for Critics

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