by Max Beerbohm

These foreign fellows always are especially to be commended. By the mere mention of their names you evoke in reader or hearer a vague sense of your superiority and his. Thank heaven, we are no longer insular. I don't say we have no native talent. We have heaps of it, pyramids of it, all around. But where, for the genuine thrill, would England be but for her good fortune in being able to draw on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anguished souls from the Continent.