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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and
insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to
make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a
slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they
see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism but an uproariously jolly
rag, although they are by no means without genuine literary ability, a
love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find
not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of
it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and
enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr Harris himself
notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his
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