Note 116 — Chapter I · THE ROMANTIC

In one of Lytton’s first volumes is an observation interesting as perhaps the germ from which the plan of The Coming Race was developed.

Vincent, the philosopher of the story, remarks. (Pelham, 57):

“There are few better satires on a civilized country than the observations of visitors less polished; while, on the contrary, the civilized traveller, in describing the manners of the American barbarians, instead of conveying ridicule upon the visited, points the sarcasm on the visitor; and Tacitus could not have thought of a finer or nobler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by his treatise on the German simplicity.”