The essence of priggishness is setting up to be better than one’s
neighbour. Better may mean more virtuous, more clever, more agreeable or
what not. The worst of it is that one cannot do anything outside eating
one’s dinner or taking a walk without setting up to know more than one’s
neighbours. It was this that made me say in _Life and Habit_ [close of
ch. ii.] that I was among the damned in that I wrote at all. So I am;
and I am often very sorry that I was never able to reach those more
saintly classes who do not set up as instructors of other people. But
one must take one’s lot.