From Oscar Wilde's *The Critic as Artist* (1891). Select the word that fits the blank. "The English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a ______ is talking to it."

Wilde's joke turns on the gap between the public's preferred speakers and the genuinely interesting ones. *Feels perfectly at its ease* signals that the public is *not challenged* — i.e. the speaker is mediocre, not great. "Mediocrity" (a person of average ability, named pejoratively) is the precise word and fits Wilde's satirical edge. - "Genius" would make the audience uncomfortable, the opposite of *perfectly at its ease*. - "Statesman" and "saint" don't match the satirical register.