[962]. The immortality of critical error—the impossibility of quelling the Blatant Beast—to which we have alluded (ii. 554, note) is again illustrated here. One might have thought that Mr Arnold had sufficiently crushed and concluded this fallacy. It has been seen again—in places where it should not have been—in these last few years.
[963]. This very generous assumption comes, I feel sure, from the blending of Wordsworth (v. sup., on him) with Aristotle.
[964]. Mr Arnold never explicitly retracted this “pyramidal” exaggeration—it was not his way; but nearly the whole of his French Critic on Goethe is a transparent “hedge,” a scarcely ambiguous palinode. For the doctrine itself, see [note] at end of last chapter.
[965]. I think Mr Arnold, especially after italicising these words, should really have told us as a WHAT we are to think of the author of Shakespeare’s greatest expressions.
[967]. Those to the manner born or matriculated in it have generally been kind to him: but then he has given them rather considerable bribes.
[968]. He has been largely imitated in this, and I cannot help thinking that it is a pity. If a man is definitely and ostensibly “reviewing” another man’s work, he has a perfect right, subject to the laws of good manners, to discuss him quoad hoc. But illustrations of general discourses by dragging in living persons seem to be forbidden by those laws as they apply in the literary province.
[969]. This pearl of eighteenth century minor poetry occurs in the 7th (“The Wallflower”) of its author’s Fables of Flora (Chalmers, xvi. 447). I think Scott’s unequalled combination of memory and taste has used it somewhere as a motto.
[970]. Gryll Grange, chap. xiv. Cf. i. 381 note.
[971]. Vol. i. p. 380. I might, and perhaps should, have introduced an interesting expression of more moderate opinion from St Basil, the pupil of Libanius, and the fellow-student of Julian. But I am glad that I did not, because I can introduce it here with an reference to the interesting translation published with Plutarch’s How to Read Poetry (v. sup., [i. 140]), by Professor Paculford of the University of Washington (“Yale Studies,” No. xv.: New York, 1932). The Saint allows the study of the purer profane literature as a useful and ornamental introduction to higher things.