[84]. It is curious that three great critics of the three great literary countries of modern Europe, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, and Mr Arnold, should all have forgotten in their later years, the caution, “Be not critical overmuch.”
[85]. See, for instance, the art. on Hagedorn, xx. 108.
[86]. I most particularly, for instance, do not wish to seem of the mind of an American Professor who announces in a periodical as I revise this book that he believes he has “overthrown most of Lessing’s ideas” in the Laocoön, “shown that his statements about Homer are wrong, his psychology wrong, and his reasoning often fallacious.”
[87]. Lessing did not always keep so cool. The Briefe Antiquarischen Inhalts (vol. 13, ed. cit.) not unfrequently betray a rise of temperature, and at the last boil over in coarse and self-forgetful language.
[88]. Deutsche Litteraturdenkmale. Heilbronn, 1883. One cannot be too grateful for the admirable re-edition of this by Herr L. Geiger. Berlin, 1902.
[89]. Mr David Hannay, Introduction to Jacob Faithful. London, 1895.
[90]. Goethe, Conv. Eck., i. 125, says none.
[91]. As in his smartness (p. 12, ed. cit.) on the phrase (which he misattributes, but this is nothing), “Ihro Majestät Glanzen wie ein Karfunkel am Finger der Jetzigen Zeit.” “Peut-on,” asks this other Majesty with fine irony, “rien de plus mauvais? Pourquoi une escarboucle? Est-ce que le temps a un doigt? Quand on le représente, on le peint avec des ailes, parcequ’il s’envole sans cesse, avec un clepsydre parceque les heures le divisent, et on arme son bras d’un faulx pour désigner qu’il fauche ou détruit tout ce qui existe.” The question as to the carbuncle is, of course, an example of pure ignorance, as is the general objection to the consecrated phrase and figure of the “finger of time” and its ring. But “arms” generally have “fingers,” unless these are cut off; and how, Ihro Majestät, does Time work his scythe without them?
[92]. Quoted by Geiger, op. cit., p. xxvi.
[93]. “Tot verba, tot pondera.”—Ibid., p. 18.