This piece of imbecility was virtually a "rider" on the trade-union-exemption rider, and was of course "playing politics" to catch support for the principal rider.
A Model of Divinatory Criticism
In our efforts to uphold the dignity of letters, of course we intend that each of our contributions shall be as nearly as possible a perfect example from its special field, and ordinarily it would ill become us to suggest the possibility of degrees of perfection. But our readers will, we trust, find justification for our calling special attention to the following model of divinatory criticism.
The fact that it has already passed the ordeal of the Authors' Club, though a trifling derogation from its novelty, is much weightier as a reason for presenting it for the careful consideration of our readers. [Ed.]
The subject is the proper interpretation of a familiar lyric poem, which runs, in the textus receptus, as follows:
Dr. Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain;
He stepped in a puddle up to his middle
And never went there again.
The question is, What does this poem mean? What does it mean, that is, in its intimate and ultimate essence? According to the conventional interpretation these lines are didactic. Their higher import—what we may call their spiritual center of gravity—is believed to reside in a pragmatic moral conveyed, or at least adumbrated, in the last line: "He never went there again." The idea is supposed to be—remember that I am now speaking of the conventional interpretation—that he never went there again because he had learned wisdom by experience—the annoying experience of the puddle. According to this view the dominant note of the poem is not lyrical feeling, but what literary critics are wont to call—usually with a shade of contempt—ethicism. It is supposed to be a sort of psalm of life—pitched to be sure in a minor key, but essentially didactic.