He is
not prone to self-confidence or to indulgence in paradox. What he did
say was undeniable by any but those who trusted only to their ear, and
refused to correct the conclusions thus arrived at by the help of other
organs which God had given them--their fingers, for example, and their
toes; by means of which a critic of trained and competent scholarship
might with the utmost confidence count up as far as twenty, to the great
profit of all students who were willing to accept his guidance and be
bound by his decision on matters of art and poetry. Only the most
purblind could fail to observe, what only the most perverse could
hesitate to admit, that there was at first sight an obvious connection
between the poison-flower--"purple from love's wound"--squeezed by Oberon
into the eyes of the sleeping Titania and the poison rubbed by Vindice
upon the skull of the murdered Gloriana. No student of Ulrici's
invaluable work would think this a far-fetched reference. That eminent
critic had verified the meaning and detected the allusion underlying many
a passage of Shakespeare in which the connection of moral idea was more
difficult to establish than this.
Pages:
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315