Interludesbeing Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses
CONTENTS

Love while it charms, shines round and ruins oft The trifles that it gilds,

or

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The love that trifles, gilds, and ruins oft While round the charms it shines.

All which are as sensable as the fust passidge.”

Dryden added coarseness to strength in his remarks when he wrote of one of Settle’s plays:—“To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet—

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‘To flattering lightning our feigned smiles conform, Which, backed with thunder, do but gild a storm.’

p. 17Conform a smile to lightning, make a smile imitate lightning; lightning sure is a threatening thing. And this lightning must gild a storm; and gild a storm by being backed by thunder. So that here is gilding by conforming, smiling lightning, backing and thundering. I am mistaken if nonsense is not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.” Dryden wrote in a fit of rage and spite, and it is not necessary to be vulgar in order to be strong; but it is really a good thing to expose in plain language the meandering nonsense which, unless detected, is apt to impose upon careless readers, and so to encourage writers in their bad habits.

p. 17

A young friend of mine imagined that he could make his fame as a painter. Holding one of his pictures before his father, and his father saying it was roughly and carelessly done, he said, “No, but, father, look; it looks better if I hold it further off.” “Yes, Charlie, the further you hold it off the better it looks.” That was severe, but strong and just. The young man had no real genius for painting, and his father knew it.

It must be remembered that criticism cannot be strong unless it be the real opinion of the writer. If the critic is hampered by endeavouring to make his own views square with those of the writer, or the publisher, or the public, he cannot 
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