I will not here reproduce it. I will only say that anything more
acute, delicate, and discriminating, and, I must add, more entirely
valueless and pedantic, I do not think I ever heard. It must have
required immense and complicated knowledge. He was tracing the
development of a certain kind of dramatic lyric, and what surprised me
was that he supplied the subtle intellectual connection, the missing
links, so to speak, of which there is no earthly record. Let me give a
single instance. He was accounting for a rather sudden change of thought
in a well-known poet, and he showed that it had been brought about by
his making the acquaintance of a certain friend who had introduced him
to a new range of subjects, and by his study of certain books. These
facts are unrecorded in his published biography, but the analysis of the
lecturer, done in a few pointed sentences, not only carried conviction
to the mind, but just, so to speak, laid the truth bare. And yet it was
all to me incredibly sterile and arid. Not the slightest interest was
taken in the emotional or psychological side; it was all purely and
exactly scientific.
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