uracy--with what
meaning, if any--we can say of a poet that he is inspired; questions
which have puzzled many wise men from Plato downwards.

But certainly I never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the
forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark
nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of
Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my
comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or
at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line--'I would he had
blotted a thousand' says Ben Jonson: and Ben Jonson was right.
Shakespeare could have blotted out two or three thousand lines: he was
great enough to afford it. Somewhere Matthew Arnold supposes us as
challenging Shakespeare over this and that weak or bombastic passage, and
Shakespeare answering with his tolerant smile, that no doubt we were
right, but after all, 'Did it greatly matter?'

So we offer no real derogation to the forty-seven in asserting that here
and there they wrote nonsense. They could afford it. But we do stultify
criticism if, adoring the grand total of wisdom and beauty, we prostrate
ourselves indiscriminately before what is good and what is bad, what is
sublime sense and what is nonsense, and forbid any reviser to put forth a
hand to the ark.

The most of us Christians go to church on Christmas Day, and there we
listen to this from Isaiah, chapter ix, verses 1-7:--

Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation,
when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the
land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her
by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the
light shined.

Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they
joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men
rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his
shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and
garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with burning and fuel
of fire.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

The forty-seven keep