UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
the offender. This person, whose abuse of Mr. Carlyle he justly describes as matchless "in its platitudinous obliquity," was cited by the name of one Buchanan—
ὄστις ποτ῾ ἒστὶν, εἰ τόδ῾ αὐ
τψ φίλον κεκλημένψ—
but whether by his right name or another, who shall say? for the god of song himself had not more names or addresses. Now yachting among the Scottish (not English) Hebrides; now wrestling with fleshly sin (like his countryman Holy Willie) in "a great city of civilization;" now absorbed in studious emulation of the Persæ of Æschylus or the "enormously fine" work of "the tremendous creature" Dante;[1] now descending from the familiar heights of men whose praise he knows so well how to sing, for the not less noble purpose of crushing a school of poetic sensualists whose works are "wearing to the brain;" now "walking down the streets" and watching "harlots stare from the shop-windows," while "in the broad day a dozen hands offer him indecent prints;" now "beguiling many an hour, when snug at anchor
- ↑ Lest it should seem impossible that these and the like could be the actual expressions of any articulate creature, I have invariably in such a context marked as quotations only the exact words of this unutterable author, either as I find them cited by others or as they fall under my own eye in glancing among his essays. More trouble than this I am not disposed to take with him.
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