Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/27

Two difficulties, in fact, are often confounded: the difficulty of knowing and the difficulty of analysing and formulating our knowledge. Language is too rough and equivocal an instrument to enable us to communicate to others the finer shades of difference which we can clearly recognise. Critics, I fancy, were it not for their characteristic modesty, might be induced by a skilful cross-examination to confess that their knowledge of Shakespeare is much more precise and distinct than they venture to claim. If I had the skill required for the most difficult form of literary art, I should try to surmount their diffidence by a Socratic dialogue. I should not endeavour to reveal new truths to them, but endeavour, like Socrates, to deliver them of the truths with which their judgments are already pregnant. Much as critics of the poetry differ, they show a tendency to converge; there are certain commonplaces, and at least as many negations, in which they would agree. As I do not profess to be an expert, I must limit myself to such generalities. What I would try to show is that what is accepted about the poetry really implies certain conclusions about the man. I must leave it to those who unite more thorough knowledge with more poetical insight to fill up