Art and Science 



sibly from the threat of an action for breach 

 of promise, then there is not a syllable in 

 the poem with which he crowns his crime 

 that is not alive with meaning. On any 

 other supposition to the general reader it is 

 unintelligible. 



We cannot be too guarded in the inter- 

 pretations we put upon the words of great 

 poets. Take the young lady who never loved 

 the dear gazelle and I don't believe she did ; 

 we are apt to think that Moore intended us 

 to see in this creation of his fancy a sweet, 

 amiable, but most unfortunate young woman, 

 whereas all he has told us about her points 

 to an exactly opposite conclusion. In reality, 

 he wished us to see a young lady who had 

 been an habitual complainer from her earliest 

 childhood; whose plants had always died as 

 soon as she bought them, while those belong- 

 ing to her neighbours had flourished. The 

 inference is obvious, nor can we reasonably 

 doubt that Moore intended us to draw it ; if 

 her plants were the very first to fade away, 

 she was evidently the very first to neglect or 

 otherwise maltreat them. She did not give 



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