Surprised by Joy
Page 21
1 The iron in Malory, the tragedy of contrition, I did not yet at all perceive.
1 Not, of course, that I thought it a tutor’s business to make converts to his own philosophy. But I found I needed a position of my own as a basis from which to criticise my pupils’ essays.
2 i.e., Shakespeare could, in principle, make himself appear as Author within the play, and write a dialogue between Hamlet and himself. The ‘Shakespeare’ within the play would of course be at once Shakespeare and one of Shakespeare’s creatures. It would bear some analogy to Incarnation.
1 The only real good I got from keeping a diary was that it taught me a just appreciation of Boswell’s amazing genius. I tried very hard to reproduce conversations, in some of which very amusing and striking people had taken part. But none of these people came to life in the diary at all. Obviously something quite different from mere accurate reporting went to the presentation of Boswell’s Langton, Beauclerk, Wilkes, and the rest.
1 This punishment was for a mistake in a geometrical proof.
1 Here, and throughout this account, I sometimes use the ‘historic present’. Heaven forfend I should be taken to mean that Wyvern is the same today.