“... he escaped, not to be seen again until a great whale appeared in Manly Cove. The creature, which may have entered the harbour to give birth, had upset a rowing boat, drowning several marines. A few of their comrades, fancying themselves as amateur whalers, set out for revenge and fatally wounded the creature. When its carcass washed up in the cove, it ...”

“... Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We’re no more real than money. This may seem to be spelling things out, an attack on crudeness and cruelty that is itself too crude; but that last sentence – ‘we’re no more real than money’ – is complex, and sometimes a blunt instrument is the right one. As Penelope says of ...”

“... is real, not assumed – in other words, it is felt, whereas Bly’s has an air of calculation. It may seem strange these days to commend a poet for ‘sincerity’, but at least it’s good to know that he means what he says. Silkin speaks as directly as he can about complex states of mind, in this resembling Lawrence and the best of the First World War ...”

“... about food’. To me this seems one of the poet’s most masterly touches. Achilles in his grief may live only for revenge, but ordinary life must go on, and the more realistic Odysseus must remind him that an army marches on its belly. Not all distinguished textual critics have been prone to this kind of over-logicality, but since it often goes with the ...”

“... much venom is directed for ‘accumulated dishonesty’. If it isn’t too clear a story, this may be due in part to the subject, perhaps even to constraints arising in real life; but mainly can only be due to the language, which all along withholds more than it reveals. T. S. Eliot maintained: ‘As with Dostoevski and George Chapman, one feels that the ...”

“... Many were even born here. Intermarriage with the natives is still forbidden, although that may soon change, but most speak a few words of English. Indeed, this distant province with its forgotten glories is beginning to exercise a fascination on its masters. Imagine an ape-man, a Quasimodo. He has picked up a delicate china figurine which has ...”

“... the varieties of nomenclaturism prominent among them. It words are typically names of things, they may bear a natural or an arbitrary relationship to these things that are prior to them. Exponents of the range of surrogational views are demolished one by one – with, alas, some tendency to the choosing of Aunt Sallies. Professor Scheffler’s book. Beyond the ...”

“... about here is the tactics of self-preservation in an obstinately unregenerated society ... It may be objected that Prometheus plans to retire from a regenerated world, but the point there is that Prometheus and Asia have no business in such a world, for they are immortals. Prometheus’ job is done ...’ Shelley’s remark is thus immediately located in ...”

“... very clever indeed: the conception itself is ingenious, the pastiche little short of brilliant. I may be underestimating ‘Immram’ by praising it in these terms; and if that is so, let me hasten to say that brilliance, a surface attribute, is not the most remarkable feature of this poet’s work. In its generally elusive, yet sometimes fearsomely direct ...”

“... tradition of Anglicanism’ is, and the phrase seems less ringingly positive than Dame Helen may have intended. Donne’s traditionalism does not fit into a pattern as easily as Hooker’s. Hooker’s major work was written in his role as servant and defender of the Establishment, while Donne’s role was always rather more obviously uncertain. Born a ...”

“... a decade of urban terrorism in Europe, “Funnies” are no longer odd men out. They may be said to have come in from the ...”

“... Only the prejudices, exacerbated by a galloping national inferiority complex, remained. In May 1979, Retribution put on its skirts and went abroad in the land. Thatcher saw herself as an economic Churchill to Macmillan’s Chamberlain. She knew that economics was not political appeasement but a branch of morality dedicated to visiting on the multitude ...”

“... one side of the vault above, and this opening is matched by other, painted ones through which we may glimpse heaven and towards which the saint turns in rapture. This much Lavin, like Wittkower and Hibbard before him, emphasises. But I think that Bernini was more specific. The saint’s raised hand and tilted head suggest that she is listening, and in fact ...”

“... is not the thing itself, as literary criticism often imagines ... but the set, of which this thing may be considered one representation, in comparison with other sets.’ So Dumézil compared the pantheons of Indo-European peoples, showing that each set of gods has a structure matching that of other such sets. It is only after identifying that structure that ...”