Note 96 — Chapter III · THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS.

One celebrated person, much associated with it in some ways, and referred to in passing above, will not appear here. Horace Walpole did, for such a carpet knight, real service in the general movement; but he was a literary critic pour rire only. His admiration of Mme. de Sévigné is not really much more to his credit than his sapient dictum (to Bentley, Feb. 23, 1755) that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is “forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of an Italian opera-book.” “Notre Dame des Rochers” talked of subjects that interested him in a manner which he could understand: Shakespeare was neither “Gothic” nor modern. So he liked the one and despised the other—uncritically in both cases.