Note 12 — ESSAY XIII ON THE CHARACTER OF FOX

There is an admirable, judicious, and truly useful remark in the preface to Spenser (not by Dr. Johnson, for he left Spenser out of his poets, but by one Upton), that the question was not whether a better poem might not have been written on a different plan, but whether Spenser would have written a better one on a different plan. I wish to apply this to Fox’s ungainly manner. I do not mean to say, that his manner was the best possible (for that would be to say that he was the greatest man conceivable), but that it was the best for him.