Abstract
Walter Scott confessed that he always gave a story a cocked hat and a sword before sending it out on its travels, he was only saying with a flourish what that sober observer Aristotle had already noted as a constant tendency in human nature and in art. May there not sometimes be a little discrepancy between truth and beauty? Here, as usual, we should distinguish the politics from the science of art. No doubt it is good for most poets to feel that beauty and truth are one. and it is certainly prudent for their supporters to say so. On the other hand, anyone who cares to examine a variety of good poems and good stories with an open mind may well decide to take Keats with a grain of salt. One of my reasons for thinking the neo-classical critics salubrious is that, when all their follies have evaporated, there remains in their writings a considerable salty sediment.
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