FRANK KERMODE
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something else . What the profession of letters requires is a new ver–
sion of that blend of interests and assumptions that marked the
bookman. Of course I do not mean a revival of their prose, or of
their poses; their cranks and whims belong to their time and not
ours. But a coexistence of interests in past and present, though now
to be understood very differently, in the light of a new hermeneutic
which is subtle enough to know its own impermanence - that needs
reaffirming. And those who understand it will observe some family
resemblance between themselves and - not Arnold Bennett entire,
that would be absurd - but between themselves and some eager
lamplit figure, unpacking his century of classics, opening
theJuvenal,
and remembering-with felicitous inaccuracy-those lines from
Philaster.
