them--almost (shall I say?) like Wordsworth's Kitten with those other
falling leaves:--

That almost I could repine
That your transports are not mine.

But meanwhile certain writers in the newspapers are assuming that by this
word 'miracle' I meant to suggest to you a something like plenary
inspiration at once supernatural and so authoritative that it were
sacrilege now to alter their text by one jot or tittle.

Believe me, I intended nothing of the sort: for that, in my plain
opinion, would be to make a fetish of the book. One of these days I hope
to discuss with you what inspiration is: with what accuracy--with what
meaning, if any--we can say of a poet that he is inspired; questions
which have puzzled many wise men from Plato downwards.

But certainly I never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the
forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark
nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of
Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my
comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or
at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line--'I would he had
blotted a thousand' says Ben Jonson: and Ben Jonson was right.
Shakespeare could have blotted out two or three thousand lines: he was
great enough to afford it. Somewhere Matthew Arnold supposes us as
challenging Shakespeare over this and that weak or bombastic passage, and
Shakespeare answering with his tolerant smile, that no doubt we were
right, but after all, 'Did it greatly matter?'