And once betrayed me into common sense.
[Footnote: _Dunciad_.]

And it is answered by Burns' characterization of writers depending upon
dry reason alone:

A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in sticks and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak,
And syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint of Greek.[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.]

The feud was perhaps at its bitterest between the eighteenth century
classicists and such poets as Wordsworth [Footnote: See the _Prelude_.]
and Burns, but it is by no means stilled at present. Yeats [Footnote:
See _The Scholar_.] and Vachel Lindsay [Footnote: See _The Master of the
Dance_. The hero is a dunce in school.] have written poetry showing the
persistence of the quarrel. Though the acrimony of the disputants
varies, accordingly as the tone of the poet is predominantly thoughtful
or emotional, one does not find any poet of the last century who denies
the superiority of poetic intuition to scholarship. Thus Tennyson warns
the man of learning that he cannot hope to fathom the depths of the
poet's mind. [Footnote: See _The Poet's Mind_.] So Richard Gilder
maintains of the singer,

He was too wise
Either to fear, or follow, or despise
Whom men call science--for he knew full well
All she had told, or still might live to tell