H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e2 0 6penned an indifferent or unremarkable line. It is idle to ask whether
someone could write like this yet be aware of how dreadful he was.
Like the less competent performers on TV talent shows, the fact
that he does not know how bad he is is part of his badness.
Yet a nagging question remains. Imagine some community,
perhaps in the far- flung future, in which the English language was
still in use, but its resonances and conventions, maybe because of
some momentous historical transformation, were very different
from the English of today. Perhaps phrases like ‘And can be seen
from miles away’ would not sound particularly lame; rhymes like
‘Tay’, ‘railway’, ‘day’ and ‘away’ would not appear absurdly repeti-
tive; and the flat literalism and rhythmical clumsiness of ‘With
your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array’ might
come through as rather charming. If Samuel Johnson could
complain about some of Shakespeare’s most inventive imagery, is it
entirely out of the question that one day McGonagall might be
hailed as a major poet?