Maintaining critical distance when writing literary criticism is not a matter of principle with me; I can’t conceive of doing it another way. It seems from his preface that Alexander both personally admires and is daunted by Murray, but that what he was principally afraid of was Murray withdrawing the right to quote him. In his anxiety to please and his fear of not being allowed to publish, Alexander has produced a portrait that has this reader, for one, shivering with repudiation.
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