The Scholar and Critic

Summary

It is thought desirable that this volume should comprise some notice of Sir Richard Jebb as a writer and critic, some attempt to appreciate his specialty as a scholar. This I have been invited to supply; and though I feel that the task is, in its own nature, and apart from personal competence, not merely difficult but truly impossible, I comply without hesitation, in the confidence that every reader, in proportion to his own capacity, will be quick to perceive the difficulty and to make the necessary allowance.

Sensibility, subtlety, delicacy, economy, reserve—these were, as I apprehend, the essential qualities of Jebb's mind, and the foundation of his skill in expression. His central achievement, the edition of Sophocles, owes its success, and the general recognition of its singular importance, to the happy application of these qualities, and a natural harmony between the expositor and the poet. Fineness of stroke, the dislike of crudity, violence, and emphasis, an ever-present perception that what is most worth saying cannot—such is language—be said, but must, if it is to come with true force, be hinted and suggested, all these are principles common to the dramatist and the annotator. We have Sophocles illuminated by Addison.