ÒNearly
all critics are prone to imagine that they know a
great many facts relevant to a book which
in reality that donÕt know. The
author inevitably
perceives their ignorance because he (often
he alone) knows the real factsÉ
Surely he is
as well placed for guessing about me as any
scholar is for guessing about the dead.
Yet he
seldom guesses right. Hence I
cannot resist the
conviction that similar guesses about the dead
seem plausible only because the dead are not
there to refute themÉÓ On
Stories, 132-33