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● do well：成绩很好。make names：扬名，露头角。excelling：出人头地。他们干律师、医生、牧师等（所谓professions）行业，到殖民地去做官，或者在本国做公务员（civil servants），成绩都很好，但是他们在创造性的艺术方面，却很少有人能有杰出的成绩。
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● They write very well：训练严格，故写作技巧很好；但思想可能窒塞，想象力不够活泼。eager to learn：求知欲旺盛。informed：学识丰富。less…more：美国学生对于学问（what）所知不多，但是兴趣较浓。
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● twinkling：闪光。
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“It strikes me that our writers don’t know enough.”
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“It is true that most great writers did know quite a lot. But it is possible to know too much. What is wanted is an immense feeling for things. And the danger in old civilizations is that the teaching may be too good. It damps students down. They know too much about what has been done, they write well, but without freshness. It is so fatally easy for a good period in art to die in scholasticism and pedantry, for the life to go out of it. Oxford has taught the classics for centuries, and for centuries Cambridge virtually refused to teach literature and taught mathematics, and yet twice as many poets came out of Cambridge as out of Oxford.”
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● our writers：美国作家。这一段又是Price发问。
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● did know：过去式，did用以加重语气。过去大作家学识的确是丰富的。
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● to know too much：若从充实学识着手，可能中了书毒，对于艺术创作反有妨害。
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● an immense feeling for things：学识并不重要，重要的是对于万事万物，有一种极大的“体会的能力”。
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● old civilizations：civilizations可以解作“国家”。在文明古国，教书先生过分道地，这是有危险的。
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● damps：使潮湿；挫折学生的锐气，打消学生的热诚。
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● what has been done：前人的作品。
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● scholasticism：（中世纪的）烦琐哲学。对于枝节问题，不惮辞费地讨论不休。pedantry：卖弄学问，掉书袋子。这两种现象，都是“遗神取貌，买椟还珠”，有害于艺术创作。一个艺术上有成就的时代，假如发生了这种现象，它的生命就算完结了。
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● fatally easy：非常容易，因此也是非常之不幸。本句结构仿照下列形式：It is easy for (someone) to do (something)。本句前后两节：前节是for a period to die，后节是for the life to go out of it，末一个it代表period。
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● virtually：事实上（虽不一定如此，也相差不远）。Cambridge：剑桥大学教育不以文学为主，反而诗人辈出。剑桥出身的大诗人有Spenser，Milton，Wordsworth，Coleridge，Tennyson等；人数比牛津出身的多一倍（twice as many）。
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“How about the possibility of one or two great artists exhausting an epoch or an art-form? The Renaissance takes a drop after Michelangelo, and grand opera since Wagner has been a ‘Tristan, Junior’.”
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“That does happen. Such figures come at the end of an epoch. The danger is when the great themes have been superlatively well done, and the later workers come to secondary themes or refinements or niceties, and art or thought gets down off into shallows. That is fatally easy. I mean such themes as a mother’s love for her child, something so universal that to express it sounds trite, and yet the medieval sculptors and Renaissance painters could express it with unbelievable beauty: but it is no good trying to imitate them.”
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● exhausting：用尽，汲干。一两个大艺术家可以把一个时代（epoch）的才气吸干；或者使用某一种艺术形式（art-form），达到尽美的境地，使后人难以企及。这种艺术形式就算给“用绝”了。
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● Michelangelo（1475—1564）：意大利画家、雕刻家、文学家、科学家。他是文艺复兴时代的大师，他死以后，文艺复兴稍呈衰状（takes a drop）。
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● grand opera：纯正歌剧。Wagner以后，纯正歌剧即少伟大作品，只有轻松歌剧（light opera）点缀门面。“Tristan, Junior”照字面上讲应该是“Tristan之子”，出典不详。Wagner的名著为Tristan und Isolde，“Tristan之子”应该比不上Tristan的。
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● figures：人物。
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● great themes：艺术上重要的题目（如母爱，下文有举例）。superlatively well：好得无以复加。done：（艺术）制作。later workers：以后的艺术工作者，自忖比不上过去的大师，只好挑次要的题目来发挥。refinements or niceties：这两个字都解作“精致”，纤巧而不雄壮，注重小节而忽略精神。（中国诗词的没落，所走的似乎也是这个路子。）
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● gets down off into shallows：驶入浅水，不复有海阔天空的雄风矣。
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● something：同位语，就是“母爱”。universal：人人皆知，四海皆有的。如母爱之类的题目，再要用来作为艺术题材，未免使人觉得（sounds）是陈腐（trite）了。
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● medieval sculptors：中世纪的雕刻家。他们以及文艺复兴时代画家大致喜欢用“圣母和圣婴”作为题材。
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