Literary florets, poetic and prosaic, miscellaneously entwined

It has also been suggested, apparently in all earnestness, that the sea can sometimes look red because of certain types of algae. Another scholar, despairing of the possibility of painting the sea red, tried instead to turn wine blue and claimed that БЂњblue and violet reflects are visible in certain wines of southern regions, and especially in the vinegar from home-made wines.БЂ«There is no need to dwell on why all these theories hold neither wine nor water. But there was one other method for circumventing the difficulty, which was applied by many a self-respecting commentator and which does deserve some comment. This was to call upon that foolproof catchall of literary criticism: poetic license. One eminent classicist, for example, pooh-poohed Gladstone by claiming that БЂњif any man should say that the minstrel was deficient in the organ of colour because he designated the sea by this vague word, I would meet him by saying that the critic is deficient in the organ of poetry.БЂ«But when all is said and sung, the elegant conceit of the criticsБЂ™ animadversions does not bear up to GladstoneБЂ™s sophisticated literal-mindedness, for his surefooted analysis had all but eliminated the possibility that poetic license could be the explanation for the oddities in HomerБЂ™s color descriptions ...»