猫儿眼很漂亮，猫的鉴赏力大概也高——如我家的猫，喜欢爬在书堆修行，尤爱读《圣经》，几部皮质封面的Holy Bible都满是他勾画的痕迹。钱锺书先生在《猫》里引介了一位眼睛不那么漂亮的傅聚卿先生（据说影射朱光潜），“自小有斜睨的倾向”，“相信凭自己的面貌可以做批评家”。他读Pope骂Addison的名句，“激动得在图书馆阅览室里就象热锅上的蚂蚁。”

Alexander Pope骂人的名句，不知是哪一句；在他的Epistle To Dr Arbuthnot (Or, Prologue ToThe Satires)里中，倒能看到斜眼的“睨视”（leer）和“藐视”（sneer）：

View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,

And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And, withoutsneering, teach the rest to sneer;

书中还提到“批眼”（the critic eye）一节，可能是The Dunciad IV里的一段：

The critic eye, that microscope of wit,

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit bybit:

How parts relate to parts, or they towhole,

The body's harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasseshall see,

When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.

锺书君的文字似乎就是在运行微观的“批眼”，践行老蒲的damn with faint praise，《猫》算是一道课外作业，却几乎不能算小说——它的艺术没有那么成功，须加现实影子当作料，才能酿出麻辣的味道。（本文题目是Johnson博士说的read with the microscope of criticism。）