The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 2: The Perfect Critic, 1919-1926

The Clark Lectures. Lectures on the Metaphysical Poetry of the Seventeenth Century with Special Reference to Donne, Crashaw and Cowley

Madonna, lo fine del mio amore fu già il saluto di questa donna, forse de cui voi intendete; ed in quello dimorava la beatitudine, ch’e il fine di tutti li miei desiri.

La Vita Nuova ¹ I want someone to treat me rough. Give me a cabman.                          Popular Song ²

It is the intention of the author to rewrite these lectures as a book. Beyond the obvious alterations – the conversational style and the constant repetitions to be removed – the whole argument is to be reformed; assertions must be proved; much detail of fact and authority must be added. The divers parts must be made more coherent; I am aware that in the present form my fundamental ideas remain quite obscure. In particular, the whole of my case turns upon my interpretation of the Vita Nuova, which is only hinted at in Lecture III, and my interpretation of the childhood of Dante. This must be developed very fully.

The completed book on The School of Donnewill be very much longer than these lectures, and will include detailed examination of the work of other poets of the epoch who have here been only casually mentioned. It is intended as one volume of a trilogy under the general title of “The Disintegration of the Intellect”: the other two volumes will deal with Elizabethan Drama, its technical development, its versification, and its intellectual background of general ideas; and with The Sons of Ben– the development of humanism, its relation to Anglican thought, and the emergence of Hobbes and Hyde. The three together will constitute a criticism of the English Renaissance.