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

Lecture I: Introduction

My purpose in these lectures is to arrive if possible at a systematic description of the common characteristics of the poetry of the Seventeenth Century in England commonly known as metaphysical, and further to seek for a definition of the nature of metaphysical poetry in general. It suits my purpose if the subject has, as I believe it has, a certain actuality and contemporary bearing. We have seen in the present century and increasingly within the last few years, an awakening of interest in this seventeenth-century poetry. However this arose, it undoubtedly contains besides pure literary appreciation, a consciousness or a belief that this poetry and this age have some peculiar affinity with our own poetry and our own age, a belief that our own mentality and feelings are better expressed by the seventeenth century than by the nineteenth or even the eighteenth. Donne is more frequently used as a critical measure than ever before. ^4† Contemporary poets are by their admirers likened to Donne or to Crashaw; some of them no doubt study these writers deliberately and elect to receive their influence; there are not wanting voices to declare that the present age is a metaphysical age.

This actuality of the subject does not merely make it fashionable; it is a subject upon which it is vital to have clear and distinct ideas. If the likeness exists, then it is valuable to understand the poetry of the seventeenth century, in order that we may understand that of our own time and understand ourselves.

If the likeness is only fancied, then it is worth the trouble to clear up the misconception, for the same reason. And if as is antecedently probable, the likeness exists in certain particulars along with utter dissimilarity in other particulars, then it will still more usefully clear up our notions about the seventeenth century and our own, if we can arrive at a proper analysis. It may reveal to us tendencies and attitudes in ourselves and our age of which we were conscious and which we must make up our minds either to forward or oppose. But in any case we should be able to find good reasons for our likes and dislikes in this age or any other.

And here it is necessary for me to point out, both in guidance towards the method to be adopted and in common modesty, that these lectures will not continue or develop the work of scholarship. I shall make use, with due sense of obligation, of the work of scholars, such as Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Grierson, who have done so much to make the material available and to make possible a proper understanding of it. ⁵ But my point of view is not that of scholarship, but that of literary criticism, and particularly that of one type of literary criticism. My attitude is that of a craftsman who has attempted for eighteen years to make English verses, studying the work of dead artisans who have made better verses. ⁶ The interest of a craftsman is centred in the present and the immediate future: he studies the literature of the past in order to learn how he should write in the present and the immediate future; and no matter how profound and disinterested his studies, they will always so to speak come out at the finger tips, and find their completion in the action of the chisel, the brush or the typewriter.

What I have just said is really a reservation: for the difference between the two kinds of pure literary criticism is more evident in the defects and limitations of individual critics than it is in theory. You can distinguish but you cannot dissect; the end of criticism is both practical and theoretic. The speculative critic refines and intellectualises our enjoyment, heightens, not destroys, the keenness of our immediate and irreflective apprehension; establishes standards which create a demand for the highest form of art, and so affects production. And the artisan critic, whose aim is production and novelty, production...