: "An acute young critic, who saw some of the
proofs, has asked me, with a hint of irony, whether Evelyn and Boswell
were Puritans or Poets. Any reader who has a conscience about the matter
must omit these essays." There you have the flavour of the man! It is
expressed further in the short preface of _Poets and Puritans_:--

"Wandering among books and enjoying them, I find in a certain sense that,
the more I enjoy them, the harder becomes the task of criticism, the less
sure one's faith in critical canons, and the fewer the canons themselves.
Of one thing, though, I grow more and more sure--that the real business of
the critic is to find out what is right with a great work of art--book,
song, statue, or picture--not what is wrong. Plenty of things may be
wrong, but it is what is right that really counts. If the critic's work is
to be worth while, it is the great element in the thing that he has to
seek and to find--to learn what it is that makes it live and gives it its
appeal, so that, as Montaigne said about Plutarch, men 'cannot do without'
it; why it is that in a world, where everything that can be 'scrapped' is
'scrapped,' is thrown aside and forgotten, this thing, this book or
picture, refuses to be ignored, but captures and charms men generations
after its maker has passed away.

"With such a quest a man must not be in a hurry, and he does best to
linger in company with the great men whose work he wishes to understand,
and to postpone criticism to intimacy. This book comes in the end to be a
record of personal acquaintances and of enjoyment. But one is never done
with knowing the greatest men or the greatest works of art--they carry you
on and on, and at the last you feel you are only beginning. That is my
experience. I would not say that I know these men, of whom I have written,
thoroughly--a man of sense would hardly say that, but I can say that I
have enjoyed my work, and that, whatever other people may find it, to me
it has been a delight and an illumination."

Another welcome book is E. V. Lucas's _Giving and Receiving_, a new volume
of essays. Since the appearance of _Roving East and Roving West_, Mr.
Lucas has been looking back at America from London with its fogs and
(yes!) its sunshine. The audience for his new book will include not only
those readers he has had for such volumes in the past but all those
personal friends that he made in a visit that took him from California to
the Battery.

CHAP