THE essays which make up this little book are a reprint of three radio lectures delivered by Mr. Eliot in England. On the printed page they reveal the fundamental limitations of the type, although the specific flavor of the lecture is happily absent. The radio, even more than the public platform, is obviously a difficult medium for anything more than the conventional 'appreciative' discourse on poetry, and these essays can best be taken as an exceptionally graceful and discriminating specimen of that character. They bring little new matter to the contemporary 'rehabilitation' of Dryden's reputation, though they may possibly give wider currency to that phenomenon.

Mr. Eliot is here chiefly concerned with the sanity and breadth of Dryden's genius, and the influence of those qualities of the poet on English poetry from his day to our own. In the first essay of the book he says: "It was Dryden who for the first time, and as far as we are concerned, for all time, established a normal English speech, a speech valid for both verse and prose, and imposing its laws which greater poetry than Dryden's might violate, but which no poetry since has overthrown." This statement covers both of Mr. Eliot's main points, and what he says in the rest of the book illustrates, but does not add to it. The occasional obiter dicta on other poets, by way of contrast and comparison, and on poetry in general, are particularly felicitous, and rather more interesting than the central text. In style the essays have the precision and moderation characteristic of Mr. Eliot's prose, though now and then, (as in the statement that to Dryden "as much as to any individual, we owe our civilization,") the latter quality is less evident. Certainly, readers wishing to study the current estimate of Dryden will find the present volume inadequate without reference to Mr. Eliot's earlier studies, reprinted in "Selected Essays."