FRANKNESS is an especial merit of Professor Matthiessen's book. Intimately acquainted with the man and his work, Professor Matthiessen makes no attempts to conceal the fact that he is attorney for the defence, and he rests his case boldly on the actual performance of Eliot as poet and as critic. He does not claim, like most advocates, to be in sole possession of the whole truth, so his tone is never arrogant or impatient; the only handicap with which his advocacy and enthusiasm have encumbered him is the tendency to deduce universal 'laws' of poetry from the practice of Eliot, but that obstacle has not seriously impaired or blunted his critical sense.

How acute Mr. Matthiessen's critical sense is appears in his insistence on the 'dramatic' nature of Eliot's poetry. This is a point of some importance; in fact, it is of capital importance in any consideration of Eliot. By calling most of Eliot's poetry 'dramatic' Mr. Matthiessen means that Eliot seldom speaks in his own person, even in poems which may seem to be lyrica. Thus Eliot is not Tiresias or Apeneck Sweeney or Mr. Prufrock, and the peculiar spiritual attributes of each are not necessarily Eliot's. The poems in which the persons cited appear are often called to witness by sociological critics of the Marxist persuasion as evidences of Eliot's state of mind under capitalism. Eliot's figures are characters of the contemporary scene, caught off their guard, as it were, and snapped in some characteristic stance. In that sense only is it proper for Marxist critics to refer to Eliot as the poet singing the dirge of the capitalist epoch.

Eliot's method, in general, is like Browning's, if we accept this thesis of Professor Matthiessen's. It is a methods particularly adapted to poets of learning and of information. Some readers have indeed hold this opinion for some time; it is encouraging to see it in print, but those readers will be sorry that this book was published or at any rate written before the publication of Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral", a dramatic poem in the full meaning of the term. That poem demonstrated, one may venture to suggest, the virtues and vices of Eliot's poetic method. His dramatic monologues--learned and concentrated and imbued with a strange rhythm--never reached a wide audience; they appealed to the widely read expert--the expert in the reading of poetry--in his study; they were not and are not popular poems. On the other hand, poetic names, whether they be tragedies, comedies, or historical plays, have only one legitimate excuse for being: they exist in order to be performed on the stage. Stage performance is too rapid to allow for works which 'communicate before they are understood'. Understanding is essential to communication.

Professor Matthiessen's exposition of difficult passages is always plausible, even if one may dissent from his opinion in specific places. He is perhaps over-generous to his friends for their in- genious interpretations. It is somewhat disconcerting to come so often to acknowledgement of indebtedness for conjectures. At the final tally, it must be admitted that into his book Professor Matthiessen has distilled the essence of all previous criticism of Eliot. Sometimes the distillation is effected by contradictions, of opponents, sometimes by amplifications of small hints in other writers, but always it is undertaken by a relentless and remorseless analyst, who is also a passionate advocate arguing as soberly as is humanly possible the importance of his experiment, which is in itself a bold undertaking, since few enterprises are so arduous and thankless as criticism of a contemporary