sense they are truly
representative and complementary each to the other; they are a fair
sample of the goodness and badness of the literary epoch in which we
live; they are still more remarkable as an index of the complete
confusion of aesthetic values that prevails to-day.

The corporate flavour of the coalition is a false simplicity. Of the
nineteen poets who compose it there are certain individuals whom we
except absolutely from this condemnation, Mr de la Mare, Mr Davies, and
Mr Lawrence; there are others who are more or less exempt from it, Mr
Abercrombie, Mr Sassoon, Mrs Shove, and Mr Nichols; and among the rest
there are varying degrees of saturation. This false simplicity can be
quite subtle. It is compounded of worship of trees and birds and
contemporary poets in about equal proportions; it is sicklied over at
times with a quite perceptible varnish of modernity, and at other times
with what looks to be technical skill, but generally proves to be a
fairly clumsy reminiscence of somebody else's technical skill. The
negative qualities of this _simplesse_ are, however, the most obvious;
the poems imbued with it are devoid of any emotional significance
whatever. If they have an idea it leaves you with the queer feeling that
it is not an idea at all, that it has been defaced, worn smooth by the
rippling of innumerable minds. Then, spread in a luminous haze over
these compounded elements, is a fundamental right-mindedness; you feel,
somehow, that they might have been very wicked, and yet they are very
good. There is nothing disturbing about them; _ils peuvent etre mis dans
toutes les mains_; they are kind, generous, even noble. They sympathise
with animate and inanimate nature. They have shining foreheads with big
bumps of benevolence, like Flora Casby's father, and one inclines to
believe that their eyes must be frequently filmed with an honest tear,
if only because their vision is blurred. They are fond of lists of names
which never suggest things; they are sparing of similes. If they use
them they are careful to see they are not too definite, for a definite
simile makes havoc of their constructions, by applying to them a certain
test of reality.

But it is impossible to be serious about them. The more stupid of them
supply the matter for a good laugh; the more clever the stuff of a more
recondite amazement. What _is_ one to do when Mr Monro apostrophises the
force of Gravity in such words as these?--

'By lea