opportunity of a similar enjoyment in my own case. They may be
assured that none of the essays have suffered any substantial
alteration, even where, for instance in the case of the incidental and
(I am now persuaded) quite inadequate estimate of Chaucer in 'The
Nostalgia of Mr Masefield,' my view has since completely changed. Here
and there I have recast expressions which, though not sufficiently
conveying my meaning, had been passed in the haste of journalistic
production. But I have nowhere tried to adjust earlier to later points
of view. I am aware that these points of view are often difficult to
reconcile; that, for instance, 'aesthetic' in the essay on Tchehov has a
much narrower meaning than it bears in 'The Function of Criticism'; that
the essay on 'The Religion of Rousseau' is criticism of a kind which I
deprecate as insufficient in the essay, 'The Cry in the Wilderness,'
because it lacks that reference to life as a whole which I have come to
regard as essential to criticism; and that in this latter essay I use
the word 'moral' (for instance in the phrase 'The values of literature
are in the last resort moral') in a sense which is never exactly
defined. The key to most of these discrepancies will, I hope, be found
in the introductory essay on 'The Function of Criticism.'

_May_, 1920.

_Contents_

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 1

THE RELIGION OF ROUSSEAU 15

THE POETRY OF EDWARD THOMAS 29

MR YEATS'S SWAN SONG 39

THE WISDOM OF ANATOLE FRANCE 46

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS 52

THE PROBLEM OF KEATS 62

THOUGHTS ON TCHEHOV 76

AMERICAN POETRY 91

RONSARD 99

SAMUEL BUTLER 107

THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY 121

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ENGLISH POETRY 139

THE NOSTALGIA OF MR MASEFIELD 150

THE LOST LEGIONS 157

THE CRY IN THE WILDERNESS 167

POETRY AND CRITICISM 176

COLERIDGE'S CRITICISM 184

SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM 194

_The Function of Criticism_

It is curious and interesting to find our younger men of letters
actively concerned with the present condition of literary criticism.
This is a novel