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, 'æsthetic' 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