The Sacred Wood

Matthew Arnold, says Eliot, was not so much engaged in establishing a criticism as in striking at the uncritical; he was less a critic than an advocate and champion of criticism. These statements about Arnold are only partly true, but they are helpful. They are equally helpful, while again only partly true, if applied to Eliot himself. For Eliot is not only a critic of literature but also, as the subtitle of this volume suggests, a critic of criticism. In the first group of essays in THE SACRED WOOD this fact is made particularly clear. Eliot does not really tell us, in "The Perfect Critic," precisely what the perfect critic is. We gather that Arthur Symons, the successor, in his impressionism, to Pater and Swinburne, is less than perfect because what is not realized in Mr. Symons' verse can be found in his critical prose. The functions of the poet and the functions of the critic should not be confused.