OF

CRITICISM

BY

E. A. GREENING LAMBORN

HEAD MASTER OF THE EAST OXFORD SCHOOL

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1917

933 4226

ru

PREFACE

'I COULD wish that there were authors of this kind, who, besides the mechanical rules, which a man of very little taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very spirit and soul of fine writing and show us the several sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind upon the perusal of a noble work . . . which few of the critics besides Longinus have considered.'

We cannot complain that Addison's wish has not been amply fulfilled in the last century and in our own day by the critics both of England and France. Yet I believe it is still true that no one since Longinus has given us, point by point, in a small compass and in a simple style, a general introduction to the meaning and scope of criticism. There are numerous and admirable books on particular poets and poems and periods, but I do not know of any modern 'Poetics', a general study of poetic form, on the model of the treatise of Longinus 'On the Sublime', with illustrations from our own poets. Moreover, all the critical studies that I know are for the advanced student, they preach to the converted, to those who have already learned to love poetry. For a long time I have been looking for a simply-written introduction to the study of poetry such as might be put into the hands of young students to show them what to look for and to prevent them falling at the outset into the fatal error of reading poetry for the substance and not the

form of its matter: this is the error of the annotated editions which are the common substitute for the kind of book I mean, and not one student in a hundred survives their vicious influence. If such a book exists my excuse for the present essay is gone. I began it with no thought of publication, but simply with the idea of setting down, for the use of my staff and of the young teachers whose practice I supervise, some record of methods I had found useful in my own lessons, and some suggestions and conclusions drawn from my experience as a teacher and a student of literature. But I have been led to suppose that the notes may be helpful in other schools and training colleges; and I should like to cherish a hope that they might be the means of leading some, whom the schools have failed to persuade, to the study and appreciation of poetry.