·266
WILLIAM H. PRITCHARD
sonal," catalytic, for the very good reason that I am sure the per–
sonality is in that as much as
in
the other part of this double-headed
oddity, however thoroughly disguised, and is more apt to be a cor–
rupting influence in that arrangement than in the more usual one,
where the artist is identified with his beliefs.
If
there is to be an
"insincerity," I prefer it should occur in the opposite sense - namely
that "the man," the personality should exaggerate, a little artificially
perhaps, his beliefs . . . the man is thus "most himself" (even if a
little too much himself to be quite the perfect self, on occasion) ....
The firm good temper and good sense of this passage is attractive
for the way it lets us know that Mr. Wyndham Lewis is not quite
the perfect self, but very much himself, and that
there
finally is the
temperamental basis for rejecting Eliot's theory. Good temper, ex–
pressed through a colloquial ease that runs toward garrulity, unites
with psychological acuteness about motives and an ability to imagine
what other people are up to by reading between the lines they write
or say. These qualities become especially apparent when Lewis' critique
of Eliot is contrasted to a recent attack on the impersonal theory by
.F.
R.
Leavis, the critical insight of which is marred by its tone of
bitterly moralistic reproof.
4
Lewis' essay, while it makes essentially
the same point twenty-five years earlier, is notable throughout for its
vigorous wit, most of which is inseparable from the strength of the
point made. For example, he does not let pass without comment
Eliot's denigration of Matthew Arnold in
The Use of Poetry and The
Use of Criticism ;
but rather than content himself with high-toned
reproof, or suggestions that Arnold was a finer critic than Eliot, Lewis
simply notices that Eliot has coupled
1.
A. Richards with Arnold, both
men having had the temerity to hope that the world might be saved
by poetry. The technique of guilt by association is rapidly exposed,
not by heavy argument to prove that Arnold and Richards are treated
unfairly, but through an instant deflation of Eliot's austere finger–
wagging:
Mr. Eliot is accusing Mr. Richards of being like Arnold! Having
degraded Arnold into the position of an inferior critic, to his com–
plete satisfaction . .. it then occurs to him as an excellent idea
to send people he does not approve of to join Arnold - like
sending
to Coventry,
a little! Matthew Arnold becomes a sort of purgatory
to which unsatisfactory people are dispatched....
4 "T. S. Eliot's Stature as Critic,"
(Commentary,
November, 1958).
