You
will, finally, have the standard that has been lost, and the losing of
which makes the confusion of a book like _Georgian Poetry_ possible,
restored to you. You will remember three forgotten things--that poetry
is rooted in emotion, and that it grows by the mastery of emotion, and
that its significance finally depends upon the quality and
comprehensiveness of the emotion. You will recognise that the tricks of
the trade have never been and never will be discovered by which ability
can conjure emptiness into meaning.
It seems hardly worth while to return to _Wheels_. Once the argument has
been pitched on the plane of 'Strange Meeting,' the rest of the
contents of the book become irrelevant. But for the sake of symmetry we
will characterise the corporate flavour of the opposition as false
sophistication. There are the same contemporary reminiscences. Compare
Mr Osbert Sitwell's _English Gothic_ with Mr T.S. Eliot's _Sweeney_; and
you will detect a simple mind persuading itself that it has to deal with
the emotions of a complex one.
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