MATTHIESSEN'S BOOK

Professor Matthiessen's book on T. S. Eliot deserves great praise. It is wet,--as opposed to dry; general,--as opposed to particular; currently interesting,--as opposed to deadly dull.

At the end of the nineteenth century, American and English scholars imported into their lands the thorough, minute, and exhaustive methods of investigation which had gained so much fame, and accomplished such wonderful results, in Germany. The tradition still survives, and still enlarges, by small steps, the accumulated knowledge of the world. Nothing can be said against the method: it has brought scientific, historical, and literary knowledge where it is today.

But there is the other side, the side with which the Elizabethans dealt, the spirit exemplified in him who would "take all nature to be his province." We must certainly know the Morphology of Shoe-laces between 1421 and 1423; scholars are perfectly correct in spending years of research on Shelley's use of the word "tig"; the world must have extrapulation, interpolation, annotation, paraphrasion, and prolocution. But also let's have big ideas; great generalities; tentative conclusions for next generations to worry about.

Specialistic scholars may know enough to know the impossibility of final, dogmatic truth on large issues, but surely they are better equipped to make tentative generalities than professional popularizers.

Mr. Matthiessen deserves the highest praise for his daring in putting out an interesting, non-pompous, non-pretensions, non-academic work on a current, controversial issue.