Victorian Critical Theory - T. S. Eliot (essay date 1920)
T. S. Eliot (essay date 1920)
SOURCE: Eliot, T. S. “Imperfect Critics.” In The Sacred Wood, pp. 17-46. London: Methuen, 1920.
[In the following excerpt, Eliot discusses the critical theories of Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Wyndham, and Charles Whibley.]
SWINBURNE AS CRITIC
Three conclusions at least issue from the perusal of Swinburne's critical essays: Swinburne had mastered his material, was more inward with the Tudor-Stuart dramatists than any man of pure letters before or since; he is a more reliable guide to them than Hazlitt, Coleridge, or Lamb; and his perception of relative values is almost always correct. Against these merits we may oppose two objections: the style is the prose style of Swinburne, and the content is not, in an exact sense, criticism. The faults of style are, of course, personal; the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined sentences, are the index to the impatience...
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