Nothing will be gained by beating about the bush. To my astonishment, I found [D. H. Lawrence: Novelist] both difficult to read and unsatisfactory in several fundamental respects. At its best, Mr. Leavis's study of Lawrence is as good as, or better than, his essays in The Great Tradition or in The Common Pursuit. But one of the factors that account for its excellence, the author's strong emotional ties to his subject, tends to make him see virtues that are not there, and to overlook flaws that should have been discerned with the aid of the critical tools he employs. (p. 123)

We cannot trace, however, all the defects of Mr. Leavis's book to his reverence for Lawrence. We must go to his critical method, if we are to gain an adequate understanding of them. (p. 127)

What is astonishing about Mr. Leavis's critical theory is that, however sound it may be, it is anything but novel. It is also clear that his guiding preoccupation is moral. He is interested in discovering whether art ministers to life directly, or whether it does so indirectly, as a means of exploring imaginatively the consequences of actions. When we ask how, on Mr. Leavis's view, the artist achieves the presentment of life or reality, he gives us this answer: By observing faithfully and by recording truthfully what he observes. But beyond this, Mr. Leavis does not go. He does not show interest in the exploration of executive techniques and devices whose discovery is the major contribution of contemporary criticism. Thus, we find only one or two fleeting and inadequate references to an important device employed by Lawrence to express the substance of his art—the use of the constitutive symbol, the symbol that cannot be exhausted by paraphrase, because its "meaning" does not exist external to it and independent of it. Mr. Leavis notices some of these "symbols" and realizes clearly that what they symbolize cannot be apprehended independently of them. He is, for this reason, averse to calling them "symbols." With his verbal scruples one cannot but sympathize. Using the term, which is about as polysemic as any in the language of criticism, in the way stipulated by scientific semiosis, he realizes that these devices of Lawrence work "from profounder levels and in more complex ways." But he does not say anything else about these levels or the way in which they work. And as a result, he overlooks the important role that these constitutive symbols play in Lawrence's art. This is not intended as adverse criticism of the quality of his work. His method, like any method, let me reiterate, involves inevitable limitations. It is merely stated "to place" him, as he would put it, in relation to the work of other critics of his day, and to help define the range of his purview. What does constitute a criticism, and in my opinion a serious one, is the observation that our critic leaves us in the dark as to the means employed by Lawrence to achieve his moral end while remaining an artist. I am not demanding, of course, a theoretical discussion of the relation of art to morality—we know he eschews such inquiries. But he could have given us an answer in concrete terms. The point of the criticism is that he bypasses this difficult problem altogether. And as a result, he fails adequately to distinguish those stories and novels of Lawrence which are defective because they are infested with propagandistic intentions, from those that are excellent because they are, if the adjective be allowed, "pure" art, or, at least, more or less "pure" art. (pp. 129-30)

Commenting on one of Lawrence's short stories, our critic tells us that the artist was "preoccupied … with defining the nature of a true moral sense—one that shall minister to life." This is a representative quotation. And the defect to which I would call attention shows clearly in it. Carrion ministers to life—the life of the maggots that feed on it. Genocide ministered to life—the life of the Nazi sadists who carried it out. Mr. Leavis cannot, and does not, mean that the moral sense ministers to unqualified life, even if that were what Lawrence himself meant. The moral sense is that which ministers to the good life. But in order to convince his readers that Lawrence had a valid conception of the good life, Mr. Leavis had to do more than paraphrase the novels and stories, and assert his belief that the values that Lawrence espoused are better than those he rejected…. [Lawrence] may have been right and our society may be as wrong as he thought it was. But it is no more self evident that an established society, because it is established, is wrong, than that it is right. (p. 134)

But let us assume that Lawrence's values are unquestionably superior to those on which our society is grounded. We still have to ask, What is the relation between the moral insights, the wisdom, the urgently needed sense of life Lawrence offers us and the specific social and individual exigencies of our actual life? One would expect that a critic who is convinced of the wisdom of his subject, would seek to arrive at the uttermost lucidity and precision on this important point. Mr. Leavis disappoints our expectation. (p. 135)