John Masefield was a copious writer, and one of the most uneven whom our time can show. His official position as Poet Laureate stimulated him to produce, conscientiously and dutifully, a number of morceaux, the poetic equivalent of journalism, works of which the chief interest was the occasion that evoked them. (p. 5)

The more closely one comes to consider any aspect of Masefield's work, the more deeply does one realize that the man is, essentially and all the time, a poet. Even at their flattest and most dutiful, the worst of the occasional pieces have style and technical polish. They are well groomed. (p. 6)

Love and knowledge of the English countryside were innate. The sea and seafaring folk had been stamped upon the impressionable years of his adolescence. He had learned to fend for himself, and to observe people who worked hard for their living by earning his own amongst them: and, at the right time, the right reading had come his way in a book store, and the future Laureate had drunk of a pure English spring of inspiration, in a country which isolated him, and so increased its power. Strongest of all, his youth gave him a life-long and passionate sympathy with the under-dog, the unprivileged, the victim, the man or woman or child (or animal) who is ''ard done by'. (p. 7)

[Masefield's] masterpiece, Reynard the Fox, [is] the finest English narrative poem of the century, and one of the finest in our language. Here was what the poet had been born to achieve. Here was a subject and a setting which gave him full scope for all his powers. Here was a conflict, inevitable, rising from the very nature of things, with a deferred happy ending which satisfied both sides alike, the weary hunted fox escaping the hunters whose urge to destroy him was sublimated in admiration for the gallant dance he led them. In this poem every characteristic, every mannerism is subdued to a single aim. The inspiration flames throughout. (p. 21)

Reynard the Fox is a magical poem, the more magical because the poet's eyes are all the time fixed upon the earth and upon its creatures. Masefield's note of mysticism has never been more strongly and deeply sounded than in this extroverted poem of a typical English activity in a typically English countryside. (p. 25)

It will come as no surprise to the reader that Masefield has written magnificently for children. His peculiar blend of zest and gravity, of relish and intense concentration, together with his love of the technicalities of any craft, make an ideal equipment for a children's writer. The Midnight Folk, and its sequel, The Box of Delights, or, When the Wolves were Running, are among the most sure-footed and robust books for children ever written. Above all their other qualities, they have magic. (pp. 29-30)

The score, then, for John Masefield, his contribution to the life and literature of his time, is one supreme long narrative poem, wholly English, which no one but he could have written: two or three other long poems, original in matter and manner, which brought violent gusts of energy to the polite, faintly countrified air of poetry in their day: a handful of short pieces which have passed into current thought: a just, spare, and impassioned commentary upon England's greatest writer: two chronicles of high achievement which match their theme: and other books, poems and plays lit with flashes of intense but intermittent light. He has never written meanly, coldly, or carelessly. He has sided always with the weak against the strong. The right things have moved him, whether to anger or joy. Sensitive, gentle, and brave, he has found his mainspring in love of life and compassion for all that live it. (pp. 34-5)