[Dr. I. A. Richards] has retained the intellectual adventurousness of an earlier and larger epoch, while everyone around him was giving way to dwarfish specialism. The result is that he stands out as an heroic figure, ready to have a go at anything, and able to draw up the most diverse sources of knowledge for his equipment. No task is too great for him to undertake, from clearing up the theoretical basis of literary criticism to reducing tension between the nations. To read Richards is a recognised tonic for the critic who has lost his nerve; he has the knack of saying something large and exhilarating in words that have a scientific flavour, so that one feels only a visionary fool would dispute it; he enables the literary man to feel that he is on the side of the big battalions of science….

Dr. Richards was coming out with [pronouncements attesting to the value of poetry] at a time when the trampling of the arts by the sciences was very much fiercer than it is now. It is quite plain, looking back, that in the Twenties and early Thirties the scientist had a monopoly of intellectual chic, and the only people who could command any respect were those who adopted his methods; this is one of the reasons for the idiotic cult of 'research' in the humane studies (to establish the precise date on which Chaucer moved from one house to another was useful because equally minute discoveries in bacteriology or entomology had proved far-reaching), and also for the currency, in artistic circles, of the OK-word 'experimental.' If you could say a painting or a poem was 'experimental,' then it must be good, because experimenting was what scientists did. It is, in my opinion, Dr. Richards's great claim to immortality that he stood out, virtually alone, against this frightful demoralisation. He did it by picking up the same ammunition and firing it back. He proved scientifically that unscientific things, such as poetry, were the things 'about which civilised man cares most.' He also dispelled—but in this he was not quite single-handed—a lot of the aesthetic haze in which the would-be guardians of 'civilised values' had enshrouded their citadel. At a time when a great many people still held that the correct thing to do was to lose oneself in an 'O altitudo,' Richards told the young—and he told them in the nick of time—that the reasons for liking a work of art were like the reasons for anything else, and it was healthy to talk about them….

I have sung this paean about Dr. Richards to make up for saying that I am not exactly crazy about his latest book [Speculative Instruments]. Dr. Richards was never very interested in literary criticism, which is what I am interested in; he thought it more important to investigate people's reading habits—'communication' is the Ricardian key-word. He even said, in so many words, that the judgement of value did not concern him much: 'There is, it is true, a valuation side to criticism. When we have solved, completely, the communication problem, when we have got, perfectly, the experience, the mental condition relevant to the poem, we have still to judge it, still to decide upon its worth. But the latter question nearly always settles itself, or rather, our own inmost nature and the nature of the world in which we live decide it for us.' I have thought over those last words dozens of times, and always they baffle me. I just cannot see the reasoning. What I can see is that Richards has moved steadily farther away from any concern with literature: into basic English, into philosophising about education (in his eyes, the great panacea), and into more and more lunatic sounding schemes for improving 'communication.' The present book does, it is true, represent something of a swing back towards his old concern with literary theory; and in any case one has to read all Dr. Richards's books carefully, because at any moment he might say something that will revolutionise one's thinking, and it might be in the middle of an otherwise dull essay. (p. 559)