The most frequently noted feature of Eliot's prose style is that it combines assertion and reticence to a remarkable degree. Particularly in essays from Eliot's great period as a critic (roughly 1918 to 1936), one is apt to encounter the largest statements about literature and sensibility, or apparently final judgment upon this or that figure; but the logic of the argument often remains elusive. The statement is treated as self-sufficient, or becomes part of another, larger issue…. (p. 93)

Although he has certain beliefs about the relationship between sensibility and language, Eliot does not, clearly, have a theory of literature in the sense that Frye or Lukács may be said to have one. Between the fundamental points of Eliot's 'classicism' there is much feeling about literature, relatively articulable but not susceptible of demonstration in reasoned argument…. Criticism was, for Eliot, a branch of rhetoric rather than of philosophy; it was natural for him to treat it as an art of persuasion rather than a science of 'proof'.

But there are other reasons for this attitude, which the Clark Lectures make clear. [The Clark Lectures on metaphysical poetry were delivered at Trinity College in 1926 and have not been published.] It is apparent from the historical myth of Eliot's criticism that rational argument is harder to conduct as words are treated more and more subjectively. As the background of shared belief disappears, as words come to be thought of as constructions rather than as references, the nature of argument undergoes fundamental and permanent changes. (p. 94)

[The] structure of an Eliot essay is not logical but psychological; it aims at inducing a certain temper of mind rather than persuading the reader on particular small points. And, because of its 'reticence' and non-rational structure, we are more likely to understand Eliot's critical prose if we read it as we would poetry, with attention to suggestion, nuance, and tone.

To a certain degree, of course, all criticism depends upon rhetoric and rhetorical strategy…. But in critics before Coleridge, there is at least an identifiable thread of sequential argument (which is all that is meant by 'proof' as a critical term), and it is this which becomes less and less evident in the continuing Romantic tradition…. It is with the writers of this tradition that Eliot has his most notable affinities; as a stylist, he is most often compared with Arnold, and however he may have deplored the element of 'emotional temperature' in the great Victorians, he employed devices similar to those of Ruskin, Arnold, and Newman. He did so quite consciously, and often in a humorous spirit.

There is considerable evidence, in fact, that Eliot thought of the whole business of criticism—journals, papers and lectures, disputes and reputations—as a sort of solemn game or insiders' joke. The pseudonyms with which he signed his early reviews ('Crites', 'T. S. Apteryx', 'Gus Krutzsch') suggest a lack of high seriousness…. (p. 96)

[We] have Eliot's own word that the element of 'illegitimate' persuasion in the essays is large. Writing to E. M. Forster in 1929, he put the matter bluntly…. Eliot acknowledges that there is an element of bluff in much of his prose, and suggests that he was aware of it from the beginning of his critical career. For critics hostile to Eliot, this is evidence enough that no one need pay attention to Eliot as a critic after all. But if we attempt to dispose of 'rhetoric' entirely there will be very little criticism left. The real importance of the rhetorical element here is that it constitutes another link between Eliot and the ongoing Romantic tradition: in how he speaks as well as in what he says, he shows his nineteenth-century heritage. In analysing Eliot's prose style, we simply extend the study of his art into another area. (p. 97)

Eliot was in fact an accomplished mimic as well as a parodist, and his sensitivity to conversational as well as written styles is apparent in The Waste Land. It is not surprising, therefore, that we encounter a great variety of 'voices' in the essays. That which is heard most often is simply fluent and assured; many of the essays open with a strong statement which the rest of the paper attempts to confirm…. (p. 100)

The value of this sort of opening is apparent. Its obvious self-confidence creates confidence in the reader, and disposes him favourably towards what follows; the directness of the statement also creates an impression of candour, and suggests that the critic has all his cards on the table. Sometimes Eliot maintains this positive tone throughout an essay—as he does in '"Rhetoric" and Poetic Drama'—but more frequently he varies it for interest's sake. (p. 101)

[It] is, finally, our awareness of Eliot as a reasonable and sensitive reader of literature which determines much of our response to his critical prose…. There is a large element of sheer panache in the essays: Eliot, like the original narrator of The Waste Land, 'do the police in different voices', and takes obvious pleasure in his virtuosity. The voice of the essays is protean. Whimsical and serious, precise and obscure, insouciant, arch, and admonitory by turns, it also strikes 'the occasional note of arrogance, of vehemence, of cocksureness or rudeness'. But in the best of Eliot's criticism, 'the cool outsider's gaze and the poised intellectual gaiety' which [Bernard] Bergonzi noted are always evident. (p. 108)

Within the atmosphere established by the tone or tones of an essay, Eliot employs a wide variety of forms of statement.

It is in part by what he takes for granted that we 'know' any critic, and some of Eliot's assumptions, at least, are straight-forwardly stated. After listing the qualifications of the perfect critic, for example, Eliot adds that 'we assume the gift of a superior sensibility', thereby introducing, quite casually, the most crucial elements of all—maturity of mind and sensitivity to the ways in which words are used: what is often called 'taste'. In a true critical system, taste has little or no place…. But Eliot, like other major critics of our century (Leavis and Richards, for example), does not have a system, and it would be a mistake to think of his central ideas, preoccupations or historic mythography as vehicles of judgment. The animating principle, the central assumption, is that of taste.

The point may seem too obvious to require stating, but we are inclined to overlook how deeply criticism is influenced by sensibility, and how seldom that influence is acknowledged in the form of critical statements. Eliot writes that 'Swinburne's judgment [of Elizabethan drama] is generally sound, his taste sensitive and discriminating.' In form, this is a statement of fact; in fact, it is in itself a judgment based on taste.

Many of Eliot's conclusions in the earlier essays become assumptions in later ones. These central ideas are so frequently and so lightly invoked that the reader who goes through much of the criticism is apt to be unaware of how much else depends upon them; like axioms in geometry, they are the essential elements for more complicated exercises. The importance of tradition, the necessity of clear images, the objectifying of point of view, the concern with the slight alteration from the expected which constitutes great poetry—these leitmotifs constitute such unity as the essays have.

They also serve to clarify Eliot's pronunciamentos, those single-sentence judgments with which the early criticism abounds. Many of these are extraordinary, and seem designed as affronts to the reader's sense of things; they are at the same time mysterious, for they appear without supporting argument. When we read of George Eliot, 'who could write Amos Barton and steadily degenerate', we are included to dismiss the remark as a misunderstanding of George Eliot's art, a sentence dashed off before the week's deadline. But similar remarks occur twice in the carefully edited Sacred Wood…. In the context of Eliot's criticism as a whole, [such] remarks are comprehensible. We know that Eliot requires clarity. He also values irony as an indication that the author can look at his characters' situation, or his own, from the outside; and irony is apt to be mistaken by the imperceptive for a lack of seriousness. (pp. 109-10)

As he approaches [the main] subject in many of the essays, Eliot suggests an idea which the reader can entertain … while the discussion is going on. By stating his conclusion at the beginning, Eliot appears to be straightforward, without palpable designs on the reader's mind; but at the same time he sets up the terms of discussion. Even if the reader does not agree that 'Seneca had as much to do with [the] merits and … progress [of Elizabethan tragedy] as with its faults and delays', he has been forced to think of Elizabethan tragedy in Senecan terms. If the central statement occurs late in the essay, it crystallizes Eliot's argument by providing a sudden persuasive focus to the discussion of the preceding pages:

It is, in fact, the word that gives [Swinburne] the thrill, not the object….

The theoretical essays also frequently revolve around a single point.

In these instances the rest of the essay either elaborates or builds to the central statement. But there are many statements in the essays which are not really susceptible of elaboration. These usually concern the texture of a poet's verse or the feel (there is no more precise word) of his work as a whole. Eliot's technique here is a direct appeal to the reader's experience of literature. (pp. 110-11)

What enables him to succeed with [his] judgments is not only the justice of the remarks themselves, but Eliot's knowledge of reader psychology…. The reader usually agree with Eliot, I believe, when the aperçu can be tested against his own nerve endings or his own experience. The technique backfires, however, when this sort of validation is not possible. Some of Eliot's more portentous historical generalizations fail simply because, in unelaborated form, they have the look of 'mysteries' in the theological sense—that is, articles of faith beyond rational comprehension. (pp. 112-13)

One can say generally of Eliot's statements that, in the earlier criticism at least, they are extremely concise. Particularly at the beginning of an essay, Eliot is likely to slice through masses of material for a few salient points…. Particularly in discussing a writer's whole oeuvre, Eliot really is obliged to deal with vast amounts of material in a short space. He therefore often writes in such a way as to combine fact and judgment, and the combination is informative even when the judgments are not elaborated on…. There is a directness and terseness about the style of [some passages which] … recall Dr. Johnson, and Eliot is, in his moments of quick and candid assessment, closer to Johnson in practice than to any other of the English poet-critics. The two share an easy authority and a disinclination to argue the point. (pp. 119-20)

Eliot imposed no overall structure upon his essays: the shape of each was determined largely by the material under review and the nature of the points he wanted to make. Within the essays, however, certain patterns recur as means of placing and evaluating literary figures.

The largest of these patterns is the historical survey…. This simplification of literary history—… any ordering of literary history is a simplification—often places the writers in an almost programmatic relationship to each other. (p. 121)

A single essay obviously cannot generate this sort of perspective, but a reading of all of Eliot's essays suggests that it was never far from his mind. Nor is the perspective always historical: occasionally it appears as the grouping, across centuries and even arts, of artists with similar visions of human experience. Eliot was interested, for example, in what he defines as Marlowe's 'farce', 'which secures its emphasis by always hesitating on the edge of caricature at the right moment'. Eliot perceives the same spirit in the work of Ben Jonson, and suggests in the Marlowe essay that a history of this 'old English humour, the terribly serious, even savage comic humour', could be traced down to Dickens. (p. 122)

Eliot is not talking here about influence; the method, if one can talk of a method governing such scattered remarks, is that which Eliot espoused in 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'—writing about a work of art with the sense that 'the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has [sic] a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.' (pp. 122-23)

Eliot does use the idea of influence for his own purpose, which is often to imply an evaluation by placing a writer in a certain line of descent. (p. 123)

Often, of course, Eliot simply mocks the whole idea of influence as a kind of bootless pedantry. In the Clark Lectures, the tone of the send-up is suitably solemn: Eliot traces a complex genealogy in which Baudelaire, mated this time with various other writers, produces offspring as varied as Huysmans and the surrealists, Mallarmé and Blaise Cendrars, Corbière and Cocteau.

This technique damns (or praises) by association. The contrary technique, that of setting up a foil, can accomplish similarly 'critical' results…. Eliot's boldest use of the technique is to contrast styles from different centuries. Morris is pitted against Marvell, Milton against James, Shelley against Crashaw, Tennyson against Dante.

One's first impulse is to protest against comparisons which take no account of different conditions, genres, or types of ability. But, again, the method is in keeping with Eliot's view of all literature as simultaneous, and he contrasts only works which share significant features. (p. 124)

Even when the distinction is not one of quality, the opposition can still help to isolate the personal element in writing which interests Eliot. The sermons of Lancelot Andrewes have little in common with those of Donne, but discussion of one illuminates the other. The recurrent pairing of Dante and Shakespeare in Eliot's essays provides a fruitful contrast between the poet who finds a world-view ready-made and the poet who must construct at least a part of his own; or, in other instances, a contrast between bare and mannered styles in poetry.

The vehicle of these comparisons is quotation, and no reader of Eliot's criticism can fail to be impressed by his almost unfailing ability to choose lines which reinforce his point and which, once heard, stick in the memory…. Quotation is, in fact, the fine pivot upon which many of the essays turn…. Eliot's quotations generally illustrate one of these two types: the innovative or the bare and Dantesque.

The Dantesque is, for Eliot, the summit of poetry. It is clear expression of even the most spiritual emotions, and Dante is the ideal model for the young poet, since he has no vices of style. To assert this quality is one thing, but to discern it in poets other than Dante is a real contribution to criticism. (pp. 124-25)

The second category of quotations is the larger, and includes those passages which exhibit 'that perpetual slight alteration of language, words perpetually juxtaposed in new and sudden combinations, meanings perpetually eingeschactelt into meanings, which evidences a very high development of the senses.' Eliot's desire to isolate the essential, the personal, in poetry is related to his interest in the 'slight alteration'; it is a desire to assess the extent of individual contributions within the tradition. (p. 126)

Eliot's major essays are, strictly, essais—attempts—and, despite their firm tone, they retain a tentativeness which is part of their charm. Eliot himself expressed some qualms about his critical work, but the best of it … constitutes the most impressive body of general literary criticism written in English during this century. It is eloquent testimony to the fact that the poet-critic is still, in an age of academic criticism, our best guide to the tradition. (p. 134)

Edward Lobb, "Eliot As Rhetorician," in his T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (copyright Edward Lobb 1981), Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 93-134.