15 FEBRUARY 1946, Page 20

Clever and Good

New Bats in Old Belfries. By John Bet;eman. (John Murray. 6s.)

MR. BETJEMAN'S new book will please his old admirers and, we hope, win him many new ones. He is so eccentric a figure among contemporary poets, his virtues are so peculiarly his own, that for lack of the comparisons which are the life blood of criticism his poems are singularly hard to analyse. Indeed, the obvious marks of eccentricity in his work, the curious mixture of innocence and sophistication, of self-consciousness and simplicity, almost obscure their strongest characteristic, that they are written to give pleasure and succeed in their object. The majority of our poets today are so overburdened by the solemnity of their emotions that they tend to think it an adequate substitute for the pleasures of their art ; with Mr. Betjeman they ace never absent. The pleasures he offers are inspired by a number of curiously assorted themes ; Victorian architecture, industrial landscapes, Ireland, colonel's daughters, suburban gentility, ecclesiastical archaeology ; their common quality is that Mr. Betjeman likes them, passionately, and his liking provokes in him a rich and genuine lyrical overflow of emotion. Even though this emotion expresses itself in laughter, it is still lyrical ; though he has the jollity of a curate ot a virgin, he remains a poet.

The striking juxtaposition of apparently unrelated themes gives Mr. Betjeman's poetry one of its sharpest flavours ; at the same time they combine in his mind to form a unity of atmosphere and emotion that compels both his imagination and ours. He has most strongly the Aristotelian virtue of seeing the natural metaphors of life, the similarity of dissirnilars (I am sure Mr. Betjeman will

appreciate so donnish a compliment). To this virtue one may add two others ; the first, an extremely accomplished and skilful technique of versification, on which perhaps the strongest influence has been that of Hardy, and the other a sturdy provincialism which, if together with his slight output it prevents us counting Mr. Betjeman among the major poets, nevertheless impels us to rejoice in him as one of the most English ones.

In this volume one can perhaps detect an increasing mellowness and an increasing seriousness. There is less satire, and when it occurs it is less crude ; and the religious quality of his verse is more directly apparent. Mr. Betjeman has surrendered some of the more obvious cleverness of his earlier poetry, has dropped some of the veils behind which he hid, and by so doing has increased in maturity. These poems are bathed in the rich yellow sunshine of a summer evening glinting on the Staff College at Camberley ; such a statement may convey some of the difficulties of praising Mr. Betjeman. One can only say of him that his poems are both clever and good, and perhaps that as they become less clever they become