MR. YEATS'S ANTHOLOGY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,--It is to be hoped that a review with the great tradition of The Spectator will not allow the appearance of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse to pass without a lengthy serious critique. Mr. John Hayward's notice in your last issue cannot be considered as criticism in any sense ; also his bias is too evident in his statement that the book should have been entitled Mr. Yeats's and not the Oxford Book. Does he consider that the other books—Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's (English and Victorian) and Sir Edmund Chambers', for example—should have borne as title the names of their editors only ?
Further, his statement that it " very rarely follows that the creator is also a critic " is simply untrue. In his obvious attempt to belittle Mr. Yeats he has forgotten temporarily that our greatest critics—Dryden, Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, Keats—were all poets but perhaps, according to Mr. Hayward, not very good poets.—Yours faithfully,
Savile Club, 69 Brook Street, W.1. W. J. TURNER.
Previous page
