In his lecture on Progress in Literature (Cambridge University Press,
2s. 6d.), Professor Abercrombie finds it very necessary to define the exact sense of his title. He is not discussing whether literature grows better as the centuries pass ; nor does he look forward to an age of still more superb achievement. He attempts, however, to observe the general trend of change during the history of letters ; and believes that he has found it in the steady growth of the analytic habit of perception. In the works of Homer, for example, he sees synthetic images—a single word, even a stock epithet, calling up a whole world of associations ; in modern poetry, on the other hand, our sensations are split up into component parts. The difference, Professor Abercrombie believes, is almost exactly parallel by the difference between fuissern and I should have been, and, in spite of all " lags " and throwbacks, it is a trend which must be accepted as inevitable.
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