The Criterion.
With its July issue The Criterion completes its first year as a quarterly review, and Mr. T. S. Eliot is to be congratulated on an excellent undertaking admirably accomplished. The present number is, perhaps, the best of those published thus far. Mr. Charles Whibley completes his excellent study of Bolingbroke ; Mr. Yeats contributes a biographical note which he intends as a new opening to Chapter VI. of " The Trembling of the Veil " ; Mr. Stanley Rice draws an interesting parallel between the Alcestis of Euripides and the story of Savitri in the " Mahabharata " ; Mr. Aldington writes pleasantly of the Italian pastoral. Most interesting of all, perhaps, is M. Jacques Riviere's " Notes on a Possible Generalization of the Theories of Freud." M. Riviere makes the best brief summary of Freud we have seen, and takes an interesting, if a little doubtful step in the direction of an application of the Freudian doctrine to aesthetic criticism. One questions chiefly his conclusion that " a sort of vague aesthetic criterion might be established which would enable us to distinguish works born of an inclination from those manufactured by will, the aesthetic quality being, of course, reserved to the former." This distinction between " will " and " inclination " will probably not bear analysis. But for the most part M. Riviere is suggestive and sound. Mr. Pound's new cantos are techni- cally interesting, but dull. One regrets that Mr. Eliot should have thought it necessary to comment astringently on the policy of The Adelphi without sufficient confidence to mention that paper by name. However, The Criterion more than justifies its existence, and one notes with great pleasure that its scope is to be enlarged with the next issue, and that it is planning to bring out from time to time books by its con- tributors. The translation of Le Serpent, by Paul Valery, with an introduction by Mr. Eliot, will be worth waiting for.
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