A. E. JIOUSMAN
SIR,—It is a fine thing that a poet should in- spire loyalty and have people ready to defend him against adverse criticism. When I wrote my article on A. E. Housman in your pages, I expected to be taken to task for over-praising him; I was aware of being almost alone among contemporary literary critics in my admiration for his work. Now I find myself drawing a very different kind of fire—that of the hard- core of his supporters, to whom even my mild criticisms are exasperating.
I cannot quite see Mr. Lloyd's point, how- ever. He claims that if my statement that 'Housman wrote poetry over a period of some forty years' can be proved incorrect, then it will also be incorrect to say that he showed a lack of development. I do not see this. If, as Mr. Lloyd says, Housman wrote most of his poetry between 1895 and 1910, and was then, largely, silent until 1922, that does not seem to me to alter the position. Why is there no development in the fifteen years embraced by the first period? And why did nothing appear to happen inside the poet during the twelve years of relative silence—so that when he spoke again it was in the same voice, saying the same things? Is it so unjust to complain of this lack of development?
Mr. Lloyd cannot, by the way, be under the impression that the volume of 1922 was Hous- man's farewell to poetry? At his death, in
1936, there was enough material for a third volume, More Poems, which is as large as the
other two and, to my mind, just as good; and
also the twenty-three Additional Poems. In any case, if Housman began to write poetry in 1895 and left a fair body of posthumous
work in 1936, it is surely true to say that he was, so to speak, in business as a poet for some forty-one years. Of course a poet does not keep up an even flow of production, and of course he can be, and should be, maturing in his fallow periods. When Hopkins resumed
poetry after a long silence, the result was The Wreck of the Deutschland and a new tone in English poetry.
Mr. Croyden-Smith seems to have regarded my article as a simple attack on Housman. He even quotes me as speaking of his 'little gift.' I did not, of course, say any such thing. I said Housman's poetry was a gift, but specified no size. Indeed, the only adjective I applied to his gift was 'exquisite.'
I think if these gentlemen had a clearer view of the field they would see that I and they are really fighting on the same side.—Yours faith- fully,
University of Reading SUMMER TIME
JOHN WAIN
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