SIR,—The letters from Mr. Boris Ford and Mr. J. C.
Maxwell are all very well, but I still find Dr. Leavis's attack on Professor Kermode extraordinary. Must every disagreement with the doctor's views be inter- preted as personal insult?—and all opinions on the status of Milton, Lawrence or anyone else be met with accusations of ignobility, bitter reminders of weekly reviews, even common-room jokes in the Thirties, and so on? Dr. Lcavis's evidences of hos- tility to himself would be simply funny, coming as they do from one of the most hard-hitting contro- versialists of the period, if they did not so frequently convert criticism into recrimination—and if they were not so clearly a source of pain to himself.
My own experience, for what it is worth, would suggest that Professor Kermode is right about Milton, and Mr. Boris Ford wrong. When preparing for a Cambridge scholarship in 1945, I was warned that to go up for it parading a taste for Milton and Tenny- son would be suicidal. Whether this advice was neces- sary, and indeed whether I took it or not, I cannot be sure. It was certainly given, and was not, unless I am much mistaken. unusual at that time. The teacher concerned was a brilliant, if prudent man; where his views on Milton came from is anybody's guess. Perhaps he had read in Revaluation that 'Mil- ton's dislodgmenL in the last decade, after his two centuries of predominance, was effected with remarkably little fuss.' and arranged his own per- mitted reading accordingly. Perhaps he had formed his opinion after reading T. S. Eliot or John Middle- ton Murry, or by the exercise of his own very able judgment. Whatever the explanation. he assumed that Milton was no longer a poet to be admired. Professor Kermode is surely entitled to draw atten- tion to this situation without, as he says, necessarily thinking of Dr. Leavis at all? Milton can still some- times be considered for his own sake.
Dr. Leavis's whole pose as a 'heretic who has sur- vived, somehow' does less than justice to himself, as well as to those who might differ from him on this or that. If he would lift his gaze from the domestic scene for a moment (and in Cambridge no one voice, one hopes, will ever go unchallenged), he might notice that for twenty years or more he has been a very powerful influence on the teaching of literature, in most good schools and colleges here and in America. That this is so, and a tribute to his own remarkable success, no one but himself is likely to doubt. And if it is hard these days for anyone to write on major literature without sooner or later agreeing or dis- agreeing with him, by intention or otherwise, is this not also a sign of success? Such disagreements have nothing to do with personal animosity, as far as one can see. That Dr. Leavis should continue to be hurt by them must be a matter of regret for everyone con- cerned.—Your faithfully,
A. F. DYSON
University College, Bangor, North Wales
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