A READER'S GUIDE TO T. S. ELIOT. By George Williamson.
(Thames and Hudson, 15s.) This book, though barbarously written, is useful and deserves to be often consulted. Mr. Williamson, who gives his book the sub-title, 'A poem-by-poem analysis,' tells us with commendable honesty that if be doesn't give the answers it is because he doesn't know them : 'I shall try neither to fake my aware- ness nor to evade elementary questions; if 1 seem to avoid difficulties, it may be presumed that I do not understand.' Certainly a poem- by-poem approach does mean that the critic cannot skate gracefully round 'aspects of his poet; a bull-at-a-gate spirit is often the best, and this book has it admirably. There are, however, faults which might have been set right had the publishers asked Mr. Williamson to revise his book, in the light of recent Eliot criticism, rather than simply reprinting the American edition. There is not nearly enough about the later poems; Mr. Williamson is more at home with the earlier ones, and The Waste Land is given thirty-nine pages as against only thirty for all the Four Quartets put together. And was it quite right to ignore the plays so resolutely—even the ones that were written concurrently with some of the poems dis- cussed?• If the reason for this is that Mr. Williamson feels the plays to belong to a lower sphere than the poems, one is inclined to agree, but this should not put them outside the field of reference.
FELIX HOLT
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