There is nothing more tragic than the obvious which is ignored. I began to write verse because I thought it would be a new way of saying something which I felt. When I had said it in one way, it did not seem to me worth while to repeat it in another. Hence, as is usually the case with people who desire to be individual, I became an imitator of the best models I could find. When I discovered that my own tastes were not peculiar, that they were precisely those of certain poets of the past, I tried the stoical and practical expedient of making use of them as a discipline.
This discipline, though severe, was a relief. What I had to do was to submit to certain forms and conventions; and by submitting to them I was enabled to express what I had to express with economy and with a kind of dignity. The more strictly I adhered to these conventions the more independent, the more personal, the thing that I wrote seemed. There is, I think, a sort of humility in good composition: the poet recognises that he has not a new manner of saying everything; he recognises that what he has to say must be said within certain limits laid down by the practice of literature.
That there is such a thing as tradition, I do not doubt. By tradition I mean the historical sense; not merely the sense of the past as a series of facts, but the sense of the past as an active force in the present. A writer who follows tradition must be aware of the place which his work occupies in a continuous human activity of which he forms a part. To know that the present is a product of the past, and to be conscious of the past as a living presence in the mind of the writer, gives him power and firmness.
Criticism, in the sense in which I use the word, is a form of memory. It is not a memory of facts merely; it is a memory of the feelings appropriate to the facts. A critic must be able to recall the emotions, the associations, the intellectual attitude that belonged to a work in its time. Thus only can he judge what place it has in the development of literature. Criticism is not an act of mere preference; it is the application of a sense of proportion.
The perfect critic is the man who, knowing the language, the idiom, and the temper of his time, can hear the new notes that another man brings and can say whether they are consonant or dissonant with the existing music. He must, therefore, have sympathy without fanaticism and a sense of measure without servility. He must be at once imaginative and disciplined; sympathetic yet stern.
In order to perform this function he must have himself some standards derived from the practice of literature. He must be acquainted not only with the masterpieces but with their history and with the experiments which led up to them. He must be able to distinguish what is essential in a poet's achievement from what is accidental or temporary. For criticism without this historical sense is merely personal preference or prejudice.
The critic, then, should be engaged in the same activity as the artist; his mind should be moulded by the studies which cultivate imagination and taste. He should read widely and with attention; he should be able to understand, and to explain to others, the qualities by which literature endures. But he must also be humble, for the critic's judgments are always provisional and are apt to be upset by new creations.
There is a tendency nowadays to separate criticism from practice, to set up a class of professionals who write about literature without themselves having any practice in composition. Such critics may be interesting, but they cannot be authoritative. The authority of criticism comes from its close relation to the art it criticises, and this relation is ensured by practice. The critic is the artist's companion, not his judge from a remote tribunal.