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My most confident prediction, however, remains
to be confirmed: it is that the perfect English style is still to be written. That it may be in
our own time is both the goal and the guiding-star of all literary criticism that is not idle
chatter.
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Preface
UNDER the title of "Readers and Writers" and over the initials "R. H. C."—the "C" occasionally becoming "Congreve" for other purposes—I contributed to the New Age,
during a period of seven or eight years, a weekly literary causerie of which the present
volume, covering the years 1918–1921, is a partial reprint. My original design was to
treat literary events from week to week with the continuity, consistency and policy
ordinarily applied to comments on current political events; that is to say, with equal
seriousness and from a similarly more or less fixed point of view as regards both means
and end. This design involved of necessity a freedom of expression distinctly out of
fashion, though it was the convention of the greatest period of English literature, namely,
the Eighteenth Century; and its pursuits in consequence brought the comments
themselves and the journal in which they appeared into somewhat lively disrepute. That,
however, proved not to be the greatest difficulty. Indeed, within the last few years an
almost general demand for more serious, more outspoken and even more "savage"
criticism has been heard, and is perhaps on the way to being satisfied, though literary
susceptibilities are still far from being as well-mannered as political susceptibilities. The
greatest difficulty is encountered in the fact that literary events, unlike political events,
occur with little apparent order, and are subject to no easily discoverable or demonstrable
direction. In a single week every literary form and tendency may find itself illustrated,
with the consequence that any attempt to set the week's doings in a relation of significant
development is bound to fall under the suspicion of impressionism or arbitrariness. I
have no other defence against these charges than Plato's appeal to good judges, of whom
the best because the last is Time. Time, if ever it should condescend to re-consider the
judgments contained herein, will pronounce upon them as only those living critics can
whose present judgments are an anticipation of Time's. Time will show what has been
right and what wrong. Already, moreover, a certain amount of winnowing and sifting has
taken place. Some literary values of this moment are not what they were yesterday or the
day before. A few are greater; many of them are less. And I think I can afford to look on
most of the changes with equanimity. My most confident prediction, however, remains
to be confirmed: it is that the perfect English style is still to be written. That it may be in
our own time is both the goal and the guiding-star of all literary criticism that is not idle
chatter.…
[The complete text is available in the printed copy of this issue.]
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