Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Part XV - Last flights to France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Whatever Housman thought, the Leslie Stephen Lecture had heightened his public profile and enhanced his public reputation.
Reviews and comment were almost wholly congratulatory, although he was used by some to support their personal agendas. For its September 1933 issue, Scrutiny had asked one Gorley Putt to review The Name & Nature of Poetry with two other books under the ironic caption ‘Go to the Professors’. He wrote:
Many who enjoyed the charm of Professor Housman when he delivered his Leslie Stephen lecture will be sorry to see its appearance in cold print. He elected to pour Johnsonian scorn on the metaphysicals, and with Arnold to dismiss the eighteenth century. But his valuable discrimination between the normal ‘solidity of excellence’ of Dryden and Pope, and their occasional lapses in mistaking ‘impure verbiage for correct and splendid diction,’ has been overlooked by those who prefer to intone with the professor poetry which, ‘does but entangle the reader in a net of thoughtless delight.
Housman would be used as a stick to beat the moderns and as an object of scorn by the defenders of the moderns, even though his lecture had made no specific attack on the quality of any contemporary poet.
T.S. Eliot speaks
In great contrast was T.S. Eliot's review in The Criterion, an influential literary magazine founded in 1922. With his background in foreign exchange and his business experience as a director of the publishing house Faber and Faber, his review displayed a worldly, fair-minded and analytical assessment of Housman's lecture. He was prepared to make his points quietly and diplomatically. He had understood perfectly where Housman was coming from and seems to have appreciated how Housman had cleverly positioned himself on the unassailable ground of personal opinion.
He opened with a compliment. Housman was a master of prose because of what Eliot identified as ‘a certain emotional intensity’ – which would please Housman. He cleverly positioned Housman both as a romantic poet and an eighteenth-century wit – which would also please Housman. He acknowledged the inherent limitations of the public lecture which calls for selection and not ‘connected profundity’, thereby outlawing blame for what Housman had not said.
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- Information
- A.E. HousmanHero of the Hidden Life, pp. 395 - 433Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018