The title of Mr. Abrams' book [The Mirror and the Lamp] is not fanciful external ornament like those with which scholars sometimes mistakenly attempt to adorn a serious theoretical or historical work, but an indication of a characteristic purpose, to consider the extent to which metaphorical thinking inevitably enters into the theory of poetry, as well as into poetry itself, and indeed into most human thought. The mirror is the inadequate metaphor continually used as the symbol of arts which regard their function as an imitation or reflection of reality; and the lamp is an opposed metaphor occasionally used by romantic theorists for the light from the artist's own mind, which not only illuminates but somehow modifies the objects of perception. In brief, then, the subject of the book is the contrast of neoclassic with romantic literary theory, considered not only logically but in the logical implications of...