[It is with] style that one naturally begins in talking about [Blackmur's] work. Style is the data of a writer's sensibility; and though there is a notable identity of style throughout Blackmur's work, the changes observable in it over the years direct one's attention toward very interesting changes in the quality of mind and sensibility that the style expresses and clothes. Blackmur's early essays—those published in the thirties—were no doubt properly thought of as "Jamesian," or more Jamesian than the norm, in manner. They were "sensitive" rather than journalistic or academic or ploddingly methodological, they tended toward a certain prolixity, and their sentences were reluctant to come to rest without considerable internal self-qualification. But even so, they were not so "difficult" that they were unintelligible to most other critical and academic minds. Moreover, they kept the work always in sight, pursuing in good New Critical fashion...