SOURCE: "How Bad was Rupert Brooke? Part 2" in Books & Bookmen, Vol. 20, No. 8, May, 1975, pp. 50-1.

In the following essay, published as the second installment of Stanford's essay, he deems Brooke's poetry important during his time, but not in the realm of contemporary literature.

In Rupert Brooke: Four Poems Sir Geoffrey Keynes remarks on the poet's tendency to preserve any small scrap or draft of a poem. The two factors behind this retention were, he believes, laziness (making disposal too troublesome a business) or vanity (inducing thoughts of posthumous fame). Just how well, one might ask, were these conceits of immortality justified?

To measure the degree of success or failure towards which these little scraps of paper point, we have to take Brooke on his own terms and assess him on his merits in writing a quite conscious poetry of youth. This, of course, means not merely seeking to...