[The] moralistic emphasis which pervades Mr. Brooks' ["The Hidden God"] may be just as fatal as that "social significance" which he derides in the literary criticism of the 1930's. Over and over again this critic warns us, quite correctly, against finding a "moral," a "lesson," a single meaning in any work of art—even while he himself, in his present criticism, is doing just that.

Thus he praises Hemingway's courage and stoic dignity and sense of individual gallantry in a blind and fatalistic universe, although these obvious traits in Hemingway's work are, strictly speaking, pagan rather than Christian virtues. Indeed what puzzles me most about "The Hidden God" is that I can hardly find in it any true sense of either Christian or religious feeling as a whole.

Mr. Brooks has always been a brilliant critic of literary technique and rhetoric, particularly in modern verse, and he is...