[Despite critical opinion to the contrary, the prose and poetry of T. S. Eliot] are very closely related. If one reads through the whole of the prose and the whole of the verse, one finds that the same process, the same search for a Tradition and for orthodox principles, combined with the same sensitivity to contemporary life, is developed through both of them. In the essays there are frequent references (they grow more open as time goes on) to problems in which the writer himself is involved in his creative work. (p. 153)

[In] Dante, Baudelaire, T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, the Elizabethans, and a half-dozen other influences, one sees the background of Eliot's poetry in Eliot's prose. The poetry and the prose together form a whole: the poetry is strengthened and given its ideals by the prose, the prose is illustrated and given foundation by the poetry. (p...