[What] is the immediate and total impression of [The Common Pursuit]? Dr. Leavis's criticism is nothing if not personal (the word is not meant in a depreciatory sense); my assessment of it will therefore be personal too. Re-reading, then, in one volume essays which (most of them) I had read before scattered over several years, the effect for me was—let me say frankly—one of a profound satisfaction. To describe the satisfaction a little more precisely I should say that it was the satisfaction of seeing a pavement well-laid. The individual stones one had noticed before, and they were of pleasing shape and colour; but now that they can be taken in as a whole there is the added pleasure of observing that they fit. Even 'added pleasure' will not do. For it is not merely the enumerative addition of the more pleasure in the same kind...