SOURCE: "Milton's Verse," in Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry, W.W. Norton & Co., 1963, pp. 42-61.

In the following essay. Leavis dismisses Milton's poetry as puritanical and pedantic

Milton's dislodgment, in the past decade, after his two centuries of predominance, was effected with remarkably little fuss. The irresistible argument was, of course, Mr. Eliot's creative achievement; it gave his few critical asides—potent, it is true, by context—their finality, and made it unnecessary to elaborate a case. Mr. Middleton Murry also, it should be remembered, came out against Milton at much the same time. His Problem of Style contains an acute page or two comparing Milton with Shakespeare, and there was a review of Bridges' Milton's Prosody in The Athenœum that one would like to see reprinted along with a good deal more of Mr. Murry's weekly journalism of that time. But the case remained...