F. T. Prince is the kind of poet we call distinguished. That just means he is famous, technically admirable, and over fifty. For some inscrutable reason, or maybe by chance, no volume of his has ever been more admired than his second, Soldiers Bathing (1954). In that same year the Clarendon Press published his most famous critical book, The Italian Element in Milton's Verse. It was a book only a poet and only a fine scholar could have written. As a non-specialist I found it exciting and brilliant and extremely helpful. In 1970 he published a long poem, Memoirs in Oxford, which at the lowest is a highly original work. [Drypoints of the Hasidim] is based largely on Martin Buber's collection of stories about eighteenth century Hasidic Jewish masters. It will be seen that F. T. Prince has some range of intelligence and curiosity as a poet.

To say that...