There is something gallant but also quixotic in Richards' great faith in the power of a general theory of language and poetry from which he expects "new powers over our minds comparable to those which systematic physical inquiries are giving us over our environment."… Nothing seems to point to such a future. Richards' theory of poetry as long as it is entangled in his psychology and operates with the simple concept of emotive language seems to me an impasse in criticism. But where he managed to look at texts, gave an account of misreadings, analyzed observable traits of a work of art, Richards found his way back to the organistic tradition of poetic theory descending from Aristotle through the Germans to Coleridge. But emphasizing these insights we assimilate him to something known before and deny what, after all, however extravagantly, was the stimulating novelty of his theory: the...