I believe it can be shown that all Mr. Richards' troubles, all the weaknesses of his books, derive from [the] fundamental error of trying to cut off the organization and control of practical activity from science and bring it over into poetry. And first among these troubles I should mention the heavy labor it turns out to be, even for those vividly interested in the subject, to read his Principles of Literary Criticism. Rarely has a man rich in new and important thoughts produced a book so tiring to the mind. We emerge on the last page with a feeling that we have been wading and plunging through a vastly important jungle of ideas, every one so overlaid and entangled with exceptions, interpolations, affiliations, methodological asides, obiter dictums and addendums, that no clear impression remains even of those ideas which were—we vaguely remember—brilliantly well stated and...