Is Mr. Tomlinson more touching than sustaining, more admirable than likable? Absolutely not. No truth whatever in the charge. But one does need to shove a little to get past his potent Praetorian Guard and into the presence of the living work. (p. 9)

Mr. Tomlinson is anything but apologetic about the bracing coolness, the receptive detachment, the intoxicating vigilance he brings to the task of survival in a country whose very indifference to poetry becomes an unlooked-for source of strength. A contemplative with a gift for the dramatic, he is as devoted as Wordsworth and Ruskin to the spirit of place. But he is enough a man of the world to know that it hardly matters whether or not he stays at home; thus he travels a lot, to Italy, Mexico and America. He knows, too, that it hardly matters whether or not he sticks to conventional forms...