SOURCE: "Virgil and the Christian World," in On Poetry and Poets, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pp. 135–48.

Perhaps the most influential poet and critic to write in the English language during the first half of the twentieth century, Eliot is closely identified with many of the qualities denoted by the term Modernism: experimentation, formal complexity, artistic and intellectual eclecticism, and a classicist's view of the artist working at an emotional distance from his or her creation. He introduced a number of terms and concepts that strongly affected critical thought in his lifetime, among them the idea that poets must be conscious of the living tradition of literature in order for their work to have artistic and spiritual validity. The following essay was originally broadcast on the B.B.C. and published in The Listener in 1951. Here, Eliot identifies prominent themes characteristic of Virgil's poetry—labor, piety, and destiny—which...