SOURCE: Eliot, T. S. “Imperfect Critics.” In The Sacred Wood, pp. 17-46. London: Methuen, 1920.

In the following excerpt, Eliot discusses the critical theories of Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Wyndham, and Charles Whibley.

Swinburne as Critic

Three conclusions at least issue from the perusal of Swinburne's critical essays: Swinburne had mastered his material, was more inward with the Tudor-Stuart dramatists than any man of pure letters before or since; he is a more reliable guide to them than Hazlitt, Coleridge, or Lamb; and his perception of relative values is almost always correct. Against these merits we may oppose two objections: the style is the prose style of Swinburne, and the content is not, in an exact sense, criticism. The faults of style are, of course, personal; the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined sentences, are the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a disorderly...