I cannot admire [Forms of Discovery]. It does not seem to me, as a whole, either sound literary history or sound criticism. Clearly Winters is not a writer like W. P. Ker, who tries to give as thorough and impartial an account of his subject as he can, given the inevitable limitations of his knowledge, taste, and capacity. He writes as an advocate, in causes in which he feels justice has not yet been done. And this is a perfectly legitimate way to write…. But the critical advocate does best when he takes us, his readers, by the hand, and shows us the evidence on which we can form our own opinion. He always remembers that critical argument can at most be persuasive, never demonstrative. In these respects Winters seems to me often to fail.

Then there is much in Winters's critical theory which I find unsatisfactory, and...