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Poems so far removed as Hopkins' came to be from the ordinary
simplicity of grammar and metre, had they no other drawback, could never be
popular; but they will interest poets, and they may perhaps prove welcome to the
critic, for they have this plain fault that, aiming at an unattainable
perfection of language (as if words - each with its two-fold value in sense and
in sound - could be arranged like so many separate gems to compose a whole
expression of thought, in which the force of grammar and the beauty of rhythm
absolutely correspond), they not only sacrifice simplicity, but very often,
among verses of the rarest beauty, show a neglect of those canons of taste which
seem common to all poetry.
R. Bridges, in A.A. Milne ed. The Poets and Poems of the Century, vol.
8, London, 1894.
mannerisms, oddity, obscurity... the omission of the relative
pronoun... lost the Keatsian sweetness of his early work
R. Bridges, Preface to Notes, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1st
ed., Oxford, 1918.
I cannot share the enthusiasm which many critics feel for this
poet, who has very little to offer us.
T.S. Eliot, After Strange Gods, London: Faber, 1934.
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