"Taste, discretion, and decision have, one likes to think, been exercised so as to manifest the variety of an age's po…"

"[T]o travesty or to calumniate the Victorians is still such a cheap holiday."

"Inerrancy about one's own powers is not a mark of the Victorian poets, nor even is a simple prudence about not over-r…"

"Great Britain was Victorian for two-thirds of a century. Things changed and counterchanged; even the Queen often prov…"

"Any anthologist of the unparagoned achievement that is English poetry must enjoy the pleasure, privilege, and respons…"

"English poetry – having a life of its own – is forever being supplemented, complemented, culled, and found afresh. Th…"

"[M]ost of us are not good at appreciating the poetry of those appreciably younger than we are."

"[I]t is characteristic of true simplicity that there may radiate from its utmost directness a good many glinting things."

"[The test of value in a work of art is] whether or not it continues to repay attention."

"The twentieth century had conclusively settled the question of how a society should be organised: liberal democracy, …"