Eliot seems in retrospect to have been rather a don manque: certainly his criticism has an academic tone and outlook when compared to, say, Ezra Pound's. His strong point was the Elizabethans and the Metaphysical poets, on whom he wrote illuminatingly and very knowledgeably - especially on their versification - with the authority of a practising poet and playwright. Other essays deal with Dryden, Blake, Swinburne, Baudelaire, and more generalised subjects such as "Modern Education and the Classics". In general Eliot was very traditional and even conservative in his outlook, a fact which makes his elevation as a daring Modernist even harder to understand. A volume which is indispensable to Eng Lit students, in particular.