an ethical test in the long run; and his own ethical standard is so half-hearted—he’s so afraid of being thought a moralist that he tries to blunt it by gas about ‘health’ and ‘survival’. As if survival can have any value apart from the prior value of what survives. To me especially it is an annoying book; he attacks my enemies in the wrong way…and a good deal of mere ‘superiority’ too…
TO JOAN BENNETT (L):
[Magdalen College
February 1937]
I also have been having ’flu or you should have heard from me sooner. I enclose the article: pray make whatever use you please of it5…It is a question (for your sake and that of the Festschrift, not mine) whether a general pro-Donne paper called Donne and his critics—a glance at Dryden and Johnson and then some contemporaries including me—wouldn’t be better than a direct answer. C.S.L. as professional controversialist and itinerant prize-fighter is, I suspect, becoming already rather a bore to our small public, and might in that way infect you.6 Also, if you really refute me, you raise for the editor the awkward question, ‘Then why print the other article?’ However, do just as you like…and good luck with it whatever you do.
I’ve had a grand week in bed—Northanger Abbey, The Moonstone,7 The Vision of judgement,8 Modern Painters (Vol. 3),9 Our Mutual Friend, 10 and The Egoist.11 Of the latter I decided this time that it’s a rare instance of the conception being so good that even the fantastic faults can’t kill it. There’s a good deal of the ass about Meredith—that dreadful first chapter—Carlyle in icing sugar. And isn’t the supposedly witty conversation much poorer than much we have heard in real life? Mrs Mounstuart is a greater bore than Miss Bates12—only he didn’t mean her to be. The Byron was not so good as I remembered: the Ruskin, despite much nonsense, glorious.
TO MARY NEYLAN (T):13
Magdalen College
Oxford
March 8th 1937
Dear Mrs. Neylan
What a nice letter! To be read is nice enough: but to have led anyone back to the poets themselves is more what critics dream of than what usually happens.
I ought to be able to reward you with a good list of books, as desired, but you know bibliographies are my Waterloo: in my own reading I always sacrifice critics to the poets, which is unkind to my own trade. However, let’s try.
I haven’t yet got Grierson’s new book Milton and Wordsworth,14 but I’m going to: it ought to kill two of your birds with one stone. Have you read F. L. Lucas’ Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal? Hideously over-written in parts, but well worth reading: he has grasped what seems to be a hard idea to modern minds, that a certain degree of a thing might be good and a further degree of the same thing bad. Elementary, you will say—yet a realisation of it would have forbidden the writing of many books. These are new.
A few years old—but you may not have read it—is E. K. Chambers’ Sir Thomas Wyatt and other studies.15 Some of the essays are medieval, but most of it is 16th century. I can’t think of anything much on ‘general tendencies of the 17th century’ since one you almost certainly read when you were up, Grierson’s Cross Currents of XVIIth c. Lit, 16 very good indeed. By the bye a festschrift to Grierson shortly appearing (Tillyard, Nichol Smith, Joan Bennett and myself are among the contributors) might contain something of what you want. The book on the 17th c. by Willy17 (I have forgotten the title) is more on the thought background than the poets, rather doing for that century what my Prolegomena tried to do for the middle ages. I don’t know of anything general on the 18th century. Sherburn’s Early Life of Pope18 tho’ good is hardly what you want.
You don’t say how you or your husband are: I hope all is well.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
The Kilns
Easter Sunday
[28 March] 1937
My dear Arthur,
I have been meaning to write to you for some time, and had partly excused myself because I was waiting to send you a story of Tolkien’s which is to be published soon and which I think you may like:19 but Uncle Gussie20 turned up on Thursday (the coolest and most characteristic visit—merely a wire to announce his arrival!) and jogged my conscience with a message from you.
Thanks for your letter. I suppose I shall hear more from you about America when we meet. Am I right in concluding from your mere list of towns that on the aesthetic side—as regards mountains, rivers and woods etc.—it made no impression?21 I am glad to hear that you think of risking another visit to us and will do my best to make you less uncomfortable than you usually are. I suppose it must be in the summer term? I have often told you that this is an injudicious (lovely adjective!) time to choose, but I know you are not entirely free. By the bye, I should warn you that you will find the Kilns changed much for the worse—which you might have thought impossible—by a horrible rash of small houses which has sprung up all round us. All thanks to Lord Nuffield, I suppose: it would take a good deal more than a million pounds to undo the harm he has done to Oxford.22
We have had rather an unfortunate spring. First of all a maid got flu’ just before she was leaving and had to be kept on as a patient for several weeks. Then I got flu’. Then as I was getting better Paxford (that is our indespensable fac-totum, like your Lea, you know) got flu’.23 Then I had a grand week end doing as much as I could of his work and the maid’s until I got flu’ again. Then Minto’s varicose ankles broke down. Then Warnie got flu’ and was rather bad. However, we have come through it all and seem pretty cheery now. The ‘dreadful weather’ I have been rather enjoying: I quite like seeing the primroses one day and the snow the next.
I have not read anything you would be likely to care for lately except a Vie de Jésus by a Frenchman called Mauriac,24 which I strongly recommend: it is papist, of course, and contains what English and Protestant taste would call lapses, but it is very good in spite of them. I suppose you noticed about Christmas time that someone has republished the complete Adventures of Tim Pippin by Roland Quiz.25 I half thought of getting it, but have satisfied myself with assuming that