topics: |  literature | essays | poetry | critic

The Sacred Wood (1920), announced the arrival of Eliot as the critic, with his
commentaries on Swinburne (" The faults of style are, of course, personal;
the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined
sentences, are the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a
disorderly mind") and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, or
on Hamlet and his problems ("more people have thought Hamlet a work of
art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting
because it is a work of art. It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature.")

Acerbic, occasionally insightful, but eminently readable. 

This volume collects some essays not in the original text, with typically
Dover-esque lack of editorial intent. One essay, "Poets on
poetry", is mentioned in the blurb at the back but seems to have lost its
way during production; it's certainly not there in this edition.
Other than this, there is no other editorial comment and the reader is left
to figure out the provenance and coherence for the added essays.

Contents

The Sacred Wood : Essays on Poetry and Criticism
  Introduction
  The Perfect Critic
  Imperfect Critics
    Swinburne As Critic
    A Romantic Aristocrat
    The Local Flavour
    A Note on the American Critic
    The French Intelligence
  Tradition and the Individual Talent
  The Possibility of a Poetic Drama
  Euripides and Professor Murray
  “Rhetoric” and Poetic Drama
  Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe
  Hamlet and His Problems
  Ben Jonson
  Philip Massinger
  Swinburne As Poet
  Blake
  Dante
Andrew Marvell
John Dryden
The Metaphysical Poets


also: The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism
http://library.nu/docs/LNIKMZOCSJ/The%20Use%20of%20Poetry%20%26amp%3B%20the%20Use%20of%20Criticism