Indeed, both "classicism" and "romanticism" are impressionistic labels affixed to largely heterogenous material, and themselves badly in need of definition. That no completely satisfactory definition has ever been offered seems to indicate that the concepts themselves are arbitrary and not very suitable as criteria of classification.

Still, everyone has a rough idea what the two words are intended to convey, and it is not difficult to see what Eliot means when he calls himself a classicist. He means, for one thing, that he is critical of the romantic theory of poetry, and believes that, in any case, it is played out, as evidenced by its last English offshoot, the so-called Georgian poets. His own poetry marks a return ot the classicist preoccupation with form and order. He shares the classicists belief that there exists an ideal order, which poetry sould reflect. In his view, it is a romantic fallacy that poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800). Inspiration is not enough. It is, at best, only a driving force, whose results must be disciplined by a rigorous application of criticism by the poet of his own work, if he is to achieve "the firmness, the true coldness, the hard coldness of the genuine artist." He speaks with scant respect of Shelley (John Dryden), Byron (in On Poetry and Poets) and Swinburne (Swinburne as a Poet) ¹.

The critical labour demanded of the poet before he can produce a finished work of art Eliot describes as a "frightful toil". It consists in "sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing" (The Function of Criticism). It is a mistake, he holds, to decry this critical labour and "to believe that the great artist is an unconscious artist, unconsciously inscribing on his banner the words Muddle Through".(Ibid.).

Another romantic fallacy, according to Eliot, is the emphasis on the personal element in poetry. On the contrary, "the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality". (Tradition and the Individual Talent). "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not an expression of personality, but an escape from personality". (Ibid.).

C.A. Bodelsen, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: A Commentary ( Kobenhavn, Copenhagen University Publications Fund, Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1966.) 9-10