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IN 1932 THE CRITIC F. R. Leavis proclaimed that T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound had between them brought about a significant reorientation of literature. Twenty years later he took most of it back again, blaming the anti-critical workings of the London literary circuit and the decay of an educated reading public. He may have been perfectly justified in crediting the metropolitan litterateurs with setting up so many false gods. But the relative failure of talent is another matter entirely. So is the manner in which so much of the talent that has arrived has been misused. The London old-boy circuit may often be stupid, conceited, and parasitic, but I don't believe that it is a deliberate conspiracy against good work.

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