SOURCE: "Cleanth Brooks: Mr. Eliot's Christian Critic," in Southern Review, 1982, pp. 73-83.

In the following review, Clark examines several books and essays by Brooks, illustrating Brooks's belief that religion and art are complementary in man's search for truth and meaning.

An especially persuasive reading of the concluding lines of Pope's The Dunciad stresses the apocalyptic nature of the poet's gloomy account of the collapse of the Republic of Letters, and, by extension, of the imminent extinction of enlightened civilization itself:

      Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
      And unawares Morality expires.
      Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
      Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine,
      Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restored;
      Light dies before thy uncreating word:
      Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
      And universal Darkness buries All.

Such a reading no doubt derives much of its force from the modern reader's awareness of...