How can a book of criticism be at once so distinguished and so unimportant? The question is the more worth asking because the author of [On Poets and Poetry] was at one time so unquestionably a major critical influence. (p. 177)

The Sacred Wood, I think, had very little influence or attention before the Hogarth Press brought out Homage to John Dryden, the pamphlet in which the title essay was accompanied by 'The Metaphysical Poets' and 'Andrew Marvell'. It was with the publication in this form of those essays … that Eliot became the important contemporary critic. It was the impact of this slender new collection that sent one back to The Sacred Wood and confirmed with decisive practical effect one's sense of the stimulus to be got from that rare thing, a fine intelligence in literary criticism—the fine intelligence so certainly present in the earlier and larger collection...