The most frequently noted feature of Eliot's prose style is that it combines assertion and reticence to a remarkable degree. Particularly in essays from Eliot's great period as a critic (roughly 1918 to 1936), one is apt to encounter the largest statements about literature and sensibility, or apparently final judgment upon this or that figure; but the logic of the argument often remains elusive. The statement is treated as self-sufficient, or becomes part of another, larger issue…. (p. 93)
Although he has certain beliefs about the relationship between sensibility and language, Eliot does not, clearly, have a theory of literature in the sense that Frye or Lukács may be said to have one. Between the fundamental points of Eliot's 'classicism' there is much feeling about literature, relatively articulable but not susceptible of demonstration in reasoned argument…. Criticism was, for Eliot, a branch of rhetoric rather than of philosophy; it was natural for him to treat it as an art of persuasion rather than a science of 'proof'.
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