SOURCE: "Gerard Manley Hopkins" in New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation, Chatto & Windus, 1938, pp. 159-93.

Leavis is an influential contemporary critic. In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1932, he claims that Hopkins' strength lies in his attempt to bring poetry closer to living speech.

Hopkins's originality was radical and uncompromising: there was, as he owns, some excuse for the dismay of his first readers. He could not himself, as the Author's Preface shows, be reconciled to his originality without subterfuge. His prosodic account in terms of Logaoedic Rhythm, Counterpoint Rhythm, Sprung Rhythm, Rocking Feet and Outriders will help no one to read his verse—unless by giving the sense of being helped: it merely shows how subtle and hard to escape is the power of habits and preconceptions. The prescription he gives when warm from reading his verse—'take breath...