In the following review, Quennel comments on Eliot's lack of ornamentation in Selected Essays and asserts that "the austerity of his professional attitude commands respect."

Mr. Eliot's volume of Selected Essays, just now published as he leaves us for America, represents in four hundred and fifty pages fifteen successive years of work. Here are essays from the early Sacred Wood, which first made its appearance in 1920; here, too, is a large part of For Lancelot Andrewes. The brilliant trilogy, entitled Homage to John Dryden, re-emerges next to the little book on Dante. Thoughts after Lambeth also recur. Two essays reproving Professor Babbitt, and generally setting about the neo-Humanists, are neighboured by a brief encomium on Marie Lloyd. A sympathetic portrait of Charles Whibley brings this various procession to a close.

The last choice was particularly apt. Mr. Eliot ends the survey of his own criticism by a...