Excerpt from Poets of the Younger Generation One somewhat inconvenient restriction I felt it necessary to impose upon myself from the outset. It would have been impertinent and essentially uncritical on my part to attempt to marshal the writers with whom I dealt in any order of merit, to range them in an ascending or descending scale. And as an imperfect and casual marshalling would have been as invidious as an exhaustive one, I found myself com pelled to forswear all comparison whatsoever between the poets on my list. The essays are ranged in alphabetical order, and each writer is treated as though he or she were the only poet of the younger generation in England or America. This self-denying ordinance has cost me not a little trouble. Innumerable are the times when I have checked myself on the verge of slipping into the comparative mood. In some cases I have had to renounce what seemed to me a desirable elucidation or apt illustration, because it would have involved a parallel or contrast between two of the poets in question. Even where such confrontation would apparently have redounded to the honour of both, I have regarded it as the thin end of the wedge and have resolutely foregone it. Perhaps I have carried this scruple to the point of pedantry. I merely note it as one of the conditions which, rightly or wrongly, I felt to be imposed on me.

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