ANGLO-SAXON PLATITUDES
SIR,—When Mr. Amis condescends to a reasoned attack on Milton, .Chaucer, etc., it will be possible for his opponents to satisfy Mr. Mandle with a reasoned refutation. As it is, he just says, rather hysterically, that they bore him stiff, and one has to treat him as one would treat a hysteric, with a slap on the face. It so happens that Beowulf bores me quite as much as it bores Mr. Amis, but I regard the fact as a piece of autobiography, not criticism. Nor will Mr. Crispin's 'Sincere feeling' suffice for criticism-- though it may be very admirable in itself and even, as Mr. Green seems -to be suggesting from behind
barricade -of. irrelev'fincies.have a moral value. Criticism is not a set of arbitrary judgements but a pattern, preferably a creative pattern, of judge- ment; and the boredom of either Mr. Amis or myself is a very tiny part of the evidence to be patterned.
The one reason given for Mr. Amis's boredom was the one I refuted,' i.e. that the poets he scorned did' not understand enough about-human relation- ships. They had all more experience,.both public and private, to understand; and understood it better than Mr. Amis'wOuld pretend to. When he gives another reason, I'll probably be able to show that it is even sillier than Mr. Green thinks my remarks.—Yours faithfully,
BURNS SINGER
Cardin/,am, near Bodmin, Cornwall
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