Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/11



HE existence of a literary review requires more than a word of justification. It is not enough to present a list of distinguished contributors; it is not enough to express a cordial zeal for the diffusion of good literature; it is not enough to define a 'policy'. The essential preliminary is to define the task to be attempted, and the place which may be occupied, by any literary review; to define the nature and the function. Many reviews and periodicals qualified as "literary" have proved deficient not so much by their failure to carry out their purposes as by their failure to conceive these purposes and possibilities clearly. This note, therefore, will be concerned less with the point of view of The New Criterion, compared with that of other reviews, than with the definition of the literary review in general, and the precise application of the term 'literature' in such a periodical.

There are two pairs of opposed errors, into which a 'literary review' may fall. It may err by being too