Professor Brett has some direct acquaintance with a Joint Honours Degree in English Literature and Philosophy: and it is therefore on the basis of his own experience (as well as Coleridge's) that he warns us that poetry and philosophy are “difficult pursuits for any man to combine” (p. 79). This book has an introductory chapter and a short epilogue which deal in a philosophical way with meaning in poetry and in imaginative literature generally and with the nature of critical interpretation.In the four middle chapters the author gives his account of four well-known and much discussed poems: Lycidas, the Essay on Man, the Ancient Mariner and the Four Quartets. One could imagine these chapters presented independently as interpretations and discussions of the literary and historical background of the poems: but they certainly illustrate Mr. Brett's theory of meaning in poetry and this provides a certain unity. Parts of Chapter I were first published by the author in Philosophy (July 1952). What is new is the particular application of the theory to didactic and discursive poetry. To this is now added a discussion of rival theories of interpretation: first, the view expressed by Wimsatt and Beardsley in “The Intentional Fallacy” (Sewanee Review, 1946 and 1949); and, second, the views expressed by Miss Kathleen Raine in her essay on Blake (British Book News, Supplement, 1951).

In a philosophical paper the point one wishes to make should be stated at the very outset. And in dealing with a problem which is as controversial as religion, the bias should be confessed before any points are made. I want to conform at once to both these requirements. I want to discuss beliefs, ordinary beliefs but mainly religious ones, for the expression of which, oddly enough, we use the same word. “Belief” and “Faith” are admittedly different in English, but many languages possess only one word for these and further I shall try to show that even in English the difference is not very great and that they have, if not the same, at least a very similar logical grammar. The point of my argument is that beliefs can be discussed rationally and that they should be so discussed. Religious arguments have been going on for a very long time, and I find it incredible that people of immense intellectual qualities, who devoted their time and energy to these discussions, have been working under a simple delusion, not understanding the very nature of the thing they were doing.