Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

to see that there was no overlapping of periods. The American scholar, Douglas Bush,¹ agreed to write to ‘The Early Seventeenth Century, From c. 1600 to c. 1660’ and in January 1938 Wilson informed Lewis of this, asking if he wanted to include William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas in his sixteenth-century volume.

      TO FRANK PERCY WILSON (OUP):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford

      Jan 25th 1938

      My dear Wilson

No, I don’t want Dunbar: and I don’t cleave to Douglas even, if anyone wants him. And at the other end of the principle is a simple one—the sooner Bush can begin and I leave off, the better I shall be pleased. The O HELL lies like a nightmare on my chest ever since I got your specimen bibliography: I shan’t try to desert—anyway, I suppose the exit is thronged with dreadful faces and fiery arms²—but I have a growing doubt if I ought to be doing this.

      Mind you, I’d sooner have Dunbar than Donne: sooner, in general, come early on the scene than linger late. Let the others choose.

      I hoped we should all meet at the Aldwych and set out to find it with Tillyard who proved to know no more about London than I do. We got to a thing called Bush House in the end where we lunched in a barber’s shop, served by tailors, off sponges. I was sorry not to see you again.

      Do you think there’s any chance of the world ending before the O HELL appears?

      Yours, in deep depression,

      C. S. Lewis

      TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      [The Kilns]

      March 28th 1938

      My dear Barfield–

Thanks for letter: I have written to Tolkien. ‘Omit no manly degree of importunity’³ towards Harwood. I begin to realise how much the quidity of the walks depended on him. I love your part in him as Lamb said. Can nothing be done about it. I am ready for feudal arrangements if they are any good. Also, I must warn you that something seems to be wrong with my left foot. I shall come, of course, D.V.,⁴ but how much I’ll be able to walk, I don’t know. (Memo: I can’t drive a car) and H.J.⁵ said ‘I hope you are not the sort of people who walk 12 or 15 miles a day.’ (That’s where the Sadism will come in!) So there’ll be much more tour than walking. I suppose you know Bournemouth is about 20 miles long.

Orpheus goes back tomorrow.⁶ I can’t pretend to have anything like taken it in yet: think what one would make of the Ring under similar conditions—and this presents difficulties of the same kind. I like the matter of I i as much as I always did and am more reconciled to the style. I ii is excellent, though I’d like more (and better) variations in the Hiawatha metre. I iii I’m still not quite sure about: I expect it wd. act well. Act II is simply superb. It brought tears to my eyes. III i also very good—until the scene with Persephone which I don’t understand. IV i Aristaeus’s opening speech does not get me at all. The ‘thing’ may be good. I begin to see my way a little more in the scene between O. and the satyr, but this needs more re-reading. IV ii very good: Cyrene’s ritual goes off admirably. IV iii—I don’t know. Mostly above my head. The lyrical part at the end: that is very unlike you. A sort of Swinburne-Morris-Kipling style (I deemed that I had good hunting…Have I used well, Demeter, the man’s good gift of his breath—the high gods etc). Is there some point in this that I’m missing? This is rotten criticism: but it’s not an easy poem.

      Yours

      C.S.L

      TO JANET SPENS (BOD):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford.

      April 18th 1938

      Dear Miss Spens

      Thanks for your kind and interesting letter. You are right of course about the silliness of dragging in Mason: that was merely (as sillinesses so often are) the intrusion of a favourite hobby horse of mine in a place where it was not wanted—my belief, namely, that the continuity between the Romantics and the XVIIIth c. needs to be stressed more than it usually is.

      Yes, the Dynasts is very queer: the invention of a whole pantheon to symbolise the non existence of God. I think it is not uncommon to find atheists perpetually angry with God for not being there. Perhaps it is a laudable trait!

I hadn’t noticed the parallel between Urania and Cymoent.⁷ But I still think there is an important difference. Marinell is, in the story, Cymoent’s literal son, and Cymoent is a character not a personification only. But Adonais and the Muse are ‘a poet’ and ‘the spirit of poetry’ and I don’t count the latter to break down like a bereaved human being. Shelley seems to be taking his symbols too seriously in one way and not seriously enough in another. It is like making the sun weep because a candle has gone out. I must re-read The Witch.⁸

The chief reason why I can’t read Godwin is that I have never got hold of a copy of Political Justice;⁹ but I intend to ‘one of these days’. I shall be very interested to hear what you think of him. My own growing suspicion is that he can’t be so bad as our critical tradition (a very flippant, elegant, belle-lettristic tradition) makes out. If Shelley likes an author¹⁰ and the Saintsburies and Raleighs and Garrods sneer at him—well, it makes one wonder. I hope you will find time to let me know how he struck you.

      With many thanks.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      29th April 1938

      Dear Griffiths

It was nice to hear from you again and of course I read the articles with interest.¹¹ I think at the top of p. 8 in the first you might have expressed more clearly the actually antimoral side of romanticism you were in when we first met.¹² Have you forgotten that in our fiercest arguments you were actually defending cruelty and lechery. On p. 9—is it your considered view that Berkeleyian idealism is to be found in the Confessions? I shd. doubt it.¹³ ‘Strange as it may seem’ a few lines lower is ambiguous. I take it you mean it was strange that this shd. have been a discovery.¹⁴ In next para. I shd. have liked an explicit statement of the view you then expressed to me, in words that I have never forgotten ‘The choice in the long run is between Christianity and Hinduism’.

In the second article your account of the night of prayer (p. 31)¹⁵ omits a v. interesting fact you told me shortly after it—that what started you off was the consciousness of sin in some religious writer you were reading which you could not share tho’ you were satisfied on objective grounds that you were more sinful than the writer. They are nice, plain articles and