The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Goodbooks

THE world of letters did not discover the poetry and critical ability of Gerard Manley Hopkins until years after his death. As an Oxford undergraduate, Hopkins felt an impulse toward poetry which he rigorously repressed upon his conversion to the Catholic Church. But a gift so elemental could not be denied, and as the years passed he wrote in quiet the poems and letters which proved to be so valuable to his friend Robert Bridges and which to-day are of acknowledged influence upon the young English poets, Spender, Auden, and C. Day Lewis.