The plain reader is, in fact, more conservative in poetry than in any other thing but religion; and in poetry more than in religion. The reader who may be said to occupy an enlightened middle position toward various historical changes he must face in his life is generally many generations behind himself in poetry and religion. This is perhaps not out of incapacity, but because he realizes that the demands put upon him by religion and poetry are too pressing, too personal. It is a case of all or nothing. So it is nothing; because no common Christian could seriously turn the other cheek when smitten or sell all that he had and give it to the poor, and no common poetry reader could bring himself without great effort to meet the demands of thought put upon him by an authentic poem. An advocacy in modern Christianity of the turning of the other cheek and of the communalizing of private property would be regarded as an obnoxious modernism in the most devout Christian; as an increase in poetry of the demands put upon the plain reader antagonizes him against modernist poetry no matter how much he loves poetry in general. Poetry, then, like religion, has to be dissociated from practical life, except as a sentimentality: he will give a saint or a poet lip-service, but only lip-service: particularly he must reject a saint or a poet if he is still living, for it is only time that reveals to a worshipper or a reader which of the saints or poets are real and which are charlatans. The common Christian will prefer a popular preacher of the orthodox type to a ‘fanatic’ like General Booth: this preserves his self-respect. We purposely make this analogy between poetry and religion, which is a false one, because it is a traditional analogy and largely accountable for readers’ shyness of poetry. Religion can be in actual conflict with social principles; to turn the smitten cheek is to abandon the virtue of self-pride, is to compromise ‘honour’: Poetry, on the other hand, in its more exacting side, makes no demands of a social nature, no demands which exceed the private intimacy of the reader and the poem; particularly when, as now, the poet asks for no personal bays or public banquets. But the plain reader is even more afraid of the infringements that poetry may make on his private mental and spiritual ease than of the social infringements that modernism in religion would lead him to. And undoubtedly the way that anything can interfere most with an individual’s privacy is by demanding criticism (complete attention, complete mental intimacy and confidence) for itself from him.