What you say about Eliot does not surprise me,--but you will recover from the shock. No one ever says the last word, and it is a good thing for you, (notice how I congratulate myself!) to have been faced with him as early as possible. I have been facing him for _four_ years,--and while I haven’t discovered a weak spot yet in his armour, I flatter myself a little lately that I have discovered a safe tangent to strike which, if I can possibly explain the position,--goes _through_ him toward a _different goal_. You see it is such a fearful temptation to imitate him that at times I have been almost distracted. He is, you have now discovered, far more profound than Huxley (whom I like) or any others obviously under his influence. You will profit by reading him again and again. I must have read “Prufrock” twenty-five times and things like the “Preludes” more often. His work will lead you back to some of the Elizabethans and point out the best in them. And there is Henry James, Laforgue, Blake and a dozen others in his work. He wrote most of this verse between 22 and 25, and is now, I understand, dying piecemeal as a clerk in a London bank! In his own realm Eliot presents us with an absolute _impasse_, yet oddly enough, he can be utilized to lead us to, intelligently point to, other positions and “pastures new.” Having absorbed him enough we can trust ourselves as never before, in the air or on the sea. I, for instance, would like to leave a few of his “negations” behind me, risk the realm of the obvious more, in quest of new sensations, _humeurs_. These theories and manoeuvres are interesting and consolatory,--but of course, when it comes right down to the act itself,--I have to depend on intuition, “inspiration” or what you will to fill up the page. Let us not be too much disturbed, antagonized or influenced by the _fait accompli_. For in the words of our divine object of “envy” (“Reflections on Contemporary Poetry,” _Egoist_, London, ’19--): “Admiration leads most often to imitation; we can seldom long remain unconscious of our imitating another, and the awareness of our imitation naturally leads us to hatred of the object imitated. If we stand toward a writer in this other relation of which I speak we do not imitate him, and though we are quite as [....]”[18] 101: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] [_ca. June 18_]