ABSTRACT
This attitude of Richards combines in its effect with another, namely, his fear of being definite, which prevents him from being at all explicit about the criteria which should govern our use of words (see page 114 above). Here we are reminded of what he said in Practical Criticism about judging poetry-"no theory, no description ... can be trusted which is not too intricate to be applied". Or, as he puts it at the end of his section on Grammar in the book we are now examining, the first moral "that I find in the discussions of this Grammar Section [is] ... that old one again, that the pupil must ... be his own adviser" (293). But the consequence of this is that, just as with the usage doctrine, "Whatever is, is right", the only difference being that "what is" is likely to be much more complex and idiosyncratic than it was with the usage doctrine. And this of course serves to make Richards' view, that we need to cultivate our skills of interpretation, all the more right.
