ABSTRACT
It is sometimes difficult to escape the feeling that Lewis was just a bit priggish and, despite his jolly spells, he lacked humour. In a letter to his friend, Richard Mills, dated November 1941, he wrote:16
53 'He (Robert Graves) warned me against becoming too
democratic-poets are not democratic in their poetry but only in their lives. Do you accept? I don't. I wrote back and said that my whole power, such as it is, springs from one sourcehumility-which alone engenders and resolves my perpetual struggle against the arrogant and the submissive, the victors, and the vanquished. I think I am working from the only true source these days: if I succeed (I use the word in no vulgar sense) I will have helped to make the world gentler, more understanding, more beautiful therefore. I don't mind sweating my soul out for such an end.'
