ABSTRACT
we are now sufficiently advanced into the twentieth century to ask whether the poetry of our period has acquired any significant character. Its achievement, in a quantitative sense, is impressive: we should have to go back to the Elizabethan period for any comparable efflorescence. But we must not forget that English is now the native language of at least two hundred and fifty million people, most of them acquiring some standard of literacy as a birthright, whereas the great wealth of Elizabethan poetry was created by a small society not numbering, on its literate level, more than a few thousands. If averages were of any account in this connection, our present rating would be miserably low.
