ABSTRACT
An obscure sense of power, the hint of magic normal in the poets, has continual reverberations in Dr Richards' books, and you need to decide whether it is just in a given case-how much people were really influenced by the confusions he points out, how far he could change men's opinions who made them conscious about language. The surrealists are brought in as wanting to 'put remote objects together in a sudden and striking manner'; this is praiseworthy as showing the real nature of metaphor, though they are 'too heroic' in wanting to put you through continual strain. One result of Dr Richards' approach seems absurd to limit metaphor to assertions of similarity; all kinds of connections may be used, and in fact Disparity Action is as normal a basis for metaphor as likeness. T. E. Hulme's essay on romanticism and classicism depends on confusion between the relation of tenor and vehicle and the relation of thing-meant and thing-said.
