F. W. Bateson, English Poetry and the English Language

Oxford, 1934, pp. 118–20

Frederick Wilse Bateson (1901–78) was Commonwealth Fellow at Harvard, 1927–9, and editor, Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1930–40).

In the following extract he suggests that Hopkins (and Housman) tried to create a poetic idiom of their own, in reaction against the vague language of conventional Victorian poetry.