ABSTRACT
Richards tended to apologize for the varieties of "practical criticism" that his method had promoted. Ironically, the ever-growing clutter of glosses had come to pose a larger obstacle for younger generations of students than the hegemony of historical criticism had been in Richards' own youth. At a meeting of Harvard graduate students in 1969, he was asked what direction graduate programs should take; he replied that "they should be dropped altogether."5 Such studies had grown out of all proportion; scholarship and criticism were a special calling that only a few could truly enjoy through life; and world literacy and high school teaching needed urgent attention. The reaction of the graduate students was a nervous and defensive laughter. In any case, Richards thought that most literary glosses failed to perform the same clarifying function served by good theory. On the contrary, glosses might do too much of the reader's work, making for shortcuts and safe-conduct passes. He refused even to read most books of glosses, and of course was wary of attempts to establish a canon by way of glosses. For the benefit of readers who could not enjoy T. E. Hulme's "Fantasia," Richards observed: "how little explications can do." For those who could, Richards added: "how easily they smutch its delicacy."6
