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Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24624, 21 July 1945, Page 5

exception. If ho reads the passage again, I think he will see that I was not so unreasonable or so naive as to blame because D’Arcy Cresswell could not be worked without strain into any pattern of social development. Mr Curnow has taken my essay seriously, he is an authority in the field I covered, and inevitably he disagrees with some of my estimates and opinions. Disagreement on these terms is gratifying: and I must say that I should have written .differently it Mr Curnow’s book had been before me. A critic, or even a literary historian, though he writes with a sense of responsibility, cannot support a doctrine of literary infallibility. “Letters and Art” will in time be regarded as an early attempt to hack a path through the jungle of New Zealand literature —an attempt that was limited by the circumstances and date of its production, the character of its author, and the space at his disposal, more restricted as the essay drew to its close. In time it will be superseded by more detailed and sensitive studies, like those of Mr Holcroft and the introduction to Mr Cumow’s anthology. i