T HE problem of comparing classical and modern poetry could be approached in various ways, and two approaches are obvious. One is through the classical tradition, the study of sources, of actual strands of influence running from ancient to modern poets. Such a study is altogether fascinating, much dealt with but never to be drained dry, and it both deepens and illuminates our perception of the qualities of literature at any particular given period. But it is not our approach here, because it is not the direct approach to our problem. Our problem, as I put it to myself, is to answer a fragment of the question: what is modern poetry like, and what is ancient poetry like, and what qualities have they in common? It is not the question: how far has modern poetry derived its qualities from ancient poetry, and where, and how? The questions are completely different. Where it is discernible that a modern poet has been influenced by an ancient one, that fact immediately emphasizes a difference between the two. That Gray set out to imitate Pindar makes Gray in just that degree alien to Pindar, because Pindar did not set up any model in the same way. If the fact creates a bond, it is a bond between Gray and Bacchylides. Similarly, if we are looking for sound analogies to the Homeric poems, we are more likely to find them in epics uninfluenced by Homer (Beowulf, Roland, or the prose epic of Malory) than in those which, directly or indirectly, trace back to him (the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost). The former are, like Homer, founded in folk memory and tradition, not in literature and learning. Like Homer, they have no Homer to throw back to. Matthew Arnold is classically influenced but not classical in quality, and Wyatt, rather than Landor, holds a position in English Poetry analogous to Sappho's in Greek. I do not, however, mean that, because a modern poet has been influenced by the classics, there can be no common ground between them; only, that