Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins occupies a position in English literary history which is virtually unique: that of a strikingly original poet whose work remained unknown in his life-time except to a handful of friends, and which was not published until thirty years after his death. He was uninfluenced by the poetic fashions of his own day, nor has he attracted followers since his reputation became established. Mr Storey's essay succeeds that by Geoffrey Grigson, and provides a detailed study of his poetic technique and of his use of language. It examines the terms 'instress' and 'inscape', which are crucial to the understanding of Hopkins's conception of poetry, and discusses the nature and the use of 'sprung rhythm', which first appears in "The Wreck of the Deutschland". It also considers the relation of Hopkins's religious vocation to his poetry. Very few poets have Mr Storey's view, communicated so strongly both excitement at natural beauty and its opposite, intimate knowledge of the terrors of despair. He concludes that Hopkins's poetic innovations were too radical for his work to have received a just valuation from his own contemporaries, and hence that the delay in publication has worked in his favour.