ABSTRACT
At a meeting of the Modem Language Association of America in New York on December 27, 1030, after a series of papers discussing the role of tradition in the work of several English writers from Dryden to Eliot, these remarks were designed to serve as an epilogue. Since the Hopkins Review — in which they were published, IV, 3 (Spring, 1951) — has subsequently disappeared, I should like to express my sympathy as well as my gratitude to its former editors. An Italian translation by Luigi Berti was published in Inventario, IV, 2 (March-April, 1932); a Dutch translation by Halbo C. Kool in Amerikaans Cultured Perspectief (Utrecht, 1954)*
