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52 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
The book attracted little attention and was the only work of
Pound's to be published by Dent. Several decades were to elapse
before Pound's passion for the Provençal was to find an audience.
In the "Prefatio" to The Spirit of Romance, Pound included a
statement that was not calculated to improve his popularity with
the poetasters of London, and that probably had been inspired by
his observations of them: "the history of an art is the history of
masterwork, not of failures, or of mediocrity."
In 1911, Elkin Mathews published Pound's Canzoni, which met
with a more favorable reception. The book was dedicated to his
future mother-in-law, at whose home he was a frequent dinner
guest. Mathews also had success with Provença (1909), which also
was reviewed favorably. The Tablet critic declared, "Mr. Pound is
sometimes Celtic; he has the love of out-of-the-way legends, and
his high authority in Provence literature and lore is made evident
on nearly every page."
The Spectator said, "Mr. Pound is that rare thing among modern
poets—a scholar. He is not only cultivated but learned."
The Nation chimed in with this chorus of praise by stating, "If
Mr. Pound will go on with the development in method shown in
this latest volume, he will add to English poetry something which
is unusual riches."
This was heady praise for a poet still in his twenties, coming as it
did from journals that were not given to snap judgments or radical
tastes. And these criticisms were made in a city that was accustomed
to handing on, twenty years after, its shopworn tastes to
its culturally shabby cousin across the seas. It took two world wars
to reduce English literary standards to those of America.
Eliot wrote in 1917 of Pound's early volumes, "Few poets have
ever undertaken the siege of London with less backing; few books
of verse have ever owed their success so purely to their own merits.
Pound came to London a complete stranger, without either literary
patronage or financial means." 41
More important, Pound had established an important beachhead
on the Continent for those American writers and artists who
came over in a constant stream after his initial success in 1908.
Although he had been preceded by other American expatriates,