Volume 1, Number 5 · October 31, 1963
Frost in His Letters
By Elizabeth Hardwick
The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 388 pp., $7.00
Simplicity and vanity, independence and jealousy combined in Robert Frost's character in such unexpected ways that one despairs of sorting them out. He is two picture puzzles perversely dumped into one box and, no matter how much you try, the leg will never go rightly with the arm, nor this brown eye with that green one. Perhaps the worst you could say about Frost was that he could not really like his peers. The second circumstance the observer of 'the man' must deal with is that, as an engaging but insistent reonologist, he was not especially mindful of the qualities of his auditors and therefore spent a good deal of time in the company of mediocrities. And, further, you could say about Frost, as Dr. Johnson said of Pope, that he had the felicity to take himself at his true value.
Review, 2781 words
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