 Tillyard's book "Milton" is the prime example of this, as are Sir Henry John Newbolt's "The Teaching of English in England", Hugh Kingsmill's book on "Matthew Arnold", some of T. S. Eliot's writing, and perhaps even H.W.Garrod's book on "Wordsworth".Tillyard wrote in his book "Milton" that such matters as style “have concerned the critics far more than what the poem is really about, the true state of Milton’s mind when he wrote it.”

As an example of what poetry is about, Lewis cites a poem, part of William Wordsworth's "Prelude".