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18. See Spears, introduction to Coll. for a brief history of Auden's critical reputation. Edward Mendelson's Early Auden (New York: Viking Press, 1981) and his Later Auden (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) magisterially update the picture Spears sketches.

19. Reed Whittemore, “Epistle to a Godson,” review in New Republic 167 (September 23, 1972), 26.

20. Gerald Nelson, Changes of Heart: A Study of the Poetry of W. H. Auden (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 138.

21. George T. Wright, W. H. Auden (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969), 156.

22. Damian Grant, “Tones of Voice,” Critical Quarterly 11 (1969), 195.

23. Calvin Bedient, review of Epistle to a Godson, New York Times Book Review, September 24, 1972, 26.

24. Phyllis McGinley, “Tribute to an Honored Guest,” in “W. H. Auden 1907-1973,” ed. Gilbert Kerr, special issue, The Harvard Advocate 108, no. 2/3 (1975): 36—alluded vaguely and fleetingly to Auden's experiments with classical metres.

25. See F. W. Bateson, “Auden's Last Poems,” Essays in Criticism 25, no. 3 (July 1975): 389.

26. Bateson, “Auden's Last Poems,” 387; see also Bedient's review of Epistle to a Godson.