Second, he defines particular words and phrases as they might have been understood at the time of composition. Third, Ricks exhaustively identifies all literary sources that possibly influenced Eliot's composition. The editor carefully notes that there is no evidence that Eliot actually used most of these sources. Rather, Ricks tries only to present the literary possibilities that existed in young Eliot's milieu. This editorial procedure creates many odd moments.
Ricks provides six packed pages of annotation in tiny type.
Before Ricks moves on to the next poem, he has quoted possible parallels in Verlaine, Sheridan, Browning, Pater, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Milton, Symons, Ecclesiastes , Henry James, Laforgue, St. Augustine, de Nerval, Isaiah , Shelley, Marston, Thackeray, Blake, Prover bs, John Webster, de Gourmont, Meredith, and, most frequently, Eliot himself. Ricks's scholarship is brilliant, but it does not always prove particularly illuminating to the passages in question. Ultimately, his annotations seem less effective as a textual commentary than as a vastly detailed speculative essay on poetic influence. While I fear that the notes will sometimes confuse unsophisticated readers, I must also report that Ricks's annotations eventually add up into one of the most interesting studies of Eliot's poetry. It is not altogether inappropriate that this superb study assumes the distinctively Modernist form of the collage.