The poets of the last generation were extremely erudite, but their erudition was of the rather specialized type that passed as currency of the realm in a somewhat literary realm. About Darwin, Marx, Freud and Co., about all characteristically scientific or modern thinkers most of them concluded regretfully: If they had not existed, it would not have been necessary to ignore them. (Or deplore them.)

New Year Letter, p. 56 - Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)